14 February 2023

New Global Mammal Checklist Available

It has been over a year since I last updated my global mammal checklist, and a new one is now available here

The list continues to grow faster than I can see them, though the rate of increase has slowed a bit. In the past 12 months I’ve added 126 species and dropped 40.

The most important change in methodology is that I now follow – almost exclusively – the American Society of Mammalogists’ (ASM) list from their excellent Mammal Diversity Database (MDD).  Old timers will remember this list started life based on the IUCN’s redlist with some subjective tinkering from me. No more. And so, with tears in my eyes, I have dropped a few species from the checklist that I felt sure were destined to be split and that I wanted on my life list (like the Javan Palm Civet). They have not yet appeared. Perhaps they never well. So I have stopped meddling.

I am sure there will be people who disagree with some of the ASM’s choices here but, unlike the other lists I am aware of, this one is very current and is also very well documented. It is the gold standard so far as I know. And species come and go all the time depending on the science. A year ago a new species of Fringe-lipped Bat was added. This year it has departed.

I have departed from the ASM list in two ways.

First, I am following the IUCN’s primate taxonomy rather than the ASM’s as this is even more up-to-date and they are super helpful in explaining the latest news to me.

Second, I have left the Bornean Palm Civet (Artctogalidia stimgatica) on the master list. It isn’t on the AMS list (yet): they include it with the Small-toothed Palm Civet (A. trivirgata) though they hint it might be on the way  (read the notes).

All these divergences are listed on the tab called – surprisingly – divergences from AMS list.

If you want to try to figure out what recent changes impact your list you can look at the changes over time tab and scroll to the bottom. If you are still puzzled you could download the full MDD spreadsheet and search for a species name to figure out where species might have gone. There is a ton of info on the spreadsheet that is easy to search.

Some of the changes that boosted my list this time include a new Aardwolf (the Eastern Aardwolf), which I saw in Tanzania, the Mount Kilimanjaro Colobus, which I also saw in Tanzania (thank you Charles Foley for both!), Chinese Goral and several “new” primates in South America.

Other changes which affected my list include the lumping of Glover’s and Chinese Red Pikas (that some of us have seen on the Tibetan Plateau) and splitting Maned Sloths into Northern and Southern varieties. I have only seen the southern flavour.

All up though, after deleting some of my dodgy species, I was up 2 mammals so I will not complain.

All the changes are documented on the spreadsheet and the new taxonomy is already up on the brilliant Scythebill listing software.

Let me know what you think. And please do send through corrections and comments – I am sure there are plenty of errors in here (all my fault).

 

Jon

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Jon Hall
Genetically Welsh, spiritually Australian, currently in New York City. I’ve also lived and worked in London, Canberra, Paris and Lusaka, and watched mammals in over 100 countries.
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2 Comments

  • 15 February 2023
    Antee

    Just added the new list in Scythebill. Shouldn´t have done it… just lost the Harvey´s duiker 🙂

  • 18 February 2023
    Vladimir Dinets

    Yes, MDD team is doing great job. As you know, I tried posting my own lists of published changes here, but recently gave up after discovering that MDD consistently has everything I catch and more.
    I disagree with you on primates but rather wouldn’t start that discussion 🙂

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