Aim:
Comprehensive, global information on species’ occurrences is an essential biodiversity variable and central to a range of applications in ecology, evolution, biogeography and conservation. Expert range maps often represent a species’ only available distributional information and play an increasing role in conservation assessments and macroecology. We provide global range maps for the native ranges of all extant mammal species harmonised to the taxonomy of the Mammal Diversity Database (MDD) mobilised from two sources, the
Handbook of the Mammals of the World
(HMW) and the
Illustrated Checklist of the Mammals of the World
(CMW).
Location:
Global.
Taxon:
All extant mammal species.
Methods:
Range maps were digitally interpreted, georeferenced, error-checked and subsequently taxonomically aligned between the HMW (6253 species), the CMW (6431 species) and the MDD taxonomies (6362 species).
Results:
Range maps can be evaluated and visualised in an online map browser at Map of Life (
mol.org
) and accessed for individual or batch download for non-commercial use.
Main conclusion:
Expert maps of species’ global distributions are limited in their spatial detail and temporal specificity, but form a useful basis for broad-scale characterizations and model-based integration with other data. We provide georeferenced range maps for the native ranges of all extant mammal species as shapefiles, with species-level metadata and source information packaged together in geodatabase format. Across the three taxonomic sources our maps entail, there are 1784 taxonomic name differences compared to the maps currently available on the IUCN Red List website. The expert maps provided here are harmonised to the MDD taxonomic authority and linked to a community of online tools that will enable transparent future updates and version control.
The monotypic genus Salinomys (Cricetidae, Sigmodontinae) includes tiny mice with specialist adaptations to desert habitats characteristic of Argentinian shrubland. We report on a population of Salinomys delicatus from Central La Pampa Province, Argentina, representing a 450 km southerly extension to its known distribution. Importantly, this stresses the necessity for further discussion of the validity of its conservation status, recently updated from Data Deficient to Vulnerable. Furthermore, we highlight aspects from its morphology that could help in future proper identification of specimens. Finally, we propose that this species should be retained as Data Deficient pending additional investigation.
In order to improve the knowledge of terrestrial fauna in the Jabal Samhan Reserve – in southern Oman – several systematic surveys have been carried out in this region. Four specimens of the bushy-tailed jird, the gerbilline
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