Mammals in Madagascar: Biogeography, Natural History, and New Species
Madagascar, the world’s fourth-largest island, is a naturalist’s promised land, with diverse and bizarre forms of plant and animal life that have been shaped by millions of years of isolation in the Indian Ocean. Due to biogeographic chance events, the mammal groups are limited to tenrecs, bats, lemurs, carnivorans, and rodents. According to recent molecular research, each of these mammalian lineages is derived from a single colonizing ancestral stock. Nick Garbutt, a naturalist and photographer, who has been visiting Madagascar for almost twenty years, is well aware of its special place in evolutionary history, and in this book he showcases the mammal diversity. In the 1980s there were no field books describing the amazing wildlife of Madagascar, and Garbutt rushed to fill that gap. His extraordinary photos in the first edition of Mammals of Madagascar introduced tourists and naturalists not only to the lemurs, but all the living mammal species. But the 1999 hardcover version was for coffee tables and too unwieldy to carry into the forest. This problem is righted in the second edition with a paperback format. Because of the explosion of exploration and research beginning twenty-five years ago and increasing in the past decade, this book is a much-needed update, including important new data on taxonomy and behavioral ecology. This concise introduction to Madagascar’s mammals is a practical field guide. The author should be commended on his excellent scholarship and attention to detail from the current literature. The clarity and beauty of the photos and drawings in this new version of Mammals of Madagascar highlights the talents of the author. Mammals of Madagascar is divided into sections, beginning with a nice review of the biogeographic regions of Madagascar. The diversity of ecosystems in which these mammals live is impressive. A brief discussion of how mammals originally reached Madagascar reviews the hypothesis of “rafting” (sweepstakes dispersal) from Africa, suggesting small mammals with the abilities to lower their basal metabolic rate could have made the crossing millions of years ago. The lack of a fossil record of the extant mammal groups leaves us with many questions about origins. An up-to-date phylogeny is presented in the beginning, and this acts as a blueprint for the species descriptions that follow. Each species description contains a map of current known distribution, and excellent drawings and/or photographs by the author. The standard measurements, description and identification, habitat and distribution, and behavior are given in convenient, easy to read sections. The behavior section is up-to-date, summarizing all that J Mammal Evol (2010) 17:65–67 DOI 10.1007/s10914-009-9117-y
Lemurs of Madagascar
The third edition of this title has been designed for easy use and to be an indispensable companion for the ecotourist, and especially for the primate-watcher. The 101 lemur species and subspecies currently recognized are illustrated and described in detail, and information is provided on the distribution, ecology, and behavior of each, accompanied by an array of photos, illustrations, and maps. The information presented in the pages will not only help the reader identify what species he or she has just seen, but can also be used in advance of a visit to Madagascar to plan field trips based on a "must see" list of lemurs.
Field Observations on Indri indri: A Preliminary Report
The following preliminary report describes the habits of the largest extant lemur, Indri indri (Gmelin, 1788). As a preliminary account, it contains assertions which can only be more fully substantiated elsewhere (Pollock, in preparation).