" . . . includes the countries of Guyana and Surinam, French Guiana (a part of France) and the Venezuelan states of Amazonas, Bolivar, and Delta Amacuro. The checklist contains 257 vascular plant families with 13,367 species." -- from abstract p. [2].

Suriname, located on the Atlantic coast of northeastern South America, is a relatively small country compared to most other South American countries. It nevertheless has a rich avifauna. By the end of 2017, 751 species (including 765 subspecies) were known to occur in Suriname. Most of the land area of Suriname is still covered with tropical rainforest and the country should be a must-visit for birdwatchers. Suriname is even mentioned as being the best country to spot certain neotropical species. Surprisingly, few birders visit Suriname. The main reason given is the lack of a handy pocket guide that can easily be carried in a backpack. This (revised and updated) edition of the Field Guide to the Birds of Suriname (with its 109 color plates) tries to fill this gap. In addition to species accounts, data on topography, climate, geology, geomorphology, biogeography, avifauna composition, conservation, and hotspots for bird watching are given. So, why delay your trip to this beautiful and friendly country any longer? Suriname with its rich avifauna awaits you!

This paper presents the first comprehensive taxonomic revision of the olingos, Bassaricyon, based on most available museum specimens, with data derived from anatomy, mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, fieldwork, and geographic range modeling. Olingos are forest-living, arboreal, nocturnal, frugivorous, and solitary, and have one young at a time. Four olingo species can be recognized, including a Central American species (B. gabbii) and lowland species with eastern, cis-Andean (B. alleni) and western, trans-Andean (B. medius) distributions. Surprisingly, the sister lineage to all previously described species of Bassaricyon is an Andean cloud forest species, which we call the Olinguito, that has never been previously described. Bassaricyon neblina sp. n., en-demic to Colombia and Ecuador, is the smallest living member of the family Procyonidae and the first new species of Carnivora named in the American continents in 35 years. We describe four subspecies of Olinguito across the Northern Andes.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the patterns of biodiversity in various neotropical ecosystems, as well as a discussion on their historical biogeographies and underlying diversification processes. All chapters were written by prominent researchers in the fields of tropical biology, molecular ecology, climatology, paleoecology, and geography, producing an outstanding collection of essays, synthetic analyses, and novel investigations that describe and improve our understanding of the biodiversity of this unique region. With chapters on the Amazon and Caribbean forests, the Atlantic rainforests, the Andes, the Cerrado savannahs, the Caatinga drylands, the Chaco, and Mesoamerica – along with broad taxonomic coverage – this book summarizes a wide range of hypotheses, views, and methods concerning the processes and mechanisms of neotropical diversification. The range of perspectives presented makes the book a truly comprehensive, state-of-the-art publication on the topic, which will fascinate both scientists and general readers alike.

As explorers and scientists have known for decades, the Neotropics harbor a fantastic array of our planet’s mammalian diversity, from capybaras and capuchins to maned wolves and mouse opossums to sloths and sakis. This biological bounty can be attributed partly to the striking diversity of Neotropical landscapes and climates and partly to a series of continental connections that permitted intermittent faunal exchanges with Africa, Antarctica, Australia, and North America. Thus, to comprehend the development of modern Neotropical mammal faunas requires not only mastery of the Neotropics’ substantial diversity, but also knowledge of mammalian lineages and landscapes dating back to the Mesozoic. Bones, Clones, and Biomes offers just that—an exploration of the development and relationships of the modern mammal fauna through a series of studies that encompass the last 100 million years and both Central and South America. This work serves as a complement to more taxonomically driven works, providing for readers the long geologic and biogeographic contexts that undergird the abundance and diversity of Neotropical mammals. Rather than documenting diversity or distribution, this collection traverses the patterns that the distributions and relationships across mammal species convey, bringing together for the first time geology, paleobiology, systematics, mammalogy, and biogeography. Of critical importance is the book’s utility for current conservation and management programs, part of a rapidly rising conservation paleobiology initiative.

Note that there is a companion website for this book and it can be seen at: http://secretsofthesnakecharmer.blogspot.com/ Humans and snakes have an intimate and ancient relationship that often revolves around either love or hate. Snakes can be seen as gods, spiritual messengers, symbols of fertility, and guardians of resources in virtually all cultures. But to those that fear them, snakes are seen as venomous creatures that cannot be trusted. In Secrets of the Snake Charmer, John Murphy, a research associate of the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, provides an in-depth, twenty-first century look at snakes utilizing the published research of other herpetologists as well as his own personal experiences and speculations. Murphy covers a wide range of topics such as the adaptability of snakes, the ways in which evolution has tinkered with snakes during the last 160 million years, and the impact snakes have on the ecological communities they live in. While sharing ideas about the origin of snakes, rattlesnake rattles, and spitting in cobras, Murphy presents an innovative portrayal of snakes that proves they co-evolve with their prey, predators, and parasites in order to fulfill a significant and novel role in the web of life.

The neotropical primate family Pitheciidae consists of four genera Cacajao (uacaris), Callicebus (titis), Chiropotes (bearded sakis) and Pithecia (sakis), whose 40+ species display a range of sizes, social organisations, ecologies and habitats. Few are well known and the future survival of many is threatened, yet pitheciines have been little studied. This book is the first to review the biology of this fascinating and diverse group in full. It includes fossil history, reviews of the biology of each genus and, among others, specific treatments of vocalisations and foraging ecology. These studies are integrated into considerations of current status and future conservation requirements on a country-by-country basis for each species. A state-of-the-art summary of current knowledge, Evolutionary Biology and Conservation of Titis, Sakis and Uacaris is a collective effort from all the major researchers currently working on these remarkable animals.