Volume 9 completes the Handbook of Mammals of the World series, and it deals with the bats, order Chiroptera.
Read our interview with the series creators
Our knowledge of bats has exploded in the past two decades, and all of that information is reflected in this volume. The number of recognized species has increased by more than 400 during that time and is still growing. Bats occupy almost every habitat on six continents and their ecology is incredibly diverse. Pollinators and seed dispersers for thousands of species of plants, bats are critical for the maintenance of tropical ecosystems.
As always, the text includes up-to-date information on every species, and each one is carefully illustrated. The family accounts include color photographs documenting a variety of behaviors of these interesting mammals. For this volume, the approximately 8100 references are included on a CD-ROM attached to the inside of the back cover.
Volumes 1-9 can also be bought together.
Order CHIROPTERA
Family Pteropodidae (Old World Fruit Bats) / Norberto Giannini, Connor Burgin, Victor van Cackenberge, Susan Tsang, Stephan Hintsche, Tyrone Lavery, Frank Bonaccorso, Francisca Almeida & Brian O’Toole
Family Rhinopomatidae (Mouse-tailed Bats) / Ivan Horáček
Family Craseonycteridae (Hog-nosed Bat) / Tigga Kingston & Pipat Soisook
Family Megadermatidae (False-vampire Bats) / Charles M. Francis
Family Rhinonycteridae (Trident Bats) / Petr Benda
Family Hipposideridae (Old World Leaf-nosed Bats) / Ara Monadjem, Pipat Soisook, Vu Dinh Thong & Tigga Kingston
Family Rhinolophidae (Horseshoe Bats) / Gábor Csorba, Anthony Hutson, Steve Rossiter & Connor Burgin
Family Emballonuridae (Sheath-tailed Bats) / Frank Bonaccorso
Family Nycteridae (Slit-faced Bats) / Ara Monadjem
Family Myzopodidae (Madagascar Sucker-footed Bats) / Steve Goodman
Family Mystacinidae (New Zealand Short-tailed Bats) / Cory Toth
Family Noctilionidae (Bulldog Bats) / Rodrigo Medellín
Family Furipteridae (Smoky Bat and Thumbless Bat) / Joaquín Arroyo-Cabrales
Family Thyropteridae (Disk-winged Bats) / Thomas Lee, Jr.
Family Mormoopidae (Ghost-faced Bats, Naked-backed Bats and Mustached Bats) / Ana D’Oliveira Pavan
Family Phyllostomidae (New World Leaf-nosed Bats) / Sergio Solari, Rodrigo Medellín, Bernal Rodríguez-Herrera, Valeria da Cunha Tavares, Guilherme Garbino, M. Alejandra Camacho, Diego Tirira Saá, Burton Lim, Joaquín Arroyo-Cabrales, Armando Rodríguez-Durán, Elizabeth Dumont, Santiago Burneo, Luis F. Aguirre Urioste, Marco Tschapka & Deborah Espinosa
Family Natalidae (Funnel-eared Bats) / Adrián Tejedor
Family Molossidae (Free-tailed Bats) / Peter Taylor, Burton Lim, Michael Pennay, Pipat Soisook, Tigga Kingston, Livia Loureiro & Ligiane Moras
Family Miniopteridae (Long-fingered Bats) / Javier Juste & Carlos Ibáñez
Family Cistugidae (Wing-gland Bats) / Manuel Ruedi
Family Vespertilionidae (Vesper Bats) / Ricardo Moratelli, Connor Burgin, Vinícius Cláudio, Roberto Novaes, Adrià López-Baucells & Rudolf Haslauert
Editors:
Dr D. E. Wilson: Curator Emeritus, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA.
Dr R. A. Mittermeier: Chief Conservation Officer, Global Wildlife Conservation; Honorary Member, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN); and Chair, IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group, USA.
Artists:
Ilian Velikov (b. Bulgaria, 1985) is a wildlife artist who has had a strong interest in the natural world since an early age. He studied and worked in the animation industry where he mastered the digital drawing and painting techniques which he now uses in his illustrations. Besides drawing wildlife he is often out in the field observing it and has assisted in a number of mostly herpetological studies. He illustrated the Field Guide to the Amphibians & Reptiles of Britain and Europe and Europe by J. Speybroeck et al. and since 2018 has worked with Lynx Edicions on a variety of projects including Ocells de Catalunya, País Valencià i Balears, Lynx and BirdLife International Field Guides and the Handbook of the Mammals of the World.
Àlex Mascarell Llosa (b. Barcelona, 1978) is a naturalist, designer and illustrator who works mainly on educational materials and has a special interest in ornithology. In addition to his work designing layouts for a range of teaching materials, he is an animal illustrator. Passionate about birds, he works regularly at Barcelona Zoo, collaborating with many organizations and institutions in the design of materials and the production of original illustrations. He has participated in the Dictionari de las Aus en Català, which collates the Catalan nomenclature of all the bird species of the world, and he works pro bono on drawing projects for other institutions dedicated to the defense of the natural world, both locally and internationally. He has worked on Volume 2 of the Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World and on the Birds of Thailand and the Birds of Vietnam from the Lynx and Birdlife International Field Guides Collection.
Lluís Sogorb (b. Monòver, 1965) is a self-taught painter and illustrator. His abilities and interest in the natural world led him to the illustration and painting of nature. Although he began with traditional techniques like graphite, watercolour, acrylic and oil paint, as soon as digital techniques became available he became interested in them and currently creates almost all his illustrations in this way. His illustrations have appeared in numerous publications and he has taken part in various educational projects centred on the environment and conservation. In recent times he has taken part in various projects involving ornithological tourism, as well as frequently collaborating with different publishers. He has participated in A New European Breeding Bird Atlas, currently in preparation. In 2013 he won the first "Concurso de Ilustración de la Naturaleza" (Illustration prize) organized by the "Sociedad Gaditana de Historia Natural" for his image of a Northern Bald Ibis. In 2017 he was awarded a prize in the Painting Animals in the Wild category of the "XI Golden Turtle Wildlife Festival" (Moscow, Russia) for his painting The Guardian of the Mountain.
Blanca Martí de Ahumada is a scientific and nature illustrator. She graduated from the University of Barcelona in Art History, and is a naturalist by vocation. She specializes in scientific and children’s illustration at the Barcelona school "Escola de la Dona de la Diputació" and imparts training courses at the Universities of Valencia and Barcelona. Her illustrations have appeared in various national and international publications: scientific and educational books in Catalonia, Costa Rica, Brazil and Nicaragua, and also on posters for natural parks: the "Parc Natural del Montnegre i El Corredor", "Parc del Foix" in metropolitan Barcelona and the Dindefello Reserve in Senegal, among others. She has also illustrated teaching materials for nature resorts and animal reserves such as "Molló Parc" or "Centre d’Estudi i divulgació del Llop Signatus". She is currently working on projects for the publisher "Zona Tropical" of Costa Rica and participating in the volume Bats from the collection Handbook of the Mammals of the World.
Faansie Peacock (b. Pretoria, 1982) is a South African ornithologist, author and artist with a passion for biodiversity and, specifically, sharing the natural world with those around him. Through his various publications, both scientific and popular, Peacock bridges the gap between the academic and public spheres in the hope that increased awareness and affinity to nature ultimately leads to conservation. He specialises in digital painting techniques, which allows him to produce unprecedented numbers of illustrations of exceptional accuracy and quality. Working from his own field sketches together with museum skins and reference photographs, Peacock has authored and illustrated specialist guides on LBJs (larks, pipits, cisticolas, warblers etc.), waders (shorebirds), and threatened species. In line with his current mindset as a father of two young boys, his latest book is a complete field guide to 722 species of South African birds, aimed specifically at children. In addition to books, he has done natural history illustration, design and layout work in a wide variety of formats, from business cards to billboards.
Jesús Rodríguez-Osorio Martín (b. Madrid, 1965) is a self taught artist. From an early age a strong sense of vocation drew him to the natural world and he used illustration as a way of satisfying his zoological curiosity. Over the years he refined his techniques and in the 1980s published a number of illustrations in Quercus magazine. He illustrated an entire volume of the prestigious Fauna Ibérica (Volume 44: Coleoptera: Hydraenidae). He spent years combining the photography of wild animals with illustration, but with the arrival of digital illustration techniques he opted for these. He is one of the illustrators of Volume 9 of the Handbook of the Mammals of the World.