Carolyn M King - The Handbook of New Zealand Mammals

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

ISBN: 9781486306282 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781486306299 (epdf)

ISBN: 9781486306305 (epub)

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.

ISBN 978-1-98-859258-9

Published in New Zealand and the rest of the world (excluding Australia), in print only, by Otago University Press.

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Front cover: brushtail possum, grey form; lesser short-tailed bat; New Zealand fur seal (artwork by Priscilla Barrett)

Back cover: Himalayan tahr male, winter (artwork by Priscilla Barrett)

Edited by Joy Window (Living Language)

Cover design by James Kelly

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Printed in China by Leo Paper Products Ltd.

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The Handbook of New Zealand Mammals was first published by Oxford University Press (Auckland) in New Zealands sesquicentennial year of 1990, and launched at a celebration funded by the 1990 Commission in Wellington. The Handbook followed 40 years after the first substantial book about mammals in New Zealand, Introduced Mammals of New Zealand: An Ecological and Economic Survey by Kazimierz Wodzicki, which was published in 1950. Ten years after the first edition of The Handbook of New Zealand Mammals, a series of reviews was commissioned, and published under the general heading of Advances in New Zealand Mammalogy 19902000 as a special issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2001. Fifteen years after the first edition, a full second edition integrated and further updated the 1990 and 2001 texts. Now, a further 15 years later, we have revisited and updated the texts for a third edition, scheduled to appear in early 2021.

As a comprehensive reference book, the first Handbook was cast in the same mould as Wodzickis pioneering volume, but different from it in one important aspect: the inclusion of introduced and native mammals in the same tome. There were objections to this decision from conservation activists, on the grounds that it seemed to extend a tacit acceptance of the introduced species. However, the practical and scientific reasons for including native and introduced species together won the debate. The ready reception and wide use of the book since then has confirmed that view.

The first edition of the Handbook was reprinted as a paperback, with minor corrections, in 1995, and again, in new covers, in 1998. Oxford University Press in Auckland and (after 1999) in Melbourne published the first and second editions. The third edition has been prepared by CSIRO Publishing in Melbourne.

The extensive information collected by the authors for each edition includes much material previously unpublished or gathered from inaccessible or widely scattered sources. The combined literature list for the first edition (~1600 entries) closed in September 1987, when the paper manuscript was handed over to the publisher (a few later citations were added in proof). The combined list for the second edition totalled almost 3000 entries, and closed in late 2004. The lists for the third edition are now separated into family sections. This rapid increase in information to be reviewed, and in the speed of handling it, reflects the many exciting advances in technology that have accompanied the electronic revolution of the last 30 years.

The Handbook of New Zealand Mammals has always had two aims: first, to collate for convenient reference authoritative, fully documented descriptions of all the land-breeding mammals that are or have been resident in New Zealand; and, second, to stimulate new research.

Many hypotheses suggested in earlier editions have since been tested. Some ideas developed overseas can be more effectively investigated in New Zealand than elsewhere; nevertheless, some questions of taxonomy or even basic biology remain to be examined. Readers might also detect differences of opinion between contributors, which have been allowed to stand because they can be resolved only by further research.

Island distributions are often dynamic, especially for species that are good swimmers, so the listings of island distributions are here mostly confined to islands of >5 ha supporting more or less permanent populations. No doubt many such populations remain unlisted, because it is simply impossible to do enough regular surveys to find them all.

The Handbook of New Zealand Mammals is not, however, an introduction to the biology of mammals in general, which is better described in a general reference work or a field guide. Neither is it a compendium of techniques for the study of mammals, for which readers should follow up the detailed references given in the species accounts.

All known land-breeding mammals that are or have been recorded in the wild in the New Zealand region (including the Ross Dependency, Antarctica) are described, including introductions that survived for at least 25 years but have since become extinct (kur, black-striped wallaby, chital deer); and feral populations of domestic stock that are or have been established for that long. One failed native vagrant, the little red flying fox, is mentioned in its family context (Chapter 4).