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Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand abstracts(c) Journal of The Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 31, Number 1, March 2001, pp 1-5
Advances in New Zealand mammalogy, 1990-2000: IntroductionC. M. King** Centre for Biodiversity and Ecology Research, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, HamiltonThe Handbook of New Zealand Mammals (King 1990) was published by Oxford University Press (Auckland) in New Zealand's sesquicentennial year, and launched at a memorable celebration funded by the 1990 Commission at the Beehive in Wellington. It was the fruit of seven years' labour by a team of 29 authors and a dozen others contributing essential help with maps, figures, layout, proofing, and all the various tasks needed to produce a complex reference book of 600 pages by a set date.The Handbook followed forty years after the first substantial book about mammals in New Zealand (Wodzicki 1950), and provided much needed updates on the extensive progress in research on the introduced species since Wodzicki's time. Now, only ten years later, it has become necessary to commission the following series of reviews to update the Handbook. We were saddened that Kazimierz Wodzicki did not live to see the Handbook published, but proud that he did write a short foreword for it in 1987. As a comprehensive reference book, the Handbook was cast in the same mould as Wodzicki's pioneering volume, but different from it in one important respect. By 1990 I felt that mammalogy in New Zealand had come of age, and that it was not only possible but actually necessary to list all mammalian species in taxonomic order, regardless of whether they were native or introduced. Not everyone agreed with this decision. The first edition of the Handbook was reprinted as a paperback, with minor corrections, in 1995, and again, in new covers, in 1998. At the time of preparing these updates (November 2000) it was still in print and available from Oxford University Press in Melbourne. Therefore, authors of the following accounts were asked to concentrate only on adding to and if necessary correcting, but definitely not replacing, the text of the first edition. For easy integration of information, each update is arranged under the same headings as in the original book, including the species numbers. Within the constraints of journal style we have aimed to match the style and level of detail of the first edition accounts, but whatever is still correct in the original text has been ignored here. Where there is enough new information, these accounts include new maps, some in much greater detail than before. For most species, we have no better information than the rather vague existing maps. The original "Preamble to Species Accounts" included the comment that some maps "show only the general area within which a species might be found in suitable habitat" (p. 31), but this information should probably have been repeated in the captions. The great majority of the references quoted here date from after the literature lists for the first edition closed in September 1987, when the manuscript was handed over to the publisher (a few later citations were added in proof). Headings of sections for which there is no new information have been omitted, and unlike standard journal papers, the chapters have no separate introductions. It is important to emphasise that the following accounts are incomplete in themselves - they have been designed to be read in conjunction with the first edition, not instead of it. In due course a full second edition will integrate the two into one connected text.
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