The NEW Natural History of Madagascar! 4

For my twelfth or thirteenth birthday, my parents gifted me a copy of the then-newly published Natural History of Madagascar. This mammoth tome, comprising 1728 pages, set a benchmark in the literature on every topic it covered, and it covered almost everything you could think of. I spent many nights after school poring over its contents, reading and re-reading various chapters. I was too young to really understand much of what I was reading—it was my first exposure to true scholarly writing—but it fuelled my desire to visit and conduct research in Madagascar like nothing else. In many ways, it was this book that put me firmly on the career path that has led me to where I am today.

Now, 20 years later, The New Natural History of Madagascar has been published! At 2296 pages divided over two volumes, with contributions from over 600 researchers, this book dwarfs its predecessor, both in scope and size. Almost every part of the 2003 version has been rewritten. The amphibian and reptile sections of the book alone comprise 122 and 136 pages, respectively—undoubtedly the largest collection of Malagasy herpetological knowledge to be published since Frank Glaw’s and Miguel Vences’ 2007 Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Madagascar. I have had the great pleasure (and hard work) of contributing to some 13 chapters of the new book, all in Volume 2. These are chapters on Malagasy amphibians in general, the frog clades Tsingymantis,  Guibemantis, Gephyromantis, Mantidactylus & Boehmantis, Cophylinae, Scaphiophryninae, and Dyscophinae, and the reptiles Pseudoxyrhophiidae & Psammophiidae, Chamaeleonidae, Gekkonidae, and Uroplatus specifically. We started work on the writing of these chapters in 2019, and it was a huge effort by a large team of coauthors on this section alone; I cannot imagine how many person-hours were put into this project across all of the contributors. But I think you will find that it has paid off!

You can get the book on Amazon, NHBS, directly from the publishers @ Princeton University Press, and probably through your local bookstore. It is surprisingly affordable, considering its size and scope. But be aware that both volumes together is 8.42 kg, and its not exactly going to fit through your letterbox!