FAUNA PARAGUAY MAMMAL LITERATURE

In general literature dealing specifically with Paraguayan mammals is thin on the ground, hard to obtain or long out of print. Having said that, there do exist some excellent works that are well worth the effort to seek out. The only "field guide" per se relevant to Paraguay is Neotropical Rainforest Mammals: A Field Guide with English and Spanish editions (Spanish Edition Emmons 1999). The scope of the work extends well beyond our country borders and it by no means covers all the mammals occurring in Paraguay (many of the Chaco mammals for example are not included) but it perhaps the single most useful publication for identifying mammals in the field. One drawback of this books is that its coverage of more difficult groups such as bats and certain groups of rodent only facilitates identification to generic level.
The standard reference for South American Mammalogists remains the three volume Mammals of the Neotropics (Eisenberg and Redford 1989-1999). Volume 2 covers the southern cone - Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Things move fast in mammalogy and this book, published in 1992, is now out-of-date in many respects, but it is still a classic work. One of the few books that deals specifically with Paraguayan mammals is Guía de Mamíferos Medianos y Grandes del Paraguay: Distribución, Tendencia Poblacional y Utilizacion (Neris et al 2002). This is a unique, bilingual (English/Spanish) work that attempts to map the historic and current distribution of the larger Paraguayan mammals with reference to museum collections and through interviews with locals.

Many of the more difficult groups (especially the rodents) are not covered by a single work, but perhaps surprisingly a series of excellent references are available for bats. The PhD thesis Systematics and Zoogeography of the Bats of Paraguay (Lopez-Gonzalez 1998) is a masterful summary of all that was known about Paraguayan bats at the time of writing. Species are described, keyed, mapped and measurement data is provided. A little more basic, but with the addition bonus of some line drawings of the species in question, A Guide to the Bats of Argentina (Barquez et al 1993) is a basic bilingual (English/Spanish) field guide to bats that covers many of the species found in Paraguay.
No attempt has ever been made to record voices of mammals in Paraguay, but a recording produced to company the Emmons field guide Sounds of Neotropical Rainforest Mammals: An Audio Field Guide (Emmons et al 1997) covers some of the more widespread Neotropical species that occur in Paraguay.
Finally if you are visiting the Mbaracayú Biosphere Reserve a charming little book on the mammals of the reserve is available from the Fundación Moises Bertoni - Mamíferos de la Reserva Natural del Bosque Mbaracayú (Esquivel 2001).
FAUNA Paraguay continues to work to increase the volume of publications coming out of Paraguay in an effort to raise the country´s profile internationally. The inception of the Bellbird journal of Paraguayan zoology in 2006 provides a platform for the publication of the results of mammal work.
Below is a working bibliography of major mammal references dealing specifically with Paraguay. Some of these references are offered for download in pdf form with the permission of the copyright owners. The size of the download accompanies the link - large files may take a long time to download on a slow internet connection.
The publications which are not available for download can be found in our library. This list does not include FAUNA Paraguay publications or publications from the featured journals on this website - Notulas Faunisticas, Boletin MHNP or Bellbird - these can all be found on the publications page.

FAUNA Paraguay E-library: Click on the links to download the publications.

Publications by the American Museum of Natural History

1.de Azara F 1802 - Apuntamientos para la Historia Natural de los Quadrúpedos del Paraguay y Rio de la Plata - Imprenta de la Viuda de Ibarra, Madrid.
2.Baud FJ 1981 - Expédtition du Muséum de Geneve au Paraguay: Chiroptéres - Revus Suisse de Zoologie 88: p567-581.
3.Baud FJ 1989 - Presénce de Macrophyllum macrophyllum (Chiroptera: Phyllostominae) au Paraguay - Mammalia 53: p308-309.
4.Baud FJ, Menu H 1993 - Paraguayan Bats of the Genus Myotis with a Redefinition of Myotis simus (Thomas 1901) - Revue Suisse de Zoologie 100: p595-607.
5.Contreras JR 1993 - Una Nueva Especie de Roedor Excavador del Género Ctenomys Procedente del Paraguay Oriental (Rodentia: Octodontidae, Ctenomyidae) Descripción Preliminar - Resumenes VI Congreso Iberoamericano de Conservación Zoologica.
6.Esquivel E 2001 - Mamíferos de la Reserva Natural del Bosque Mbaracayú - Fundación Moisés Bertoni
7.Gamarra de Fox I, Martin AJ 1996 - Lista de Mamíferos del Paraguay in Colecciones de Fauna y Flora del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural del Paraguay - Dirección de Parques Nacionales y Vida Silvestre, Asunción.
8.Lopez-Gonzalez C 1998 - Systematics and Zoogeography of the Bats of Paraguay - PhD Thesis Texas Tech University.
9.Lopez-Gonzalez C, Presley SJ, Owen RD, Willig MR, Gamarra de Fox J (undated) - Noteworthy Records of Bats (Chiroptera) from Paraguay - Mastozoologia Neotropical 4: p5-9.
10.Myers P 1982 - Origins and Affinities of the Mammal Fauna of Paraguay in Mares M Genoways HH Mammalian Biology in South America - Pymtuning Laboratory of Ecology University of Pittsburgh.
11.Myers P 1983 - Systematics and Zoogeography of the Bats of the Chaco Boreal - University of Michigan Miscellaneous Publications 165: p1-59.
12.Myers P, White R, Stallings J 1983 - Additional Records of Bats from Paraguay - Mammalogy 64: p143-145.
13.Neris N, Colmán F, Kato H 1999 - Densidad Poblacional del Mono Aullador Alouatta caraya en los Departamentos Itapúa y Misiones in Dirección de Parques Nacionales y Vida Silvestre en el Area de Influencia de la Represa Yacyreta Informe Final.
14.Neris N, Colmán F, Ovelar E, Sukigara N, Ishii N 2002 - Guía de Mamíferos Medianos y Grandes del Paraguay - SEAM Asunción Paraguay.
15.Parera A 2002 - Los Mamíferos de la Argentina y la Région Austral de Sudamérica - El Ateneo Buenos Aires.
16.Podtiaguin B 1944 - Contribuciones al Conocimiento de los Murciélagos del Paraguay - Revista de la Sociedad Científica del Paraguay 6: p25-62.
17.Redford K 1992 - Mammals of the Neotropics Vol 2: The Southern Cone Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay - University of Chicago Press.
18.Sherman HB 1955 - A Record of Lasiurus and of Vampyrops from Paraguay - Mammalogy 36.
19.Taber AB, Doncaster N, Neris N, Colman F 1993 - Ranging Behaviour and Population Dynamics of the Chacoan Peccary Catagonus wagneri - Mammalogy 74: p443-454.
20.Thomas O 1901 - On a Collection of Bats from Paraguay - Annals and Magazine of Natural History 10: p435-443.
21.Van Humbeck J, Pérez N 1988 - Estudios del Yagua Yvyguy Speothos venaticus en el Centro de Investigación de Animales Silvestres de Itaipú - BIOTA 8, Itaipú Binacional.
22.Wetzel RM, Lovett JW 1974 - A Collection of Mammals from the Chaco of Paraguay - University of Connecticut Occasional Papers in Biological Science 2: p203-216.
23.Wilson DE, Gamarra de Fox I 1991 - El Murciélago Macrophyllum macrophyllum (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae) en Paraguay - Boletin del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural del Paraguay 10: p33-35.
24.Yahnke CJ, Gamarra de Fox I, Colman F 1998 - Mammalian Species Richness in Paraguay: The Effectiveness of National Parks in Preserving Biodiversity - Biological Conservation 84: p263-268.