No global biodiversity studies are possible without knowledge of the ranges of biological species. At the same time, our knowledge of where a particular species can be found is always based on fragmentary information. The restoration of complete range maps today is expert work, regardless of whether or not an expert is involved in the mathematical apparatus for the analysis of ranges. Such work is especially difficult in the case of ecretive
species, which includes most mammals.
A large group of experts who compiled species essays and range maps for the Handbook of the Mammals of the World (HMW) collected all the ranges of mammals in digital (gis, shp) form on the Map of Life portal https://mol.org. The list of species (6362 species) is synchronized with the Mammal Diversity Database. Maps are available for visual analysis and download. The team of authors included Senior Researcher, Laboratory of Mammal Microevolution, Ph.D. A.A. Lisovsky and Senior Researcher, Laboratory of Population Ecology, Ph.D. Sheftel B.I. The paper compares several global datasets on mammals: HMW, IUCN, Mammal diversity database; maps of global species abundance.
Digital data on the ranges of all mammalian species, prepared according to a single scheme, can be used for global or local zoogeographic research in the field of conservation of biological species, not to mention its informational value for a wide range of zoologists.
Sources:
Expert range maps of global mammal distributions harmonised to three taxonomic authorities // Journal of Biogeography. Vol.49. No.5. P.979–992.