Peterson Field Guide To Reptiles And Amphibians Eastern & Central North America (Peterson Field Guides)

needed this for a herpetology course and it worked out very well!! so interesting to see what herps are in my area and identify them!

A must for an animal enthusiasts book collection.

Great guide book! Covers the whole of North America as well as including invasive species! Exactly what I was looking for; full color, tons of pictures and information about behavior, breeding, & ranges

Exactly as described. Shipped on time. Happy with purchase

Beautiful photos, very informative, easy to understand. I can't say enough good thing!!

This guide has been one of my favorite herp books for many decades. The previous edition, first published in 1991, included a few recently discovered native species (for example, the Pigeon Mountain salamander) and various established exotics (mainly lizards) not yet known when the 1975 edition was published, and also introduced clearer, more colorful and detailed range maps included with each species account rather than placing them in a section at the back. This latest edition includes all that but also incorporates many recent taxonomic changes, even more detailed range maps, and adds some newly discovered native species (one notable case is the patch-nosed salamander, a small species found in a tiny part of northeastern Georgia that somehow evaded discovery until 2009), and many newly differentiated cryptic look-alike species, as well as many more established non-native species that have been recently recorded, in large part from Florida. I was very excited to see this long awaited 4th edition and the impressive wealth of new information it contains, and so considering this as well as the way I feel about this book in general, I am giving it 4 stars, though I had really hoped to make it 5. One major disappointment for me is that, apparently to reduce the number of pages, many of the old species accounts have been condensed, and some material from the previous edition, like the chapters on field herping, care in captivity, etc., has been omitted. Also, the classic illustrations on the color plates have been reduced in scale for some reason, apparently in order to accommodate the new color tabs along the margins without increasing the number of plates. I am rather puzzled by some of the tinkering that has taken place in this regard, and think some errors were made. For example, on Plate 6, the Yonahlossee salamander, which is the largest of the woodland salamander group, now looks only about the same size as its cousins like the slimy and red-cheeked. (By the way, it should be mentioned that no new illustrations were added to the existing plates, although many of the old illustrations were shuffled around. The newly discovered species are represented under their accounts in photographs.) I personally would have preferred for these omissions not to have been made, even if the book would have been 100 pages longer (as was the 3rd edition). But I still feel that this new edition is a must-have for the library of any herp enthusiast, and heartily recommend it if you want the latest cutting edge information about our herpetofauna, although if you are like me, you will still want to keep the previous edition handy as well.

The book is an update of the original edition of Roger Conant from 1958, Even though two of the authors are deceased Powell should have left Conant as the original author. Powell also uses this book to make his own distasteful new common names with disregard for the lists that are made by herpetology organizations, particularly anoying is his coining of new names for a recently described species of Lilthobates, the authors did not call it Kaufields leopard frog. But Tom Collins also liked to decree his own species as well, so let poor Roger roll in his grave! The maps are also garishly colored and many of them do not depict the actual range of the animals, It is also confusing that he puts western species which have a slight eastern range extension as well as invasive foreign species into the text as if they were braodly distributed in Eastern and Central North America rather than in a separate section. It is an important reference book, but more time should have been spent to details and consulting other herpetologists and not just inventing his own. I am sure he got a lucrative contract with the Peterson Field Guide series to write this book, Tom Collins tol me how much he was making from the other editions, it would have been wise for him to welcome another person aboard to make this new edition of the Bible for North American Herpetologis better than ever. It is a travesty that he cut out the section on Making and Transporting the catch and reduced the introduction from 16 pages to 10 pages of text (3 p of photos). I persaonlly knew all threee authors.

wonderful field guide, i love the illustrations in Peterson field guides over any other