If there was ever a geographic location that needed a comprehensive reference guide to its amphibians and reptiles, the border states between the United States and Mexico is it. And not only a comprehensive reference guide, but a bilingual one. Therefore its exceptionally fortunate that Texas A&M University Press has recently published Amphibians and Reptiles of the US – Mexico Border States/Anfibios y reptiles de los estados de la frontera México – Estados Unidos – the first ever bilingual guide to the “more than 600 species of toads, frogs, salamanders, turtles, sea turtles, alligators, lizards, snakes, and sea snakes that are found along the almost 2,000-mile border between the two countries” as the most recent addition to their famous W.L. Moody Jr. Natural History series.
Written by some of the world’s top herpetologists and edited by Julio A. Lemos-Espinal, profesor titular of biology at the Facultad de Estudios Superiores Iztacala of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, this new reference guide is a bold step forward not only in the herpetology of the region but also in making the information collected in it equally available to speakers of both English and Spanish.
