The Venomous Reptiles of the Western Hemisphere
(Volumes 1 and 2)
Jonathan A. Campbell and William W. Lamar. 2004
xviii+898 pp. Cornell University Press.
Hardback with dj.
ISBN 0-8014-4141-2
$149.95

Reviewed by Mark O'Shea

Originally published in “The Herptile” in the UK.

I have said it before and no doubt I will say it again, but I don't say it very often. Some books are publishing triumphs, the `must-have' books, tomes that eclipse all previous publications on their subject and stand out as milestones, the baseline for future publications. This is one such book, or rather two such books, though that doesn't sound as good and really you can't take one without the other because they are sold is a two volume set as inseparable as a pair of bookends (which I suppose are separate, by definition with books in between, but you know what I mean). I am referring to what eagerly waiting herpetological bibliophiles have been referred to as Campbell and Lamar Two.

I should point out that it has not been called that because there are two volumes nor strictly because this is a second edition, because in truth it isn't, but then it sort of is!

Back in 1989 Comstock Cornell published a large book with a black dust-jacket, featuring a superb photograph of a yellow-blotched palm-pitviper (Bothriechis aurifer), entitled Venomous Reptiles of Latin America, written by the well-known and equally well respected neotropical herpetologists Jonathan A.Campbell and William W.Lamar. This book instantly became an essential reference for anybody interested in or venturing into the rainforests, deserts, swamps or grasslands of Central and South America or the West Indies. Within its 425 pages, were featured the two species of venomous lizards and 145 species of front-fanged venomous snake that could be found from Mexico to Argentina (but not Chile of course which is devoid of vipers or elapids) and also those few islands of the Caribbean which were home to venomous serpents. I, for one, found Campbell and Lamar One (as I shall call the earlier volume) extremely valuable because in the years following its publication I made 13 filming or fieldwork expeditions to Mexico, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Guyana, Trinidad, Brazil, Argentina and Peru. If I were on a `Desert Island', and that desert island was in the Sea of Cortez, my choice of book would have been Campbell and Lamar One, well at least until L.Lee Grismer's Amphibians and Reptiles of Baja California was published in 2002 anyway. I even gave my first two dog-eared copies away to S.American herpetologists who could not obtain copies so now I am onto my third copy, and that is beginning to look a little rubbed around the edges.

Campbell and Lamar One, was provided with an excellent companion volume when Carl H.Ernst's Venomous Reptiles of North America was published by the Smithsonian Institution Press in 1992.

I am 437 words into this review and I haven't started to write about the book I set out to review yet. So here goes. Campbell and Lamar's twin volume The Venomous Reptiles of the Western Hemisphere supercedes their earlier excellent tome and it has been expanded to include North America too. After all, USA and Canada only contained four species: cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus), pigmy rattler (Sistrurus miliarius), timber rattler (Crotalus horridus) and eastern diamondback (C.adamanteus) that do not venture into Mexico and would therefore be omitted from Campbell and Lamar One.

Campbell and Lamar Two contains both venomous lizards and 190 species of venomous snakes. That is 45 more than their earlier volume and it is made up from a variety of sources including the four N.American species listed above. There are also numerous taxonomic changes where subspecies have become species or species have been split into more than one species. For instance the former tropical rattlesnake species Crotalus durissus has been split into a S.American species C.durissus, a C.American species, C.simus and a northeast Mexican species C.totonacus while the western rattlesnake species, C.viridis, is now C.viridis and C.oreganus. That is not to say that all the taxonomic changes have been with global approval. I know taxonomists who have voiced disagreement over this or that decision, so even in this latest huge work nothing is cast in stone, nothing ever is. One interesting decision which seems to have met with agreement was the transfer of the Mexican pigmy rattlesnake Sistrurus ravus to Crotalus as Crotalus ravus, because it shows closer apparent relationships with other small Mexican highlands rattlers with only partially fragmented head scales. There are also now four bushmaster species, Lachesis acrochorda being resurrected from synonymy. In the earlier volume all bushmasters were a single species, Lachesis muta, but two of the subspecies were raised to species status during the intervening years (Zamudio & Greene 1997). The most radical changes are probably reserved for the Bothrops complex and this may be where Campbell and Lamar's critics stick the knife in, and although I am perfectly happy with their arrangements I know others may not be so keen on their continued recognition of the genus Bothriopsis.

Reading through the lists of species contained within these two volumes I can see that the authors have attempted to keep on top of all taxonomic changes and new species described since their last edition. One of the most challenging areas from this respect, are the coralsnakes of genus Micrurus. Since 1989 six species have been described. M.nebularis, Roze 1989; M.oligoanellatus, Ayerbe & Lopez 2002; M.pachecogili, Campbell 2002; M.meridensis, Roze 1989, and M.serranus, Harvey, Aparicio-E & Gonzalez-A 2003, are included but what, I wonder, happened to M.pacaraimae described by my old friend Celso Morato de Carvalho in 2002 ?

I checked the 28-page index at the end of volume, to see if it had been synonymized, sunk into another species but there was no mention. Surely the authors did not simply miss its description!

Volume One, with Langsdorff's coralsnake, Micrurus langdorffi on the dust-jacket front and a golden eyelash palm-pitviper, Bothriechis schlegelii, on the back, contains the country by country checklists, dichotomous keys, maps and accounts followed by the taxonomic accounts for the Helodermatidae (Heloderma); Elapidae (Leptomicurus, Micruroides, Micrurus and Pelamis) and the Viperidae (Agkistrodon, Atropoides, Bothriechis, Bothropsis, Bothrocophias, Bothrops, Cerrophidion, Lachesis, Ophryacus and Porthidium).

Volume Two, with a C.American bushmaster, Lachesis stenophrys, on the dust-jacket front and a terciopelo, Bothrops asper, on the back, contains the remainder of the Viperidae (Crotalus and Sistrurus) followed by excellent chapters on Venomous snake mimicry, by E.D.Brodie III and E.D.Brodie II, The evolution of New World venomous snakes, by R.L.Gutberlet Jr. and M.B.Harvey, Venom poisoning by North American reptiles, by R.Norris, and Snakebites in Central and South America, by D.A.Warrell.

The volumes also contain 282 black and white figures, 113 distribution maps and 1500 colour plates of venomous reptiles, their mimics and the effects of snakebite (you need a strong stomach for some of these). The final sections of the book are given over to an eleven page glossary, 95-page bibliography and the aforementioned 28-page index.

The whole twin-volume set is must comprise, one of the most essential purchases for anybody interested in venomous snakes or American herpetology. It is a feast, a banquet, you will be thumbing through these volumes for hours. If you have got $150 spare you should buy these books, if you haven't, start dropping hints for your birthday.

Getting back to that Desert Island. Err, Sue, can I swap the Bible and Shakespeare for Campbell and Lamar Two? My luxury, a Midwest snake hook please!

References:

Campbell J.A. & W.W.Lamar 1988 Venomous Reptiles of Latin America. Comstock-Cornell. xii+425.

de Carvalho C.M. 2002. Descricao de uma nova especie de Micrurus de estado de Roraima, Brasil (Serpentes, Elapidae). Papeis Avulsos de Zoologia. 42(8):183-192.

Ernst C.H. 1992 Venomous Reptiles of North America. Smithsonian Inst. Press. ix+236.

Grismer L.L. 2002 Amphibians and Reptiles of Baja California, including its Pacific islands and the islands of the Sea of Cortes. California Univ. Press. xiii+399.

Zamudio K.R. & H.W.Greene 1997 Phylogeography of the bushmaster (Lachesis muta: Viperidae): Implications for neotropical biogeography, systematics and conservation. Biol. J. Linnean Soc. 62(3):421-442.

(other references in Campbell and Lamar)