Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of California. Revised edition

Some 40 years after the first edition, UC Press has come up with a new regional field guide, with Robert Stebbins now assisted by his former student Sam McGinnis. This book covers less than 10% of the area of Stebbins's iconic field guide in the Peterson series (1966, 1985, 2003), but is actually a few pages longer, and departs from that format by placing text, maps, and illustrations together for each species account. At first glance the principal illustrations are the same, new photographs are inserted, the range maps are crudely redrawn, and the taxonomy is updated, or not, in a somewhat haphazard manner. A major difference lies in the text, where extensive sections on natural history and on conservation now complement entries on identification and range. Although billed as a revised edition of a 152-page book with a similar title by Stebbins alone (1972), this is more accurately regarded...