Spanish and English Vernacular Names of Mammals of North America

Vernacular names are important to know the characteristics of an organism, and are essential to improve the exchange of information between academic and non-academic areas.  These are popular in the English language by improving the efficiency of communications in this language, even being more frequently used in the academic environment even when the scientific name is known.  In contrast, common names are only occasionally used in Spanish, only for charismatic mammal species; however, these are applied collectively to a wide range of animals that share the same characteristics, such as bats, mice, gophers.  Due to the lack of consensus regarding vernacular names in English and of a matching commong name in Spanish for many species, our objective was to gather, rescue and propose vernacular names for 800 species of mammals in North America.  The approach used was to follow, to the extent possible, basic principles to propose vernacular names