Birds of New Guinea: Distribution, Taxonomy, and SystematicsBirds of New Guinea: Distribution, Taxonomy, and Systematics by Bruce M. Beehler and Thane K. Pratt. 2016. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA. 668 pp., 14 color plates. $75.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-691-16424-3.

Birds of New Guinea: Distribution, Taxonomy, and Systematics by Bruce M. Beehler and Thane K. Pratt. 2016. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA. 668 pp., 14 color plates. $75.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-691-16424-3. For years, I’ve relied heavily on Ernst Mayr’s 1941 List of New Guinea Birds for key information on bird names, authorities, localities, and historical expeditions. Beehler and Finch’s (1985) Species-Checklist of the Birds of New Guinea has also been essential; it updated the New Guinea checklist with names of accepted species and provided the taxonomy for Beehler et al.’s (1986) now classic field guide, Birds of New Guinea. But that was more than 30 years ago, and much work has been done since. Working in Europe and the Americas, it is easy to forget how much our work relies on an authoritative checklist. In the Americas, for example, the North American Classification Committee meets annually to review the latest proposals for name changes and the associated literature. The committee ensures that names are properly formulated and that they reflect the latest understanding of the phylogenetic relationships of birds. The rest of us rarely have to look back more than a couple years for trustworthy information on bird names; usually the latest field guide or Birds of North and Middle America Checklist will provide the appropriate names for your study species. Keeping these checklists is a huge and thankless undertaking, but it is absolutely essential work for everyone from the checklist-minded birder to the professional biologist. Places like New Guinea have no checklist committee. There are no annual meetings to make sure that taxonomy is up-to-date and reflects current systematic thinking. Yet New Guinea hosts a similar number of bird species (~769) as the continental United States, with mind-boggling biogeographic complexity. Additionally, no single country has specimens from across the entire New Guinea region. Collections are scattered from the Netherlands to Paris to Sydney to Tring to New York and beyond, and many specimens were collected over a century ago. Even today, many phylogenetic studies are not constructed primarily to test New Guinea hypotheses, but they may contain key New Guinea representatives that shed new light on avian evolution on this dense island. So New Guinea bird taxonomy has been in desperate need of an overhaul. Birds of New Guinea: Distribution, Taxonomy, and Systematics represents an unbelievable scholarly advancement. This is not a mere checklist with summaries of work done to date. The authors have wrestled with the validity of every taxon for which there are new data post-1941 (virtually every species!), critically evaluating the evidence supporting each taxon down to subspecies, summarizing and documenting the known distribution, considering the characters (morphological, genetic, and behavioral) that