Reptiles and Amphibians of the Amazon: An Ecotourist's Guide

As usual Dick's photography is awesome, and this is a fun book for your shelf. It's not for the hard core, or avid herper that wants to be able to ID everything they see. It's more of a general overview. I'd get this book if you are curious about going to the area and want to see whats there. It's one of very few books on the topic, so it is a decent starting point for South American herps, but... you'll want to bring a few extra books (and papers) along as well if you are a hard core reptile geek!

The book is really well done. It is a fantastic guide to the Amazon Region for amphibians and reptiles of the region. I wish the book had been better shipped. It was tossed in a bag and banged around in shipping. It didn't do the book any good. I won't buy another book through them.

I'm hoping to join eco-tours amazon for a ten day herping trip in 2014 so I bought this book. I'm not disappointed in it, on the contrary, leafing through this field guide gets me excited to go! The quality of some photographs from when it was published are not as good as what we get now, but they are still sufficient. I enjoy this book very much!

OK.

Excellent photos and descriptions are given for each of the noted animals. Rare to have a book that deals with animals of a specific area that is not a bird book.

Just as described. Thanks

I got this book shortly after returning from South America and at first glance I was impressed. The cover is decent, the publishing quality higher than expected, and the intro a good start. Unfortunately, the content is a disappointment. I have three main complaints about this volume, and some background will add perspective to these criticisms. I have been keeping and breeding poison frogs of the family Dendrobatidae for nearly a decade and am familiar with R.D. Bartlett as author of numerous articles for the pet trade. Rather than articles from the hobby, I prefer the scientific literature, journals or texts on various herpetological subjects. I have made nearly a dozen trips to the Neotropics with friends or family in the last 5 years and have seen both the dendrobatids I study as well as over a hundred species of frogs and dozens of species of lizards and snakes. My experiences in Central and South America have led me to conclude that ecotourist guides are ineffective. Whether they are for plants or animals, these guides are geared for people who are somewhat interested in a particular taxon, but relatively ignorant of the species. I have found that ecotourist guides illustrate a limited number of representative animals. This is justified in regions where there are hundreds of species including some new to science. However, the illustrations or descriptive text are so vague and generalized that they can't be used to identify species. The problem with ecotourist guides is that if you necessarily limit the number of species then you need more detail and information to make sure you are identifying the correct subject. However, most ecotourists want, at quick glance, to know what they saw and rarely require great detail. My first attempts to identify birds from an ecotourist guide were frustrating because of the lack of detail. I now travel with detailed excellent bird guides from various regions. I have been awaiting the herp equivalent of these books but the Bartletts' ecotourist's guide falls well short of the mark.The information offered is vague, downright silly, or wrong. For each animal there is a species account that includes size, identifying features, voice, reproduction, similar species, habitat/range, and comments. Size is a generalized descriptor but it frequently does not help in distinguishing between similar species. Identifying features usually state the obvious but after reading a number of these one gets the impression that an animal could not be identified based on what the Bartletts have written. Voice descriptions are useless. Frogs usually call in mixed species choruses so one would have to have a calling animal in front of them to ascertain what it sounded like. Many frogs quiet themselves upon human approach so it would take patience to catch a frog species calling. I don't believe the average `ecotourist' would make that effort. The calling description is also difficult to use. What is a "series of peeps", "two syllables often repeated", or "repeated buzzes"? The habitat/range info is equally useless. Take this quote from Platemys platycephala: "Although essentially aquatic, twist-necked turtles wander far overland during the rains and when water levels are high. They may be left high and dry as the waters recede." Does this mean one can find this turtle anywhere in the entire Amazon basin? Numerous ranges are listed as primary, secondary, or edge habitats or entire countries. Well of course! I guess it wouldn't be in the book if it didn't occur in the Amazon!Ah, but then that would be an incorrect assumption. Dendrobates azureus and D. tinctorius are poison frogs inhabiting the Guiana shield of South America. This geographically distinct region from the Amazon consists of a massive up welled landmass on the northern edge of South America. Take the following account of D. azureus. Voice: "Males produce easily overlooked peeps." The call of a male D. azureus is actually a soft buzz much like the electronic ballast of a fluorescent light fixture. Similar species: "Some dyeing poison frogs (D. tinctorius) are quite similar in color, but they usually sit in a more erect posture and often (but not always) have at least a little yellow on the back." Are the Bartletts suggesting that posture is an identifying characteristic of these species? They seem to think so, as they repeat that stance shortly thereafter under the account of D. tinctorius. Habitat/range: "This poison frog has become quite uncommon over much of its original range and is now found in isolated pockets of pinelands and surrounding rainforest near the Brazilian border in Southwestern Suriname. Of difficult access, this region is technically somewhat north of the actual delineation of the Amazon Basin but is drained by several rivers that do terminate in the Amazon." What exactly was the original range of this species? Difficult access to be sure. An expedition to collect this extremely rare species a few years ago was restricted as the local indigenous community controls the area. This region is not in the Amazon proper, but even more glaring is the Bartlett's stated reason for inclusion that the region has rivers that drain in the Amazon. Aside from the absurdity of that argument most of this region's rivers, the Sipaliwini included, flow north and drain into the Atlantic Ocean. So why are D. azureus and D. tinctorius included in this book? I can only conclude that they make pretty pictures, and like much of his dendrobatid section, are based on their popularity in the pet hobby.The entire dendrobatid section of this guide is filled with errors. The indigenous people of the Amazon did not use these frogs to "concoct a potent toxin from these compounds with which they coat darts and arrows." Only the Noanamá and Emberá Chocó Indians west of the Andes used frogs for poisoning darts. Most Amazonian hunting poisons are made from plants. The Bartletts frequently start to use locale as a defining characteristic for species but then lists the range as so wide, such as southeast Peru, that species overlap makes this technique useless. In fact they give no range for Dendrobates imitator and to beat that they include an incorrect photo of it. The Bartletts list the range of D. castaneoticus as Northeast Brazil (!), which is a massive area. Caldwell's description of the species specifies a much more restricted region. Under D. quinquevittatus they again say to use range to distinguish it from D. ventrimaculatus, yet the two species do have range overlap. They include an incorrect photo of D. quinquevittatus. They state that D. reticulatus are arboreal and while they are capable of climbing most hobbyists and field biologists know that they prefer a terrestrial lifestyle. Most of his accounts on Dendrobatids seem based on their, or others', hobby/pet trade experience. Many of the poison frog photos are of captive specimens. I wonder why they relied on these instead of in-situ shots of these animals if they were as widely traveled as they claim.The Bartletts' vague mentality carries on in nearly every aspect of this book. Take the species account of Hyla leali. Bartlett calls it a non-descript frog that can most reliably be identified by what it is not (?!). There are hundreds of species of hylid frogs in the region. His photo of it is a Hyla brevifrons. Writing of vipers, they state that captive Bothriopsis bilineata can kill a lab mouse quickly. They remark repeatedly that nocturnal vipers are more prone to bite after dark. Obviously these comments are fluff and seem to be just words to fill the spaces; perfectly meaningless for identification or natural history.The errors go on. I thought of listing them but there are simply too many to include here. Not to mention that I'm not being paid to correct the Bartletts' mistakes.My last critique is of the photos. They are generally good and usually catch the identifying characteristics of the frogs, but the print quality is poor. It seems as if someone went bonkers with the hue/saturation settings in Photoshop, as many of the bright colors come off as garish and inaccurate. Some appear as if printed with a color laser printer. Nonetheless, the photos are the only useful part of this book. In fact this book would be more useful if it were just a collection of photos with species captions. That could certainly limit the number of inaccuracies.The authors present themselves as Amazonian experts but after reading through this work it seems they just made a number of trips to the Iquitos region, taken a bunch of photos of the region's herps (as indicated by the location captions), and decided to publish a book. I would guess that many of the animals were identified for them; otherwise some research would have produced a deeper knowledge. The topic seems broader than their experience and their facts and natural history information come off as made up or based on limited dealings with the animals. They certainly could have benefited from delving into the literature on ranges, natural history, and other details that scientists have been documenting for years.If you have herp experience or are serious about these animals then I can't recommend this book. It is inferior to Rodriguez and Duellman's, Guide to the Frogs of the Iquitos Region, Amazonian Peru, and Dixon and Soini's guide to the Reptiles of the Iquitos region. This book does have more photos, some of which prove useful in identifying animals. But if you were to take the Bartletts' advice and travel to the region with any of the South America tour companies, many with herp experts, then those experts will likely identify the animals for you free of charge.

One of the few popular manual there is on this subject. However I would have liked some kind of systematic key or oversight matrix.

As I was recently planning a trip to Ecuador's rainforest, I was shocked to see that very few books on the identification ofreptiles and amphibians exists. Since this was the only book I was able to find, I bought it despite the negative criticism it received on amazon.com. I have to say I didn't regret it at all!This book is a great help in identifying reptiles and amphibians of the amazon rainforest. Of course not allspecies that can be found are listed. Personally, I believe that they only included species that they have found themselves.Thus, even species that are rather common can be missing. However, I appreciate that they only use first-hand information.The pictures they use are in most of the cases great. Of course there are exceptions (e.g. the Sanguine poison frog's picture is way too small or some pictures show the animals head). However, in most cases even color variations, gender differences or the underside of the animals are displayed.The texts describing the appearance of the animals are also great. However, some texts could just be left out, such as the frog sound descriptions. Personally, I could not make use of these descriptions. Natural language is just not good for that.Whether some species identifications are wrong, as some of my fellow critics have said, I cannot judge. To me, however,no error jumped out. The only thing being that the common name 'Fer-de-Lance' was assigned to the wrong lancehead. But that's no big deal.Improvements:The pictures of the animals are all clustered in the middle of the book. While this is great for quickly looking at all pictures toidentify an animal, I would have preferred one page/animal including the picture. That way one could have gotten an overview of all species and would still have been able to read whether the animal occured in the area of the sigthing.Which brings me to my second point for improvement: the habitat description. The book describes the range a species lives inas e.g. the 'Northern amazon basin'. I really would have liked some rough maps of the amazon showing where the animal can occur.Overall, the book is good for identification and one of the few that covers reptiles and amphibians of the amazon.

The product is a good size for traveling. There are only 275 photos on the plates but they are very well done. The descriptions of the families and species are great. Size, Identification, Reproduction, Habitat and Range and Similar species are all descried.I would say that this book is WELL worth the money. It is one of the only guides on reptiles and amphibians of South America that I could find in Canada.

Even if the species-names are not always up-to-date the pictures help to identify most of the species.There is a coloured register of all mentioned species from where you can go back to the detailed desciption of these species to verify if this is the right one.Some of the species are lacking, but you can't expect a mirracle for whole Amazon.As long as there is no substitute this is the book to buy for a trip to the amazonian forest.