The field guide series that I’m working on will be the biggest project I’ve ever done, but I’m excited nonetheless! Each volume/book is going to be put into collections for each continent, so for example, when I finish all of the books for the North American species the collection for that will be “North American Wildlife”. Each book will be the “family” classification for a group of species; Canidae (canines), Felidae (felines), etc. As you can see from the title below, the first continent I’m going to be doing is North America.
I feel like my main focus on the field guides is to educate about the different natural coat variations that species can have, since while most species look the same to one another, there are rare occurrences where they have a different coat color and look like a different species. So all of the first field guides I’ll do for each continent are the ones that have species that can have variations, and then work my way around to the species where variations aren’t common or haven’t been documented.
The next focus for the field guides is subspecies! Not all Red Foxes are the common Red Fox for example, each subspecies covers their own range within North America and the rest of the world, since they’re the most widely distributed wild canid. Not all wolves are the same, not all cheetahs are the same, the list goes on! Usually the information on subspecies is lumped with the the nominate species as a whole, while in reality there can be differences in lifestyle, behavior, diet, and even morphological differences that vary from subspecies to subspecies. So with my field guides I want to shed some more light on the subspecies and how they differ from other subspecies.
Cover Reveal August 1st!
North American Canidae
Summary
“North American Canidae is an extensive cross between a field guide, and an encyclopedia that dives, not only in the facts about the canine species on the continent, but also some of the genes behind different coat variations. There are nine species, and sixty nine subspecies within this book that all call North America their home. These being 13 subspecies of Red Fox, 18 subspecies of Gray Fox, 6 subspecies of Island Fox, 1 species of Swift Fox, 3 subspecies of Arctic Fox, 1 species of Kit Fox, 15 subspecies of Coyote, and 14 subspecies of Gray Wolf, and 1 species of Red Wolf. Red Wolves do not fall under the Gray Wolf subspecies list since they were classified as their own species in 1937. Within the species and subspecies listed in this book, there are 35 different coat variations that can occur. Read on to learn about the canids roaming North America.”
This sounds great!