The Mammal Diversity Database

By the American Society of Mammalogists

Track the latest taxonomic changes to living and recently extinct (i.e., since ~1500 CE) species and higher taxa of mammals.

Current version: v2.1, released April 6, 2025.

Previous versions are available on Zenodo.

A palawan moss shrew. Courtesy of the ASM’s MILA golden mouse. Courtesy of the ASM’s MILA hispaniolan solenodon. Courtesy of the ASM’s MILAn Abbott's duiker. Courtesy of the ASM’s MIL

What's New in the MDD2

  • Codings of US state, country, continent, and biogeographic realm geographic categories for each species
  • A comprehensive nomenclatural dataset for 50,000+ synonymous species-rank names, curated with type locality and specimen information.
  • Integration between the MDD and the databases Hesperomys and Batnames for greater data accuracy and completeness
  • A rewritten and redesigned of the MDD website (work in progress). It comes with a new search feature, better scalability, enhanced data visualization, and other features. The original version is available at classic.mammaldiversity.org.
  • A new cross-platform app (currently in beta) offering offline access to MDD, advanced search capabilities, custom exports, and more.

Our Goals

We are curating the taxonomic implications of new research publications in real time — with the goal of promoting rigorous study of mammal biodiversity worldwide. The initial objective has been to aggregate, curate, and compile, new citations on species descriptions and taxonomic revisions into regular releases that are downloadable in comma-delimited format. Downstream goals include expanded hosting of ecological, trait, and taxonomic data.

Mammal Diversity Statistics

Taxa MSW3 2005 MDD 2018 Current
Species
Total 5,416 6,495 6,801
Recently Extinct 75 96 112
Living 5,341 6,399 6,689
Domestic 0 16 17
Living Wild 5,338 6,382 6,672
Genera 1,230 1,314 1,357
Families 153 167 167
Orders 29 27 27
Synonyms - - 59,006

Try the MDD App beta

MDD App

App features:

  • Offline access to the database
  • Advanced search
  • Custom exports
  • And more

Support all major desktop and mobile OS.

Cite MDD

The current database (via Zenodo):

Mammal Diversity Database. (2025). Mammal Diversity Database (Version 2.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15007505

A specific entry: Each entry has a citation string at the end. For example:

Dipodomys deserti (ASM Mammal Diversity Database #1001892) fetched April 9, 2025. Mammal Diversity Database. 2025. https://www.mammaldiversity.org/taxon/1001892

Describing the MDD v2.0 taxonomy:

Burgin, C. J., Zijlstra, J. S., Becker, M. A., Handika, H., Alston, J. M., Widness, J., Liphardt, S., Huckaby, D. G., and Upham, N. S. (2025). How many mammal species are there now? Updates and trends in taxonomic, nomenclatural, and geographic knowledge. Journal of Mammalogy in revision: TBD. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.02.27.640393

Describing the MDD v1.0 taxonomy:

Burgin, C. J., Colella, J. P., Kahn, P. L., and Upham, N. S. (2018). How many species of mammals are there? Journal of Mammalogy 99: 1—11. https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyx147