An Updated Checklist of the Mammal Species of Spain with Notes on Exclusions, Additions, and Taxonomic Changes

Countries’ species checklists provide essential references for documenting current wildlife diversity, but they require periodic revisions due to constant changes in distribution and taxonomic arrangements. This study presents an updated and annotated list of the present Spanish mammals, covering the country’s mainland territories, archipelagos, Spanish enclaves in North Africa, and Spanish marine demarcations. We first explicitly defined inclusion categories and criteria: i) mammal species with wild populations that breed or complete part of their life cycle within the territories described in the study area; ii) species that meet the previous criterion but are currently extinct, with reliable records of their presence after 1500 CE; and iii) occasional species that reach the study area naturally. Established exclusion categories include: i) domestic species, including those that reproduce naturally in the wild; ii) species that only have captive breeding populations; and iii) introduced or escaped species into the study area that do not currently have wild breeding populations. The resulting list recognises 157 species within the orders Lagomorpha (5), Rodentia (28), Eulipotyphla (19), Chiroptera (34), Artiodactyla (44, including 36 marine species), and Carnivora (27, including 8 marine species). This list of Spain´s mamals is built on explicit, well-founded criteria, wich enables the list to be updated while maintaining the same standars (or revising them transparently) and facilitates comparisons at both national and international scales.