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Fishes of Arkansas. Second Edition. Henry W. Robison and Thomas M. Buchanan. 2020. The University of Arkansas Press. ISBN 9781682261033. 994 p. $69.95 (hardcover).- Drs. Henry W. Robison and Thomas M. Buchanan are renowned ichthyologists with impactful careers dedicated to describing and conserving the biodiversity of Arkansas. When they were early career scientists, the two friends dreamt of completing a project detailing the fish diversity of the state (Robison, 2015), and they have managed to live the dream-twice! Fishes of Arkansas is a long-awaited and muchneeded update. The second edition is well constructed, featuring a new layout structure and updated color species photos and maps. It builds upon the first edition by incorporating updated taxonomic and genetic information, and expands inclusive taxa.
The new layout of Fishes of Arkansas is more detailed and structured than most "fishes of" books from the southeast region. The most recent "fishes of" books, at minimum, introduce the diversity of fishes from a zoogeographic perspective to provide some backstory of how the state's diversity came to be or to highlight the species richness of the state compared to others in the region. The first edition has one paragraph that teases this concept before diving into everything Arkansas; whereas, the second edition rectified this absence of knowledge by going broader than most state fish books, mirroring aspects of the atlas of North American freshwater fishes, Freshwater Fishes of North America (Warren and Burr, 2014). Similar to how the atlas of North American freshwater fishes begins by discussing the evolution and ecology of freshwater fishes, so too does the second edition of the Fishes of Arkansas, but with a narrower scope, weaving a story of how the evolution and distribution of the fishes of Arkansas fits within the larger narrative. These concepts span the first two introductory chapters of the book. As you progress through the early chapters, it becomes familiar, with similar structure and content to the first edition until you reach later chapters, such as "Classification and Systematics," "Conservation of Arkansas Fish," and a chapter devoted to explaining the layout of the species accounts and information provided in them. The genetics of fishes were not included in the first edition, so it is a welcome sight to see a chapter...