Austral Ecology (2005) 30, 706–712

Book Reviews

Environmental Histories of New Zealand

E. Pawson and T. Brooking (eds). Oxford Univer-sity Press, Melbourne, 2002. xvii + 342 pages.Price AUD$39.95/NZ$49.95 (Paperback). ISBN0 19 558421 X.

The environments of the south-west Pacific have expe-riences two waves of settlement: a first by the indige-nous peoples of Polynesia and/or Melanesia and asecond by European settlers. Aotearoa-New Zealandis no different in this sense to other south-west Pacificcountries, and it too experienced what Wynn (p. 101)describes as a cycle of ‘exploration, encounter, exploi-tation, and transformation . . .’. However, it is uniquein the rapidity of the changes following settlement andit was the last major Pacific landmass to be settled,probably c. 700–800 years BP (although this is muchdebated). Environmental Histories of New Zealand isconcerned with telling the story, or stories, of howNew Zealand’s environments have changed since theywere first settled by the Maori, through Europeansettlement, and up to the present day. While the bookhighlights some of the similarities of this historywith other ‘new world’ countries, notably the USA,Australia and Canada, the differences in NewZealand’s experiences are emphasized. Indeed, thebook is not so much a history of the environment asa history of human–environment interactions and theways that humans have conceptualized and perceivedthe environment itself. In telling these stories it drawson the approach of Holland (2000) that cultural land-scapes (largely the domain of this book) can be exam-ined and understood as biogeographical experiments(albeit uncontrolled and unreplicated ones!). NewZealand’s environments have been subjected to threetypes of environmental experiment, each on more thanone occasion: the large-scale modification of the landand its vegetation cover; selective removal of nativeanimals from indigenous ecosystems; and the intro-duction, accidental and deliberate, of plant and animalspecies. The three types of experiment, all of themlacking controls, continue to this day, and are allrecurrent themes in the book.

The book is divided into five broad sections, thethemes of which are elaborated on in the 4–5 chaptersthat comprise them; the sections are entitled Encoun-ters, Colonising, Special Environments, Modernising,and Contemporary Perspectives. The book is arrangedin roughly chronological order starting with the envi-ronmental impact of the pre-European Maori andfinishing with a look at how human–environment

interactions might change in New Zealand in thefuture. Encounters focuses on pre-European Maoriimpacts and the initial contest for resources betweenMaori and European settlers and the economic andsocial context within which they occurred. Colonisingconsiders themes of transformation from the mid-19thto early 20th centuries looking at forests, grasslandsand mining/quarrying. Special Environments looks athow human–environment interactions have occurredin particular environments either archetypical (e.g.mountains) or particularly relevant to New Zealand(e.g. swamps, indigenous vegetation remnants). Mod-ernising considers environmental transformation inthe context of the dominant relevant themes of moder-nity, namely, the role of science and technology inmaking economic development and resource protec-tion more effective; grassland, urban environmentsand gardens are considered in this light. The finalsection, Perspectives, considers themes of contempo-rary relevance (e.g. environmental law) in terms oftheir historical context. Ecologists have also consid-ered many of these subjects, thus, some of the materialis familiar (e.g. trends in forest cover and use and thetransformation of New Zealand’s grasslands), but theperspectives offered here are different. Subjects thathave received comparatively little attention from envi-ronmental historians, such as urban environmentalhistories and histories of the garden, are also consid-ered. Interestingly some of these are the same subjectsthat ecologists have begun to think about, such asurban ecology (e.g. Pickett et al. 2001) and gardens aspossible reservoirs of biodiversity in urban environ-ments (e.g. Thompson et al. 2003).

The authors of the various chapters come from awide range of backgrounds including environmentallaw, history, geography and anthropology, amongstothers; nevertheless, the whole is cohesive and thedominant themes run clearly through the book. Thestandard of figures and maps is also excellent. Inplaces, the language used might be somewhat differentfrom that of much of the ecological literature (i.e. thelanguage of history and human geography), but this isnot a criticism and the book has plenty to offer ecol-ogists in New Zealand and elsewhere. Although thebook focuses on New Zealand its appeal is not justlocal. While some of the subjects discussed are more‘New Zealand-specific’ than others, possibly requiringplace-specific and/or knowledge-specific understand-ing, others are of more general interest, and insightscan be gained from every chapter. Indeed on readingEnvironmental Histories of New Zealand one is struckby the potential for a more effective marriage between

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the historical and narrative approach taken here andthe more experimental approach taken by ecologists.Ecology might gain much from the approach taken byenvironmental history, but environmental historymight also benefit from a more ecological approach attimes. Surely, and as Environmental Histories of NewZealand makes clear, if we are to effectively managefragile landscapes such as those of Aotearoa-NewZealand, it is imperative that we understand the com-plex and multilayered stories and perspectives thatmake up our past.

GEORGE PERRYSchool of Geography and Environmental ScienceUniversity of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

Email: george.perry@auckland.ac.nz

REFERENCES

Holland P. (2000) Cultural landscapes as biogeographicalexperiments: a New Zealand perspective. J. Biogeogr. 27,39–43.

Pickett S. T. A., Cadenasso M. L., Grove J. M. et al. (2001)Urban ecological systems: linking terrestrial, ecological,physical, and socioeconomic components of metropolitanareas. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 32, 127–57.

Thompson K., Austin K. C., Smith R. M., Warren P. H.,Angold P. G. & Gaston K. J. (2003) Urban domesticgardens (I): putting small-scale plant diversity in context.J. Veg. Sci. 14, 71–8.

Pheromones and Animal Behaviour

Tristram D. Wyatt. Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, 2003, xv + 391 pages. Price AUD $99.ISBN 0521 48526 6.

Learn about the female sex-pheromone that 140 spe-cies of moth and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus)have in common and more importantly, learn whyelephants don’t try to mate with butterflies in Phero-mones and Animal Behaviour, an excellent, up-to-datereview of the role that pheromones play in communi-cation between individuals. Throughout the animalkingdom, pheromones are involved in more interac-tions than any other type of communication signal.From path following in social animals to mate choiceand territorial defence, pheromones mediate awide range of animal interactions and behaviouralresponses. Clearly pheromones are an ubiquitous partof the animal kingdom, and so why has it taken over40 years for research into chemical communicationto develop into a strong discipline? Perhaps as thebook suggests the dominance of sight and hearing inhumans has influenced the value we place on non-visual communication in the animal kingdom.

Pheromones and Animal Behaviour is organized into13 easy to read chapters that deal with a range oftopics from the history of pheromone research to therole that pheromones play in human mating behav-iour. The first two chapters provide a brief introduc-tion to chemical communication, the history ofisolating and identifying the chemical compoundsused in communication, and define the terms usedthroughout the scientific literature. These chaptersprovide the reader with a strong foundation in thetopic and the book would be an ideal text for advancedundergraduate courses as well as providing postgrad-uate students and academics with a fantastic startingpoint for research on the role of pheromones in animalbehaviour.

Each of the remaining chapters deals with a specifictopic including: (i) finding and choosing mates – whyand how did pheromone signalling become involvedin mate selection; (ii) scent marking and territorialdefence – what information is conveyed through scentmarking and are markers an effective barrier to intrud-ers; (iii) social organization – the role of pheromonesand behaviour in the inhibition of sexual developmentin subordinates; (iv) recruitment – what cues do larvalstages follow when choosing a settlement site; (v)alarm pheromones – why did they evolve; (vi) themolecular basis of behaviour – highlights recentadvances in our understanding of the way that animalsdetect chemical signals and the molecular basis forbehavioural responses; (vii) illicit receivers and signal-ers – cracking the code, the exploitation of pheromonesignalling by conspecifics, predators and competitors;and (viii) the final chapter deals with the recent dis-covery of the important role that pheromones play inhuman mate selection. Each chapter provides an over-view of current research in that particular topic andthe concepts raised are illustrated with examples froma diverse range of taxa. Pheromones and Animal Behav-iour uses examples from both invertebrates and verte-brates to illustrate the points raised and this is arefreshing change for behavioural texts, which oftenmaintain a sometimes unjustified distinction betweenanimals with and without backbones. In addition tothe references cited within the text, Wyatt suggestsfurther reading at the conclusion of each chapter forthose who want to increase the depth of their knowl-edge. The book is accessible to readers from a rangeof scientific backgrounds. It covers the ecology andevolution of pheromone mediated animal behaviourand also details the recent advances in our under-standing of the role of olfactory communication at theneurological and molecular level. The chemical struc-ture and nomenclature of organic molecules is intro-duced in the appendices so that the non-chemist caneasily understand the concepts of three dimensionalstructure in organic compounds and how the differentisometric structures of an organic compound can

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influence its effect on target organisms without havingto retreat to the library.

Pheromones and Animal Behaviour is clearly writtenand comprehensively researched. It provides adequatedetail without getting bogged down in minutia andbecause it was written by a single author there is acontinuity and cohesion often missing in collaborativework. My main criticism of the book is the choice ofmonochromatic illustrations. While they are generallysuitable for illustrating the majority of points there aresome figures in which it was hard to identify the struc-tures of interest and these illustrations would havebenefited from being reproduced in colour. The sec-ond issue I have with this book is the attention to detailin the layout design. Some of the captions don’tcorrespond to the position of the figure and it isnot always clear to which figure a particular captionbelongs. These are minor problems that do not signif-icantly affect the scientific tenor of the book, but theyare annoying and detract from the overall experiencegained from reading the book.

DEREK TURNBULLSchool of Zoology, University of Tasmania

Hobart, Tasmania, AustraliaEmail: Derek.Turnbull@utas.edu.au

Tropical Forests and Global Atmospheric Change

Y. Malhi and O.L. Phillips (eds). PhilosophicalTransactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences,London, 2004, 250 pages. US $74.50 ISSN 0962–8436.

The rationale behind this theme issue was to bringtogether a collection of papers from a wide range ofdisciplines to focus attention on the fate of the world’stropical forests as a consequence of recent globalatmospheric change, emphasizing new field data ornew syntheses of existing data. For the most part itachieves this aim, albeit with a bias towards neotropi-cal forests. After a short introduction by the editors,the volume is organized into four sections that followthe key disciplines contributing to our knowledge andunderstanding of the effects of global atmosphericchange on tropical forests and concludes with a usefulsynthesis paper, drawing together the critical elementsof the 15 contributed papers.

Section 1 (The changing tropical atmosphere)contains three papers, beginning with Malhi andWright who examine spatial patterns and recenttrends in the climate of tropical forest regions overthe period 1960–1998. While a high degree of cer-tainty exists for increases in temperature regimes in

the tropics over coming decades, the greatest uncer-tainty is how tropical precipitation regimes willrespond to changes in the global atmosphere. Thiswill impact on studies attempting to predict impactsof global warming on biodiversity and water bal-ances. Cramer et al. give a comprehensive overviewof impacts of atmospheric carbon dioxide, climatechange and deforestation on tropical forests and theglobal carbon cycle, and suggest that deforestationwill probably produce large losses of carbon intothe atmosphere, despite the uncertainty about thedeforestation rates. Laurance examines forest–climate interactions in fragmented tropical land-scapes at several spatial scales, and concludes thatgiven the rapid pace of forest conversion in thetropics, care must be taken to distinguish the con-sequences of global-change phenomena from theever-increasing effects of landscape alteration.

Section 2 (Contemporary change in tropical forests)contains four papers, based entirely on Amazonianforests. This limitation makes it difficult to generalizeto tropical forests in Africa and Asia where there arefundamental differences in climate and land-usechange patterns. Baker et al. discuss increasing biom-ass in Amazonian forest plots using new data, andshow that there has been a regional-scale carbonsink in old-growth Amazonian forests over the past20 years. Barlow and Peres focus on ecologicalresponses to El Niño-induced surface fires in the cen-tral Brazilian Amazonia, and show a combination ofEl Niño-induced drought and land-use change hasdramatically increased fire frequency in humid tropicalforests in Brazil and elsewhere. Significantly, rates oftree mortality and changes in forest structure arestrongly linked to burn severity, with strong implica-tions for biomass loss, carbon emissions and faunalresponses. Phillips et al. give an overview of patternand process in Amazon tree turn over from 1976 to2001, and confirm previous work that has shown treeturnover rates, tree biomass and large liana densitieshave all increased in mature neotropical forests overthe last 50 years. Chave et al. discuss error propagationand scaling for tropical forest biomass estimates, andconclude that more work needs to be done to improvethe predictive power of allometric models for biomassstudies.

Section 3 (Understanding the present: interpretingcontemporary change in tropical forests) contains fivepapers. Lewis et al. begin by examining concertedchanges in tropical forest structure and dynamics,using data from 50 long-term plots in South America.They demonstrate that continental-wide increases insolar radiation, coupled with increases in atmosphericconcentrations of carbon and higher air temperatures,may have increased resource supply in this time,thereby causing accelerated growth and increaseddynamism across the world’s largest tract of tropical

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The Nature of Scientific Evidence: Statistical,Philosophical and Empirical Considerations

Mark L. Taper and Subhash R. Lele (eds). TheUniversity of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2004, xviii +567 pages. Price AUD$45.00 (paperback). ISBN0226 78957 8.

In the main, ecologists are occasional users of pre-packaged statistical routines. While we may feel someanxiety about selecting the ‘right’ method to test ourdata, few of us spend much time thinking more deeplyabout the connections between theory, data and infer-ence. Rather, most of us feel secure in the knowledgethat statisticians resolved these matters on our behalflong ago. But, as this book documents, that is far frombeing the case.

In compiling this volume, editors Mark Taper andSubhash Lele set out to examine the question of whatproperly constitutes ‘evidence’ in science, using ecol-ogy as their exemplar. The Nature of Scientific Evidencedoes this from the triple perspectives of philosophy,statistics and science, the editors arguing that no singleperspective is adequate. They also claim that scientistsgenerally lack a secure understanding of the philo-sophical foundations of statistical and scientific think-ing, and they seek to expose the disjunctions betweenphilosophical theory, statistical implementation andscientific practice. In doing so, Taper and Lele take acatholic approach, inviting contributors who representa plurality of approaches; for example, Frequentists,Bayesians and Likelihoodists are equally representedamong the statisticians.

Taper and Lele have thought carefully about themaking of their book, for part of its success stems fromsome atypical choices. First, they challenged contrib-utors ‘. . . to think originally about evidence . . .’rather than simply reviewing the existing literature,resulting in a lively emphasis on new and recent ideas.But what will be most apparent to the reader is thebook’s adoption of a format more commonly seen instatistics and mathematics. The chapters are groupedby topic, with each group intelligently prefaced by adiscursive summary. Each chapter is accompanied bytwo detailed commentaries from other authorities,often from other disciplines, followed by a rejoinderfrom the chapter author(s). So philosophers commenton the statisticians’ chapters, statisticians comment onthe ecologists’ chapters, and so on. This worksextremely well, throwing further clarity and detail onarguments, bringing forth new ideas, and in one ortwo instances providing more informative reading thanthe chapter itself (e.g. Holt and Slade’s commentaryon Chapter 10).

The concept of consilience (Wilson 1998), in whichconfidence in a theory increases as supporting evi-dence is obtained from disparate sources, and in which

forest. Lewis et al. attempt to fingerprint the impactsof global change on tropical forests, and discuss how10 potential drivers may change in the future andthe possible consequences for tropical forests. Clark’spaper shows how little we know about carbon cyclesin tropical forests and whether these systems arecurrently carbon sinks or sources, and how this statusmight change over the next 100 years under globalwarming. Körner examines the hypothesis that CO2

enrichment may cause forests to become moredynamic and that faster tree turnover may in factconvert a stimulatory effect of elevated CO2 on pho-tosynthesis and growth into a long-term net biomassC loss by favouring shorter-lived trees of lower wooddensity.

The final section (Insights from the past) containsthree papers, all based on the neotropics. Franceset al. evaluate responses of Amazon ecosystems toclimatic and atmospheric CO2 changes since thelast glacial maximum (21K BP), and suggest thatecotonal areas near the margins of the Amazon basinare likely to be most sensitive to future environmen-tal change, and should be targeted for any conserva-tion strategies. Pennington et al. describe effects ofhistorical climate change on the distribution andevolution of plant species in the neotropics, withparticular reference to the long-standing debateabout whether neotropical species diversity is recent(Quaternary) or ancient (Tertiary). Cowling et al.’spaper on contrasting simulated past and futureresponses of the Amazon forest to climate changeargues that the region is currently near its criticalresiliency threshold, and that even minor climatewarming may be sufficient to promote deleteriousfeedbacks on forest integrity. This particularlyapplies to montane tropical forests with their cool-adapted taxa.

In the synthesis paper, Malhi and Phillips maintainthat over the coming century, the Earth’s remainingtropical forests face the combined pressures of directhuman impacts (fragmentation) and a climatic andatmospheric situation not experienced for at least 20million years, and that understanding and monitoringthe response of tropical forests to this atmosphericchange are essential to maximizing conservationoptions. If you do not have time to read all contributedpapers, this last paper will provide most readers withan excellent up-to-date summary of where we standon this critical issue and where we might go in thefuture.

STEPHEN M. TURTONRainforest CRC, School of TropicalEnvironment Studies & Geography

James Cook University, Cairns, AustraliaEmail: Steve.Turton@jcu.edu.au

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some forms of evidence have greater weight thanothers, is one of the central themes of the book. TheNature of Scientific Evidence not only argues thatstatistical inference should be consistent with thisapproach, but also that inferential tools, which couldprovide meta-analyses of evidence of differing qualityand could somehow assess consilience, would consti-tute a major methodological advance.

As the book proceeds, successive contributors unveiltheoretical weaknesses and philosophical inconsisten-cies in the ways that scientists draw inference. Theyidentify the divide between the types of questionsresearchers often want to ask, and the types of answersthat current statistical methods can provide. Severalcontributors discuss how statistical practice and meth-odology should best advance from here.

Some contributions warrant more detailed com-ment. Royall’s chapter ‘The likelihood paradigm forstatistical evidence’ goes right to the heart of the mat-ter. That is, what do we consider to be evidence inscience, how do we assess the strength of evidence,and when is evidence strong enough to justify chang-ing our beliefs or our actions? Royall states thatevidence is mathematically distinct from uncertainty,and argues that ‘probabilities represent and measuredegrees of belief or uncertainty, not evidence’, whereas‘it is the likelihood function, and not any probabilitydistribution, that shows what the data say’.

While acknowledging Royall’s arguments on themerits of this approach, Forster and Sober’s contri-bution on ‘Why likelihood?’ raises the issue of thedilemma between ‘truth versus predictability’ for agiven hypothesis in this approach. Taper and Lele’s‘Dynamical models as paths to evidence in ecology’contains useful insights into the art of process-basedmodelling, while also discussing the status of modelsas evidence, and the links between modelling andexperimental ecology. Other chapters, such as Lele’s‘Evidence functions and the optimality of the law oflikelihood’ and Lindsay’s ‘Statistical distances as lossfunctions in assessing model adequacy’, offer creativeand insightful progress towards addressing fundamen-tal problems of statistical inference. In the final chap-ter, a synthesis of the book’s contents, Taper and Lelepropose a set of concepts and methods that, theybelieve, have the potential to overcome many of theexisting conundrums.

The book’s importance lies more in detailing theproblematic nature of current methods and philoso-phies than in providing answers. Nevertheless, TheNature of Scientific Evidence may well be viewed as alandmark publication in years to come, one that wasthe precursor to a new set of statistical methodologiesbased on evidence and likelihood.

Readers for whom Pickett et al. (1994) or Hilbornand Mangel (1997) were pivotal texts will want to readThe Nature of Scientific Evidence. But we think that its

content justifies a wider readership; it is more funda-mental to what we do as ecologists than, say, any bookon competition theory. Given its bargain paperbackprice, we unreservedly recommend it to every ecolo-gist wanting to understand more about the relation-ship between logic, evidence, analysis and inference –which, after all, constitutes the essence of the scientificmethod.

GRAEME HASTWELL AND S. RAGHUCRC for Australian Weed Management

Queensland Department of Natural Resources & MinesAlan Fletcher Research Station

Sherwood, Queensland, AustraliaEmail: graeme.hastwell@nrm.qld.gov.au

REFERENCES

Hilborn R. & Mangel M. (1997) The Ecological Detective:Confronting Models with Data. Princeton University Press,Princeton.

Pickett S. T. A., Kolasa J. & Jones C. G. (1994) EcologicalUnderstanding: the Nature of Theory and the Theory of Nature.Academic Press, San Diego.

Wilson E. O. (1998) Consilience: the Unity of Knowledge. Knopf,New York.

Food Webs

Stuart L. Pimm. University of Chicago Press,Chicago, 2003, xxxix + 219 pages. Price US$25.ISBN 0 226 66832 0.

Why re-publish, or indeed buy, an ecological bookmore than 20 years after it first appeared? The answeris because this is a classic and University of ChicagoPress has updated several books in that class, includingElton’s Animal Ecology (possibly the first to popularizefood-web depictions of who eats whom). Food websoccupy a fundamental place in community ecology.Pimm’s 1982 book was the second book publishedspecifically on the topic and it introduced a mathemat-ical treatment of why food webs are the way theyappear. That explanation was a dynamical one in thatfood chains that are too long or had many tenuouslinks could not be stable, so we see a reduced setof topologies compared with what is conceptuallypossible.

Within a new set of covers, the original edition isreproduced (with the same font and pagination but noadditions or corrections) in the final 219 pages of thisvolume. UC Press’s decision to repackage the originallook as well as the text is an interesting aesthetic choice

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that preserves appearances. I read this soon after it firstappeared whilst travelling to and from field sites dur-ing the final year or so of my PhD studies. The way itlooks brought memories flooding back of scribblingdown lots of ideas for a postdoc. Pimm systematicallybuilds his argument with chapters concerning anintroduction to food webs, models, stability as a crite-rion, theory and empirical results about complexity,food chain lengths, where omnivory (defined asfeeding from more than one trophic level) fits in, com-partments within food webs, how to describe websmathematically, and an overall view of food-webdesign.

A major strength of this book was the mix itemployed of empirical and theoretical perspectives onfood webs, what Pimm described as the ‘2 broadmethods’ of modelling and field experiments. In mostcases the argument considers several competing expla-nations for what we see, relating specifically to pub-lished data but often grounded in common sense andreasoning from first principles. Some of the maths maybe heavy going for some ecologists but the models aregenerally simple and mostly introduced well. It cer-tainly backs up ‘the unifying theory that nature abhorsa food web that is likely to be unstable’ (p.xxvii).

In addition, there is new material in the form of a27-page Foreward (including 2 pages of references),where Pimm answers the question at the start of thisreview, as being of more than just historical interest.Also, he is sending a sort of ‘thank you’ to subsequentcollaborators and is inspiring authors whilst updatingecology’s view of food webs after 1982. In part, this isa response to the reaction to his book in the early1980s as well as a look at how his predictions for thisfield have fared over the decades, but it is also reveal-ing about him and his approach. Outlining the book’sstructure, Pimm updates its resources (including thoseon that other sort of Web that has grown enormouslyin the last 20 years) and advances, highlighting hisown later contributions. A cogent point made is thatnow we don’t need to guess about estimates of mostmodel parameters, as Pimm had to back then. Heneatly takes us through spreadsheet equations thatunderpin the book’s models, and shows the readerhow to approach each section, including advice to ‘notbother reading’ the weakest sections.

A number of crucial developments that appearedmore recently are highlighted in reflection of Pimm’searlier treatment. Australian experiments were crucialto testing ideas on food-chain length and their dynam-ical constraints. One such figure, Roger Kitching, islauded for his monographic compilation of food websin phytotelmata and his interpretation of their empir-ical patterns. I was somewhat surprised that two otherstalwarts of bringing empirical reality to food webstudies, namely Bob Paine and the late Gary Polis, getmuch shorter shrift. One striking observation is that

many of the food webs discussed in the 1982 book areactually rather simple depictions, but the messagefrom Polis, Paine, Neo Martinez and others was thatthere is considerable complexity in nature that maybe missed by simple and static food-web linkage dia-grams. Pimm also misses opportunities to link hisearlier ideas to the current interest around conceptslike intraguild predation or interaction strengths.

This is a very nice repackaged book at a modestprice, although I found one missing reference and twopages in my copy were swapped, which lent confusionto the narrative. I recommend it to any ecologist inter-ested in the evolution of our views on a pertinentmetric of community interaction, the food web.

PETER G. FAIRWEATHERSchool of Biological Sciences

Flinders UniversityAdelaide South Australia, Australia

Email: peter.fairweather@flinders.edu.au

Tropical Rain Forests: an Ecological and Biogeographical Comparison

Richard Primack and Richard Corlett. Blackwell,Oxford, 2005, 336 pages. Price AUD$154.00. ISBN0632045132.

These two authors have compared the life histories,adaptations and interactions of plants, primates, car-nivores, forest-floor herbivores, birds, bats, gliders andinsects in rainforests worldwide. This is a tour de forcein anyone’s terms.

Their message is simple, and they marshal a wealthof evidence to support it: every rainforest is different.Just because rainforests are all green, wet and compli-cated is no reason to lump them together. Researchon one area does not substitute for research onanother. Conservation of one area cannot substitutefor conservation of others. The perception of a belt ofalmost homogeneous rainforest around the globaltropics, perhaps unthinkingly held by many ecologistsas well as popular mass media, is wildly inaccurate.

It is not clear how much of this volume is derivedfrom the authors’ own experience, and how muchfrom reviewing published literature. Richard Corlett Iknow as a botanist who has had a particular interestin rainforest ecosystems since listening to lectures bythe late Professor Corner at Cambridge University.His PhD work in Papua New Guinea and his subse-quent research in South-east Asia, from Singapore toXishuangbanna, has made him an authority on thearea. Richard Primack also has extensive experiencein South-east Asia, and in central America. He headsa major project to produce a series of rainforest con-

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servation textbooks customized to different countriesand languages.

The text is very well produced and I noted only onetypo: ‘complimentary’ instead of ‘complementary’ onp. 46. On p. 140, antbirds and their analogues aredescribed as ‘professionals.’ This seems a strangechoice of phrase. Why is following ants any more aprofession than, e.g. picking ticks off large mammals,or for that matter, hammering holes in tree trunks tofind boring grubs? There is a wealth of fascinatingdetail. How rude, one feels, that the common nameof Zimmerius vilissimus is the ‘paltry tyrranulet.’ Glid-ing animals such as flying squirrels, colugos, and flyinglizards, frogs and snakes are described and in manycases illustrated.

The book points out a number of interesting int-ercontinental patterns. Assemblages and life historiesof birds, primates and rodents, for example, are verydifferent in New and Old World rainforests. Theformer have giant long-legged rodents, the latter haveungulates. Fruit bats in New and Old World havedifferent lineages: New World rainforests have leafcut-ter ants, African rainforests have large ground dwellingmammals such as gorilla and elephant, Asian rainfor-ests have dipterocarp dominance and more glidingmammals, and in Papua New Guinea there is an Asianflora but a marsupial fauna.

Turning to Australia’s own tropical rainforests as areality check, I do find one or two items to take issuewith. To describe a striped possum as having a ‘skunk-like’ smell (p. 94) is, I think, a slur on one of our mostmagnificent arboreal marsupials. And to argue that thefeathers of cassowaries are reduced to ‘a coat of quills’(p. 161) also seems inaccurate. Surely cassowary feath-ers, although admittedly soft-structured, are muchmore than quills. Outside Australia, I also find it a littlefar-fetched to present capybara and pygmy hippopot-amus as a ‘matched pair’ (p. 118), although I appre-ciate that the figure (4.7) is drawn from previousliterature. And on p. 153, for example, the authorsargue that bright-coloured birds with lek displays haveevolved in areas without placental carnivores. They citebirds of paradise, bowerbirds and others. And yes,certainly, bowerbirds build their bowers on the ground.But don’t birds of paradise display from branches?

The differences between continents give rise to arange of research questions, which are raised at theend of each chapter. Do fungus cultivating termites ofOld World rainforests affect nutrient cycling? Does the

lack of primates in Papua New Guinea affect seeddispersal? Why do Asian and American rainforestshave more carnivore species when Africa has moreprey species? Why are there no lion or leopard sizedcats in African rainforests when there are tigers inAsian and jaguar in South America? To what extent doparrots, small primates, squirrels and marsupials com-pete or substitute for each other?

Various potential experiments are proposed toaddress some of these questions, for example, remov-ing bromeliads from areas of New World rainforest, oradding artificial bromeliads to African and Asian for-ests, to test for effects on canopy fauna. As the authorsnote, various large-scale human interventions that arealready occurring could be used as ecological experi-ments. For example, logging removes dipterocarpsselectively. Hunting removes elephants. Long-tailedmacaque have been introduced into Papua NewGuinea, and African honeybees to America. Orangefarmers poison leafcutting ants locally.

The book’s last chapter addresses human influence,from clearance for cattle farming in Brazil, to clear-ance for oil palm plantations in Indonesia. In 2000,the volume of rainforest timber that China reportedimporting from Indonesia was 103 times the volumethat Indonesia reported exporting (p. 264). So what isthe final prognosis? ‘If current destruction of the rain-forest continues it will inevitably lead to a new waveof mass extinctions, dwarfing anything caused by pre-vious generations of human’ (p. 266). And what to do?‘The ongoing destruction of the world’s rainforests isnot one problem, so we should not expect there to beonly one – or even a few – solutions’ (p. 276). ‘Theexact type of conservation strategy will depend on thecountry involved’ (p. 269).

‘The situation is not yet hopeless’ (p. 275). Theauthors point to regeneration of central Americanrainforests since the collapse of Mayan civilizations. Ofcourse, the Mayans did not have guns or bulldozers,and they lived a thousand years ago. So the conclu-sion: save every patch of rainforest everywhere,because we will need every reserve of species for ecol-ogists to restore ecosystems when, or if, human poli-tics eventually allows it.

RALF BUCKLEYInternational Centre for Ecotourism Research

Griffith University, Queensland, AustraliaEmail: r.buckley@griffith.edu.au