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doi:10.1016/j.ba
Basic and Applied Ecology 11 (2010) 94 www.elsevier.de/baae
Book Review
Evolutionary Biogeography, J.J. Morrone. Columbia
University Press, New York (2008). 304 pp., $50.00,
ISBN: 978-0-231-14378-3
A major critique to Morrone’s ‘‘Evolutionary Bio-geography’’ is his failure to highlight the importance ofhistoric biogeography and its applications for theunderstanding and evaluation of current problems suchas climate change, fragmentation, or biodiversity loss.Morrone, instead, focuses on an integrative compilationof methods and case studies in historic biogeography.He accomplishes this aim very well.
Juan J. Morrone is one of the most prolificrepresentatives of cladistics and panbiogeography nowa-days. In this book he aims at an integration ofdistributional, phylogenetic, molecular, and paleontolo-gical methods for the study of broad biogeographicpatterns in space and time. This integrative approachitself is most welcome in a time where not onlymacroecology and biogeography, but also severalcurrents within historic biogeography such as panbio-geography, parsimony analysis of endemicity, cladisticbiogeography, and phylogeography, rather tend toseparate themselves from each other. This is, however,no book on theories and explanations, although a feware provided in the numerous case studies. This book israther a summary of available methods to study historicbiogeography in a broad sense. The methods are verywell introduced by short rationales and a discussion ofassumptions and algorithms. Especially the softwarereferences appear helpful. Sometimes we missed a clearevaluation of the various methods concerning thequestion when to use which method. A clear strengthof the book, however, is the excessive list of publishedcase studies and authors for each method. Overall,Morrone cites about 800 references. Together with theinformative case study examples provided in the text,this is the greatest treasure of this book. The describedmethods aim at reconstructing biogeographic patterns.We would have expected from the title that this bookwould further deal with evolutionary mechanismsdriving these patterns, but this is not provided.
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Morrone sets up nine chapters to lead his readerstoward his goal of an integrative biogeography, which issubject of the ninth chapter consisting of only two pages.He assumes his readers to be informed on evolution andgenetics and starts with an introduction on the tasks ofevolutionary biogeography. Following two chapters onbasic concepts of biogeography and an extensive butinformative history of evolutionary biogeography, chapterfour starts a series of five chapters on the hierarchicalsteps of evolutionary biogeography as perceived byMorrone: The identification of biotic components, thetesting of relationships between biotic components, theregionalization, the identification of cenocrons (sets oftaxa which share the same biogeographic history), and theconstruction of a geobiotic scenario to explain theobserved patterns. For all but the last of these steps,Morrone is able to provide several methods, which areexplained in some detail, as well as very informative casestudies. The construction of a geobiotic scenario, how-ever, seems not yet advanced enough to have developedmethods or ample case studies.
Morrone’s style is informative and easy to read. Theglossary, nevertheless, is quite helpful as several technicalterms are used without introduction. The presentedmethods appear comprehensive, although we miss someremarks on data acquisition for all these analysis,including genetic analyses that are further limited to fewmethods and applications. Compared to the strict focuson the statistical analyses, it seems odd that Morrone usesseveral pages to introduce plate tectonics.
Overall, we conclude that ‘‘Evolutionary Biogeogra-phy’’ is well suited for any novice in the field of historicbiogeography by providing a broad synopsis and verygood introductions to each method. Experts willundoubtedly benefit from the literature overview pro-vided by Morrone.
Jurgen Kreyling�, David HarterBayreuth, Germany
E-mail addresses: [email protected](J. Kreyling), [email protected] (D. Harter)
�Corresponding author.
