Jonathan Bart, Michael A. Fligner &William I. Notz (1988)Sampling and Statistical Methods forBehavioural Ecologists.Pp. xii + 330. Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge.

£47.50 (hardback), ISBN 0-521-45095-0.

£17.95 (paperback), ISBN 0-521-45705-X.

This is an unusual thing, a bedside statistics book. It

aims to cover statistical concepts and techniques

that should be useful to behavioural ecologists but

that are not generally covered in introductory

courses and books. Because of this, it is not suitable

as a ®rst statistics book for the complete novice: to

bene®t, the reader should already be using basic sta-

tistics. Neither is this a suitable book for someone

who wants a compendium of statistical recipes that

they can look up when they have a speci®c problem.

The reader who will bene®t most from this book is

someone who currently uses statistics but feels that

they would like a deeper understanding of what they

are doing, and/or someone who would like to talk

to statisticians but feels intimidated by unfamiliarity

with concepts and terms.

The ®rst ®ve chapters cover techniques that will

be familiar to readers already: estimation, con®-

dence intervals, regression and sampling plans.

Although the concepts should be familiar to readers,

there will be material in all of these chapters that all

but the most statistically aware will ®nd new and

useful. For example, when considering simple linear

regression, the authors consider the assumptions

about the data that are made when this technique is

used, and the consequences of using data that vio-

late these assumptions. Most usefully of all, they

provide advice on how far from perfect your data

can be without seriously a�ecting the performance

of the technique. This is a good example of one of

the really strong points of the book ± the authors

are very aware that data collected in behavioural

ecology are often a lot more sparse, noisy, biased

and subject to missing values than data in many

other branches of science. Hence, there is always a

real practical feel to the advice they give. Despite

two of the authors being statisticians, there is no

feeling that the authors live in ivory towers ®lled

with perfect data sets. However, neither do the

authors duck theoretical arguments when they feel

that these might be useful. Chapter 2 in particular is

quite mathematical: elementary calculus would be

required for a full understanding, although mathe-

matical con®dence is not required to reap rich

reward from even this chapter.

The next six chapters cover slightly more

advanced topics (pseudoreplication, sampling of

behaviour, monitoring abundance, capture±recap-

ture methods, estimating survivorship and resource

selection and use), before the last chapter brie¯y

reviews some further topics that might be of interest

to some readers, but which are beyond the scope of

the book. These chapters are exceptionally well writ-

ten, being useful to those whose current research

involves these issues, as well as being interesting to

the more general reader. The 10 pages on pseudore-

plication are the most clear, insightful and con®-

dence-building guide to this potentially thorny issue

that I have ever read. The last chapter gives a ¯a-

vour of why a certain technique might be of interest

before referring the reader to appropriate further

reading. Another strength of this text is the helpful

guide it gives to other literature.

I have very few reservations about this book. The

index could be much more comprehensive. There

are two large appendices, neither of which I expect

to make any use of: the ®rst is a summary of how to

apply all the statistical methods of the ®rst ®ve

chapters, but I found it too terse to be particularly

useful; the second is a collection of statistical tables.

Publishers of statistics books feel obliged to add sta-

tistical tables to the back of every book, although I

for one have one set of statistical tables that I

always turn to. These reservations are minor, I

heartily recommend this book.

GRAEME D. RUXTON

Andrew P. Dobson (1998)Conservation and Biodiversity.Pp. 264. Scienti®c American Library, New York,

USA.

$19.95, ISBN 0-7167-6032-0.

It is only just over a decade since the word `biodi-

versity' was ®rst coined by E.O.Wilson, a fact that

always startles students in tutorials. The word was

so catchy that it was seized on and devoured by the

media before ecologists had really decided how we

were going to use it. Now, for all its faults of over-

generalization and its attempt to be all-encompass-

ing, we are stuck with it. This is certainly not the

®rst book with `biodiversity' in its title and it is unli-

kely to be the last. I must admit that when I ®rst

picked it up I was sure that I would not like it. It is

American through and through, from the awkward

margins, the background colours to the graphs and

the page layout, to the fonts and the paper. The

Book ReviewsJournal of Animal

Ecology 1999,

68, 1056±1059

# 1999 British

Ecological Society

cover sports a painting of a cut-away bromeliad on

a background that looks as if you have already

spilled 17 mugs of tea over it. Furthermore, it is

number 59 in a series of Scienti®c American books,

which suggests that, perhaps, this particular

sequence of co�ee-table books might be getting a lit-

tle stale. However, ®rst impressions can be decep-

tive, and this book is actually ®lled with superb

examples, excellent illustrations and a very good

integration of environmental economics, politics and

human population pressures with pure ecology.

Quite rightly, Andrew Dobson follows his short

introduction on `What is biodiversity?' with a whole

chapter on the main driving force for loss of species:

habitat fragmentation and loss. He gives the usual

examples of deforestation for agriculture and makes

the point that, in general, more area supports more

species. There are then sections on the process of

extinction and the identi®cation of endangered or

particularly important species. For example, taxono-

mically, the two remaining species of tuatara are all

that is left of a huge lineage of reptiles and, there-

fore, it can be argued that they are much more

important than an endangered species of antelope.

The section on `Wildlife in the marketplace' covers

scarcity driven by economics considering ivory,

whaling and the pet-bird trade. There is then a

switch from the problems to the solutions. First is a

discussion of the problems of captive breeding.

Some very basic genetics appear here, along with an

explanation of e�ective population sizes and mini-

mum viable populations, but these sections can be

skipped. Next comes identi®cation of nature reserve

siting with the familiar consideration of SLOSS and

diversity hotspots, then a chapter on how to manage

a reserve.

The concluding chapters are rather unusual for an

ecology book. The ®rst considers the huge and

growing impact of humans on the Earth's ecosys-

tems. This is a sensible inclusion as most books

more than 10 years old only cover human impacts

in passing between consideration of pristine ecosys-

tems. The ®nal chapter on `the wealth of nature' is a

warning to us against over-exploitation of biological

systems. I feel that it will be `preaching to the con-

verted' somewhat, although I suspect that in the

next century the inclusion of such a chapter will be

mandatory.

CALVIN DYTHAM

W.S.C. Gurney & R.M.Nisbet (1998)Ecological Dynamics.Pp. 335. Oxford University Press, New York.£29.95 (cloth), ISBN: 0-19-510443-9

This is a book in three parts: all excellent. The heart

of the book is in the middle: four chapters take the

reader from models of individuals to models of

whole ecosystems via single species populations and

interacting populations. This section presents a

coherent body of theory for ecological dynamics. It

is preceded by three chapters introducing the basic

mathematical concepts required to formulate, ana-

lyse and understand dynamic models. The last sec-

tion of the book covers two more di�cult topics:

physiological and spatial structure. Discrete and

continuous approaches are discussed throughout,

although by and large the book deals with those

situations in which stochasticity is one of the details

that can be ignored. The emphasis is on modelling

real systems with the aim of understanding how

they work. Silly claims about the generality of

results from models of nothing in particular are

absent. Instead, you get a rigorous and clear

approach which stresses the generality of the model-

ling methods and of many of the dynamic principles

presented.

I think that this is a very good book at several

levels (an irritating admission to have to make, as it

deprives me of the chance to be revenged for all

those hours spent struggling with the authors' pre-

vious volume). For a start, it presents ecological

dynamics as a subject with a coherent body of basic

theory, rather than the random selection of rather

arbitrary models that it sometimes appears. After

reading the book I really felt that I had a better

understanding of the subject than I had before. The

second outstanding feature is the set of case studies.

All but the ®rst three chapters contain several case

studies that use the ideas and models presented in

the chapter. I found all of these excellent: real biolo-

gical problems are addressed and answers obtained

using simple and carefully constructed models. The

breadth of coverage of the case studies is equally

impressive, from the growth of a sea urchin to the

dynamics of a fjord (the latter being perhaps the

best of a good bunch). Furthermore, the reader can

try out all the models presented (and more) using

software freely available from the book's web site.

The text was extensively ®eld tested on undergrad-

uate and postgraduate classes in biology and maths

departments in the US, Canada and the UK. It

shows. Most of the material is extremely clear and

admirably concise: the footnotes used early on to

`remind' students of various mathematical facts pro-

vide examples of the care taken. Similarly, the high

production standards have lead to a text almost free

of mathematical typesetting errors: an important

feature of a book some of whose audience will lack

mathematical self-con®dence. At the same time,

clarity has not been achieved by omission of challen-

ging material: a fair proportion of the subject matter

is of contemporary research interest.

1057Book Reviews

# 1999 British

Ecological Society

Journal of Animal

Ecology,

68, 1056±1059

The well thought out structure of the whole book

is mirrored at the chapter-by-chapter level: key con-

cepts are distinguished from details and chapters

build up material in a well thought out manner. As

important is the lively and interesting style (only in

the ®rst couple of sections of chapter 7 does the

approach get somewhat tedious ± but my will to live

was rapidly restored by the superb case study that

follows).

Who will ®nd this book useful? It looks like a

superb book on which to build a course on ecologi-

cal dynamic modelling (I wish I'd had it 3 years

ago), but it would also be my recommendation for

people wanting to teach themselves: not only is the

book clear and well thought out, but the freely

available modelling software enables the reader to

start producing models from chapter 1. Researchers

wanting an overview of established theory, jargon

de-mysti®ed and an introduction to structure, will

also ®nd it invaluable. In short: this is one to buy.

SIMON WOOD

Brian Maurer (1999)Untangling Ecological Complexity: TheMacroscopic Perspective.Pp. 262. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

£39.95, $50 (hardback), ISBN 0-225-51132-4.

£14.50, $18 (paperback), ISBN 0-226-51133-2.

At least we cannot be accused of arrogance. Whilst

the geneticists boast about understanding the roots

of human behaviour, and the physicists look for-

ward to a general theory of everything, community

ecologists continue to debate the widely acknowl-

edged inadequacies of our subject. One response to

the failure of many general predictive principles to

emerge from community ecology is to call for a

retreat to autecology; if each species if unique, then

progress can only come by understanding each one

in turn. The approach described by Brian Maurer in

this eclectic and stimulating book is the polar oppo-

site. Rather than limiting our horizons, we need to

expand them and embrace ecology on a macro

scale.

Maurer begins with a diagnosis of the problems

as he sees them. He revisits some well-known criti-

cisms of linear population and community analyses

based on Lotka±Volterra equations, showing how

the accuracy of any prediction based on this

approach is likely to decay rapidly with time. This

might be because communities have non-linear,

chaotic dynamics. Maurer describes some techniques

used to search for regularities in chaotic data, but

concludes that the variability found in local commu-

nities will mean that general principles will remain

elusive.

So what is the solution? Maurer proposes that the

problem of uniqueness arises simply because our

sample sizes have been too small. In the same way

that the iron laws of chemistry and physics are just

statistical regularities arising from the variable beha-

viour of billions of particles, so very large collec-

tions of organisms will show regularities that

transcend the idiosyncrasies of individual popula-

tions and species. Examples include the positive rela-

tionship between geographic range size and local

abundance of species, the log-normal distribution of

body masses within species assemblages, and di�er-

ential rates of speciation and extinction within

clades over evolutionary time. Maurer presents

quantitative models to explain these and other pat-

terns.

By calling for a new emphasis on what he

describes as the statistical approach to ecology,

Maurer has provided a valuable challenge to com-

munity ecologists to tackle the big issues. Many pro-

blems remain ± how do we infer cause from pattern,

how do we discriminate pattern from randomness

and, perhaps most crucially, how do we acquire the

big, reliable data sets that are needed? Maurer does

not give the answers, but he does point the way

towards a bold and con®dent ecology.

MARK HUXHAM

Jack F. Talling & Jacques Lemoalle (1998)Ecological Dynamics of Tropical Inland Waters.Pp. 441. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

£60´00 (hardback), ISBN 0-521-62115-1.

Given that lakes and rivers are so fundamental to

the ecology and economics of most tropical regions,

it is surprising that so few texts exist that attempt to

synthesize diverse sources of information and pro-

vide a regional or global overview. However, this

imbalance has been partially addressed in the last

couple of years by authors with a wealth of experi-

ence in tropical areas, including Le veà que (1997), a

forthcoming volume by Dudgeon and this current

work by Talling & Lemoalle. The focus of this

impressive book is very much on balance and ¯ux

and variability in parameters over time. It is orga-

nized into six major sections: Introduction;

Environmental Transfers in Space and Time;

Resource Utilization and Biological Production;

Patterns of Environmental Change with Time;

Reactive Components of Time-variability; and

Conclusions. Each of these sections is further subdi-

vided along logical lines according to the topic being

addressed. A strictly quantitative approach is main-

tained with a plethora of equations, symbols and

constants. Although necessary, these detract from

the general readability, and I was frequently refer-

1058Book Reviews

# 1999 British

Ecological Society

Journal of Animal

Ecology,

68, 1056±1059

ring to Appendix D or further back in the text for

de®nitions. However, I imagine the book is not

intended to be read from cover to cover and these

failings may be mine rather than the book's! I was

particularly impressed with the way the authors lead

the reader e�ortlessly through from ¯uxes in hydro-

logical, chemical and physical parameters to their

e�ects on primary and secondary production and,

®nally, to observed patterns of biodiversity for

example. Given their huge importance in terms of

protein provision and local economics, the sections

concerning ®sh seemed a little brief, but readers are

referred to the primary literature for further infor-

mation. Indeed, the bibliography is very thorough

and an extremely valuable resource.

I feel that the title and publisher's summary of the

book are slightly disingenuous, since the book is

overwhelmingly concerned with lakes and related

lentic water bodies. The attention given to ¯owing

waters is focused on large, low-gradient rivers and

small or high-gradient streams are generally ignored.

While this probably re¯ects a lack of studies, I

would suggest that `Tropical Inland Waters' could

be substituted by `Tropical Lakes' without comment

by readers. Similarly, geographical coverage is

biased heavily towards Africa and, to a lesser extent,

South America, while SE Asian examples are

severely under-represented. Again, this re¯ects

where work has been performed, but I know of a

large body of hydrological work performed in small

streams in Malaysia by Douglas and colleagues that

is not referred to at all. However, these are small

quibbles (and probably to be blamed on CUP rather

than the authors); overall, this book is an extremely

valuable reference work, which should be the start-

ing point for any student or ecological professionals

embarking on tropical limnological projects. One

®nal point: £60 represents a very large investment

for an individual or even ®sheries department for a

country in the South, so unfortunately I don't think

this volume will end up where it might do most

good.

KEITH M. MARTIN-SMITH

References

Le veà que, C. (1997) Biodiversity Dynamics and

Conservation. The Freshwater Fish of Tropical Africa.

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Dudgeon, D. (1999) Tropical Asian Streams: Zoobenthos

and Ecology. Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong.

Robert J. Whittaker (1998)Island Biogeography: Ecology, Evolution andConservation.Pp. 272. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

£50.00 (hardback), ISBN 0-19-850021-1

£19.99 (paperback), ISBN 0-19-850020-3.

In writing this textbook, Robert Whittaker set out

to allow students from di�erent backgrounds and

disciplines access to `.....the full array of island bio-

geographical themes and issues'. This he has

achieved admirably. The book is bang up-to-date

and covers the vast array of topics that one would

expect, given the historically pivotal role that islands

have played in the development of evolutionary and

ecological ideas. The main sections of the book

cover: Island environments; Biodiversity hotspots;

Speciation and the island condition; Arrival and

change; Models of island evolution; Species numbers

games; Community assembly and dynamics; Island

theory and conservation; and The impact of humans

on island ecosystems.

Each of these broad topics is covered in detail,

using a broad range of data and examples from a

range of disciplines. A striking feature of the book

is that where there are controversies, and there are

many in this area of study, the author does not skirt

the issue but gives a well balanced and full account

of the varying arguments and schools of view. This

is all backed up with a very large number of refer-

ences to the primary literature. The result is an

excellent, but demanding textbook, where the stu-

dent is not only presented with factual material but

also a very clear insight into how scienti®c ideas

develop and change as debate and ®eld work con-

tinues.

The book is exceptionally well written, in a clear

and enjoyable style and the author's clear enthu-

siasm for the `island condition' comes across vividly.

This must be the textbook of choice for anyone

delivering a course on island ecology and biogeogra-

phy. I shall certainly use it in my own teaching.

MARTYN GORMAN

1059Book Reviews

# 1999 British

Ecological Society

Journal of Animal

Ecology,

68, 1056±1059