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biology: it remains to be established how interpretations of these concepts differ; andimpinge on conservation. Another, perhaps of greater concern, is the lack of alter-natives to pervasive paradigms of sustainable development. All told, the foundationsand goals of conservation biology (and its historical development) awaits elucida-tion by critical philosophers. Such a mature and rigorous refinement will underpinobjective knowledge and conservation of organismal biodiversity (what about themicrobiosphere?) whilst maintaining biospheric integrity. Time is of the essence.

References

Dawkins R (1998) Postmodernism disrobed. Nature 394: 141–143Dunbar R (1995) The Trouble with Science. Faber and Faber, LondonHaack S (1995) Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology. Blackwell Science,

OxfordWilson EO (1998) Consilience: The Unity of Scientific Knowledge. Knopf, New York

F.P.D. CotterillBiodiversity Foundation for Africa, P.O. Box FM730, Famona, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe(address for correspondence) andPrincipal Curator, Department of Mammalogy,Natural History Museum, P.O. Box 240, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth

Lynne Margulis and Karlene Schwartz, W.H. Freeman, New York, 1998, UK£25.95,519 pp, ISBN 0-7167-3027-8 (paperback)

It is difficult to know where to begin with a review of the third edition of such a well-known book. In a nutshell, this version comes 11 years after the second edition and issubstantially fatter (520 compared with 370 pages). If you found the second editionuseful, you will need a copy of the third.

But is it a useful updating and does it fairly sumarise the current understandingof systematics? It goes without saying that no volume of this size can do more thanintroduce the huge diversity of the living world and it is intended as a primer for‘students of biology’. Interestingly this edition highlights the need to understand andrecognize the diversity of life in response to a need identified by NASA scientists tobe better able to search for extraterrestrial life. Hmmm.

The continued use of Whittacker’s 5-Kingdom system is supported in the fore-word by Stephen Jay Gould, who argues that notwithstanding the now widely re-cognized molecular diversity of the prokaryotes and the molecular similarity of themacroscopic organisms, a system which allows us to name more of the warm-and-cuddlies is intrinsically more useful and more memorable. The problem which Gould

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highlights is very real and is a major stumbling block to those who have to teach thebiology of these groups which probably demands of a biology student a greater vocab-lary of latinised words than your average classics student. None the less, knowledgeadvances and the structure that Margulis and Schwartz support here panders to thatprejudice. I can see no rational reason to lump the Archaea and the Bacteria into oneunit and it impedes comprehension to say that they are one unit on a par, in diversityterms, with the plants. Phylogenetically, the 5-Kingdom system is under active debateas a result of the rapidly accumulating molecular data which have allowed for thefirst time rational intra-phylum comparison. It is not a stable field yet and we are stilltrying to identify the largest scale of grouping which is both sensible and convenient.Some of this debate comes over in the introduction, but being pitched at student levelis inevitably somewhat oversimplified.

The new edition lays down definitions of the Kingdoms themselves and the in-troduction sections are also greatly expanded. This is a very useful addition whichshould, I would like to think, stimulate debate about where the demarkation linesshould be drawn.

Dave RobertsThe Natural History Museum, Department of Zoology, Cromwell Road, London SW75BD, UK

Biodiversity: An Introduction

Kevin J. Gaston and John I. Spicer, Blackwell Science, Oxford, 1998, UK£9.95,113 pp, ISBN 0-632-04953-7

From the outside this volume appears a little thin for a book with its title. With ‘Biod-iversity: An Introduction’, however, the authors aimed to produce a short, simpleintroductory text to the topic of biodiversity, a task I think they have performedadmirably, even if the result is (perhaps unavoidably) a little superficial at times.

The book is essentially a summary of recent scientific attempts to quantify anddescribe biodiversity. There are chapters covering what biodiversity is, changes inbiodiversity through time, where it occurs and why it is important. The last chapteron maintaining biodiversity deals almost entirely with the Convention on BiologicalDiversity. I think a little more depth and breadth to this section would have been wellworth the extra pages, it does however provide a very accessible summary of import-ant parts of the Convention and some of its strengths and short comings. Suggestedlearning exercises, designed to stimulate debate on some of the more controversialissues, are dotted throughout the text. A major strength of this book is as an introduc-tion to the primary literature on the topic. There are also very useful ‘further reading’lists, with helpful comments by the authors, and even web sites.