Book Reviews

Environmental change: morethan just another encyclopaedicdictionary

Matthews, J.A., Bridges, E.M., Caseldine,

C.J., Luckman, A.J., Owen, G., Perry, A.H.,

Shakesby, R.A., Walsh, R.P.D., Whittaker,

R.J. & Willis, K.J. (eds) (2001) Encyclo-

paedic dictionary of environmental change.

Arnold, London. xii + 690 pp., figs, index.

Hardback: Price £125.00. ISBN 0-340-

74109-0. Paperback (2003): Price £29.99.

ISBN 0-340-80976-0.

Some years ago, I made a vow not to write

any more encyclopaedic entries. A series of

ambitious projects to which I had contributed

showed no signs of ever reaching the publi-

cation stage (some of them never have) and

there just seemed more important things to

work on. In addition, the emergence of the

World Wide Web and of CD-ROMs seemed

to be heralding the demise of the great,

dinosaur-like paper compendia of terms and

definitions that prop up the ends of library

shelves. So when I was invited to act as one of

the editors for the Encyclopaedic dictionary

of environmental change, I did not have to

think for too long before declining the offer.

Five years later, and on the basis of the

published end product, I have to confess that

I may have made the wrong decision. This

volume, created by John Matthews, nine co-

editors and 101 contributors, is an authorit-

ative work of consistently high quality. And,

by largely keeping to tried and trusted aca-

demic contacts, the editors have managed to

bring to fruition a mammoth task in minimal

time. A total of 3450 terms are defined and

described at an average of five entries for each

of 676 pages, ranging from as few as seven

words (tuff) to over a page in length. All but

the shortest have further reading listed after

each entry, and many are illustrated by one of

the excellent array of diagrams. In addition to

the entries themselves there is an index for

other terms that are included within the book

but which do not merit �entry� status.

In terms of coverage, this dictionary is truly

encyclopaedic. It spans the whole gamut of

Earth history, but the focus is primarily at the

recent end of the geological time-scale, with

Holocene and historic changes in the natural

environment being given greatest attention.

Biogeographical and ecological topics are

well represented, but so too are elements of

other terrestrial, aquatic and atmospheric

systems. If natural science forms the heart of

the enterprise, social science also gets a look-

in, albeit more patchily: �sustainability� and

�stewardship� are there, but not �ecological

footprint� or �carbon taxes�. There is a slight

bias in terms of the choice of entries towards

British interests – e.g. �SSSIs�, �Dimlington

Stadial� – as one might expect, given that over

70% of the contributors are based in the UK.

But the bias is small, and the overall per-

spective is clearly a global one. The tight and

succinct nature of entries means that links

between them become critical. The editors

have worked hard to achieve this, but inev-

itably links cannot be perfect. �Amazonia� in

the index takes you to �colonialism� but not to

�refuge theory�; �magnitude and frequency� is

not linked to �flood magnitude-frequency�, or

vice-versa; meanwhile the �ozone� and �ozone

depletion� entries end up covering much of

the same ground. But it would be wrong to

nit-pick; the overall editorial and production

standards are admirably good.

What of the argument that encyclopaedias

may be reaching the end of their shelf life in

the electronic age anyway? I took ten entries

from this volume and trawled the Web using

a standard search engine to see what came

up. All but one topic (ergodic) produced

useful results, and for some (e.g. eutrophic-

ation) the web produced information that

was probably as useful as the entry in this

encyclopaedia. Moreover, the web is effect-

ively cost-free for most users, and has the

potential to be regularly updated. On the

contrary, the web results lacked the consis-

tently high quality and comprehensiveness of

the entries in this volume. Websites also take

the user to other websites, and very rarely to

anything approaching an annotated biblio-

graphy. If library-based resources are going

to remain as key information sources for

students, academics and the lay reader, then

encyclopaedias and web-based information

retrieval systems have to serve somewhat

different – and arguably complementary –

functions.

This is a fun book to dip into (try �pio-

sphere�, �lithalsa� or �hum�), and with a

paperback edition available at under £30,

personal copies should become a common

sight on academic bookshelves. The editors

are to be congratulated on a first-rate

achievement and an affordable work of ref-

erence, and for proving my scepticism to be at

least partly misplaced.

N E I L RO B E R T S

Department of Geography,

University of Plymouth,

Plymouth, UK

E-mail: cnroberts@plymouth.ac.uk

How to be a tree in a tropical rainforest

Turner, I.M. (2001) The ecology of trees in

the tropical rain forest. Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, UK. xi + 298 pp., figs,

line diagrams, halftones, tables, bibliography,

index of scientific names of plants, index of

scientific names of animals, general index.

Hardback: Price £55.00. ISBN 0-521-80183-4.

I enjoyed this book. It is a well-written and

up-to-date discussion of its subject, which is

accessible to both undergraduate and post-

graduate readers and may be regarded as a

recommended textbook for both levels. We

get a real feeling for what it is like to be a tree

in tropical rain forest – how differences

amongst species interact with the biotic and

abiotic environment to determine individual

success and forest composition. The text

succeeds in several ways, with a strong thread

on dynamic processes and on how species

differ. While seeking generalizations, the

author clearly enjoys the diversity to be found

amongst forests and species.

The book is loosely based around the life

cycle of trees. After a short introduction,

which includes treatment of evolution and

phylogeny, trees as functioning organisms are

explained, including topics such as wood

properties, mechanics and allometry. A sec-

tion on root and leaf function sets the basics

Journal of Biogeography, 30, 803–804

� 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

for more detailed discussion in later chapters.

�Tree performance� covers all aspects of pop-

ulation dynamics and is particularly valuable

as I know of no other book which deals so fully

and clearly with this important aspect of tree

and forest functioning. �Reproductive biology�discusses the full range of the subject, and in so

doing reveals many gaps in our knowledge and

understanding, offering many openings for

new research opportunities. In considering the

early stages in the life of tropical forest trees,

�Seeds and seedlings� considers the processes of

germination and establishment, including

discussion of seed size and some emphasis on

plant responses to light, the most common

cause of limitation in forests.

The range of subject matter treated is much

greater than this summary may suggest and

readers will find most, if not all topics men-

tioned with abundant references to further

reading. Inevitably, some areas may seem to

be under-represented. I would have liked

more on soil seed banks, on phenology and

on the effects of drought. The book has a

coherent focus on processes at a scale small

by geographers� standards, but lucidly

explains the fundamentals which ultimately

drive the differences amongst forests around

the tropics. For this reason alone, geogra-

phers should find it fascinating and revealing.

The final chapter considers how tropical

tree species may be classified into functional

groups, confirming the author’s evident fas-

cination with the differences to be found

amongst species. This is a long-standing

interest amongst tropical forest ecologists

both for practical (management) reasons and

because convergence of function in response

to environment is often strikingly at variance

with phylogeny as indicated by plant taxon-

omy. I suspect that the author intuitively feels

that there exists a natural ecological taxon-

omy waiting to be revealed which reflects

more recent (and therefore more ecologically

relevant) evolution than that described by

ancient phylogeny. He admits that our pre-

sent knowledge of the ecology of tropical

forest trees only allows a crude grouping of

species but leaves open the possibility that

further research may reveal more robust

generalizations. This would be of great value

in allowing comparisons amongst continents,

which share so few species in common, but

need not deny the fascinating diversity to be

enjoyed both amongst and within species.

M.D. S W A I N E

School of Biological Sciences,

University of Aberdeen,

Scotland, UK

E-mail: m.swaine@abdn.ac.uk

Why good biology books are rare

Lavers, C. (2001) Why elephants have big

ears. Understanding patterns of life on earth.

Phoenix (Orion Books Ltd), London.

xvi + 245 pp., illustrations, index. Paper-

back: Price £7.99. ISBN 0-575-40210-5.

Chris Lavers has written a simply marvellous

book. I have to admit that my heart sank

when I first heard the title. Why elephants

have big ears sounded far too similar to Why

big fierce animals are rare, Paul Colinvaux’s

masterly synthesis of ecological thought. But

I was persuaded that Lavers had come at life’s

big questions from a different standpoint, and

I am glad I overcame my initial resistance.

Lavers� point of departure is metabolism,

and in particular the difference between

warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals.

From that, all else flows. But, not content with

the physiology of living species, he also brings

the long view and natural humility of the

palaeontologist to bear on the big questions

he tries to answer. The result is a succession of

remarkable detective stories, each building on

the previous ones, that set out to solve some of

the mysteries of the living world.

The title question is relatively easy, of

course. Anyone who has reached A-level

biology should be able to provide a reason-

able account of the relationship between

surface area and volume and their impacts on

thermoregulation. Things then get progres-

sively more interesting and illuminating,

ending in a final chapter that, without giving

too much away, makes quite the most inter-

esting account of the current plight of biodi-

versity I have ever read.

One could leave it at that, and the criti-

cisms I have are directed more at what the

book is not. Lavers writes, in his introduction

to the bibliography, that his �fondest hope is

that children of school age will read this

book�. Some hope, though that’s their loss.

While the writing is clear and at times both

gripping and exciting, I fear it will leave most

schoolchildren, and indeed most adults,

behind. There are many reasons. One is that

Lavers barely deals with the mechanisms of

evolution, and when he does discuss evolu-

tionary change it is in the teleological short-

hand that biologists find so tempting and that

tends to leave others cold.

This is a real problem. The fact of the

matter is that most people simply do not

understand natural selection. There are all

sorts of reasons why this might be so, from

bad teaching to bad attitudes, but in the end

this book does not help them. That is a

shame, because perhaps the most important

message in Lavers� book is that we humans

really are both deeply unimportant and rather

extraordinary, and only a good grasp of

natural selection can loosen the insidious grip

of humans as the measure of all things.

Lavers does his best. The second chapter

contains a wonderful metaphor to explain the

abundance of species of different size. Com-

pressing the entire history of the Earth (or of

life on Earth) into a 24 h day is a now

hackneyed technique to convey a sense of the

vast stretches of geological time. Lavers asks

us to �imagine a road 100 km long with a

5-tonne elephant at one end, a fairy-fly

weighing 0.000001 g at the other, and

representatives of the rest of Earth’s creatures

arrayed in between in order of size�. He then

travels down the road, showing us how

sparse are the inhabitants at the elephant end

and how crowded things become nearer the

fairy-fly.

Then there is his approach to the Age of

Mammals that we are supposedly living in.

He rubbishes that one comprehensively. �We

are clearly in the Age of Fish,� he writes,

before going on to make a strong case �for

calling the Cainozoic the Age of Birds,�which, of course, �implies that we have never

really left the Age of Dinosaurs�.These are just a couple of examples of the

lively approach Lavers brings to his subject,

and I would be willing to bet that one-on-one

he could persuade almost anyone of the truth

and beauty of his ideas. But with only the

book to go on the arguments are sometimes

so dense, and the language so specialized,

that I hesitate to recommend it to the real lay

reader. An A-level biology student would

definitely benefit from reading it, and many

undergraduates could probably improve their

final grades with its help. Professional scien-

tists should try to make time for it to remind

them of what they thought they knew, and to

give them fresh insights into problems they

may never even have thought of as such. But

this is preaching to the converted. The real

mystery is why our species finds it so hard to

understand and appreciate all the other out-

comes of life’s incessant experiments, and no

book can solve that one.

JE R E M Y CH E R F A S

International Plant

Genetic Resources Institute,

Rome, Italy

E-mail: j.cherfas@cgiar.org

� 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Journal of Biogeography, 30, 803–804

804 Book Reviews