Texts like this have had years of student, teacher, and reviewer feedback
incorporated into them. It is hard to see how they could be any better.
The first edition of Biological Science was somewhat revolutionary in its
day because it emphasised the unity of much of biology, stressing the similarities
between microorganisms, animals and plants rather than the differences between
them. Today we take the unity for granted, from the cell and molecular level
through to the interactions of different groups at the ecosystem level.
This new edition is full of wonderfully clear diagrams that summarise and
reinforce points made in the text, and at the end of each chapter there
are study questions, review concepts and further reading. The book is published
either as a muscle-wrenching single volume of more than 1200 pages, or more
conveniently as two separate volumes.

A new development is that there are disc-based supplements accompanying
the book, for Apple Mac or DOS 386 computers. They consist of ‘stacks’ of
‘cards’ that review each chapter, with sets of multiple choice questions,
and responses that explain why answers are either right or wrong. The supplement
loaded into my system very easily, was straightforward to use, and I can
see that it will be useful for students. The introduction to the book refers
to it as a ‘novel interactive learning aid’. Once upon a time the interactive
learning aid would have been a teacher, but we live in changed times.

Another textbook that appears this year as a new edition, in this case
the second, is The Invertebrates: A New Synthesis by R. S. K. Barnes, P.
Calow, and P. J. W. Olive. In the past 20 years, the amount of time devoted
to the systematic review of the range and diversity of various groups of
animals in most university biology and zoology departments has declined
dramatically. This is probably more true of invertebrates than the more
familiar vertebrates. Textbooks on invertebrates traditionally adopt one
of two approaches: either a systematic treatment that covers them phylum
by phylum, or a comparative functional approach that takes a system at a
time, such as respiration or locomotion, and discusses it group by group.

In The Invertebrates the authors have combined these two approaches
beautifully. Because time is short in most invertebrate courses, teachers
often have to hope that students will be tempted to read more for themselves
to fill in the inevitable gaps. If this book, with its exceptionally clear
diagrams, does not do that, I cannot imagine what will. I especially like
the first part, which deals with evolutionary history and phylogeny. We
tend to teach evolution using vertebrate examples because it is easier
to explain the transitions from fish to amphibia, from reptiles to birds
and mammals and so on.

When it comes to the invertebrates the position is much less clear cut.
There are many gaps in our knowledge and so often the evolutionary relationships
between the phyla are neglected. It is also a difficult area of zoology
because many of the key organisms are unfamiliar ones, but in this book
the subject is dealt with very clearly. It is a bold step to put it at the
beginning, because there are many unfamiliar terms and concepts not covered
until later in the book, but I think it works, not least because it gives
the subject the importance that it deserves. This book ought to become
the standard text for invertebrate courses.

One subject, to me anyway, that does not seem well served by basic texts
is marine biology. I do not know of a book that brings together all the
things that I think should be there. The closest to it for me, again published
this year as a new edition, is the third edition of Marine Biology: An Ecological
Approach by James W. Nybakken. As the title suggests, it is a strongly ecological
treatment of the subject and my own ideal text would include more on exploitation,
on fisheries, on the historical exploitation of marine mammals, on aquaculture,
and on environmental problems, but this is not meant as a criticism of Nybakken’s
text. It is a complete and self-contained book, and the introductory chapters
are strong on basic ecological principles, especially on the differences
between marine and terrestrial ecosystems. It is an American book and inevitably
many examples, particularly of intertidal ecology, are from the American
Atlantic and Pacific coasts, but in this edition Nybakken includes more
material from elsewhere, and many topics, plankton biology and deep sea
biology, for example, are global in their scope. Nybakken is also good at
pointing out areas where there are unsolved problems in marine biology and
where disagreements exist among scientists about the way systems work.

If the past year or two have not seen many new biology textbooks then
there has been no shortage of the kind of books that I hope students will
read for interest’s sake; the kind of book that I would like to put on a
summer vacation reading list. I have shelves full of books about the state
of the world’s environment and many recent ones look very similar, but Earth
in the Balance is different, not so much for what it says but for who wrote
it – Al Gore, then a US senator, now Vice-President. He writes as a politician
with a good understanding of the range and complexity of the environmental
issues facing the human race, and if there are any British politicians with
the same understanding they are doing a pretty good job of keeping it to
themselves. There is not a great deal of hard science in Gore’s book, but
it is notable for his ‘Global Marshall Plan’, an account of what needs to
be done to save our environment.

State of the World 1993 from the Worldwatch Institute is up to the same
high standard as all the others – a series of reviews that combine environmental
science with economics and politics in a truly interdisciplinary way. Although
not specifically a biology book it is something that all biology students,
even all science students, should dip into, especially the first contribution
by Lester Brown that describes the costs of environmental degradation in
economic terms and the pressing need to develop environmentally sustainable
economics.

For many biology students courses in conservation are biased very much
towards ecology and the biology of endangered species. There’s obviously
more to saving species than that and this is well described in The Last
Panda by George B. Schaller. The book vividly portrays the trials and tribulations
of field work in a difficult area. What sets it apart from other books on
conservation is that it shows that, in addition to accumulating data on
the animals, we have to come to terms with the complex mixture of science,
greed, indifference, and cultural differences that have to be tackled if
animals like the panda are to be saved.

Finally, there is another series of essays from Stephen Jay Gould, Eight
Little Piggies. Gould, for the first time, writes about environmental issues
and contemporary extinctions. The world is not going to fall apart because
a small east coast American limpet is no longer with us, but Gould manages
to write about it in a way that makes it matter.

Robert Ralph is a senior lecturer in the department of zoology at the
University of Aberdeen.

* * *

Biological Sciences by William T. Keeton, James L. Gould and Carol Grant
Gould, W. W. Norton, pp 1194, £23

The Invertebrates: A New Synthesis (second edition) by R. S. K. Barnes,
P. Calow and P. J. W. Olive, Blackwell Scientific, pp 488, £19.95

Marine Biology: An Ecological Approach (third edition) by James W. Nybakken,
Harper Collins, pp 462, £19.95

Earth in Balance by Al Gore, Earthscan, pp 407, £14.95 State
of the World 1993 edited by Lester R. Brown, Earthscan, pp 268, £9.95

The Last Panda by George B. Schaller, University of Chicago, pp 291,
£19.95

Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen J. Gould,
Jonathan Cape, pp 479, £18.99

How do you draw on the separate efforts of invertebrate palaeontologists,
genetic engineers, fish microevolutionists, taxonomists of the liverwort,
sea-anemone experts, muscle physiologists and the works of other kinds of
biologists, to try and present the subject in an integrated way?

Despite the hugeness of the task there are authors and publishers, almost
always American, prepared to attempt the one-textbook approach. Making comparisons
between such big books is difficult but Biology: Concepts and Applications
by Cecie Starr is one of the best I have seen. It is about as comprehensive
as a single-volume text could be, and is written in a beautifully clear
style. For me, the outstanding feature of the book is the quality of the
diagrams and illustrations and the careful way in which they have been integrated
with the text. I cannot remember seeing an introductory text where colour
in diagrams has been used so effectively. Some of the colour photographs
are spectacular.

I suspect most biology teachers and lecturers are reluctant to try to
enthuse students with just how beautiful some aspects of the subject are,
in case it seems somehow nonscientific. But the beauty comes through in
this book in almost every section, whether it is in looking at a fluorescent
micrograph of sperm around an egg, the details of a scale from a fossil
fish or the patterns of a lichen community on a piece of marble.

Genetics students are well served by the eighth edition of Principles
of Genetics by Eldon John Gardner, Michael J. Simmons and D. Peter Snustad.
Coming in at nearly 650 pages, it has expanded considerably compared with
previous editions, reflecting the growth in the subject in recent years.
It retains a balanced coverage of classical, molecular and population genetics,
and is written in a way that conveys the excitement of a rapidly growing
field.

Although a book of this length will probably be bought only by students
taking specialised genetics courses there are two chapters, the first and
the last, which should be required reading for everybody. The first chapter
is an account of the role of genetics in the modern world, in agriculture,
in health and medicine, in politics and law, and in the threatened loss
of genetic diversity, especially in the destruction of the tropical forests.
The final chapter describes where we are in genetic engineering and where
we might be a few years from now.

From genetics it is a natural step to Developmental Biology by Scott
F. Gilbert. This is the third edition of the book since 1985 and reflects
the exciting advances in the field. Developmental biology has an important
role in bringing the evolutionary, organismal and molecular approaches to
biology. Gilbert does this very well. It is big, with 23 chapters and nearly
900 pages.

A difficulty for authors and teachers alike faced with such a wealth
of material is how to stimulate students to think as well as learn. Gilbert
obviously appreciates this problem and there is one small, but significant,
feature in the book that goes a long way towards tackling it. Two or three
carefully chosen, thought-provoking epigraphs begin each chapter, ranging
from the Psalms and Virgil to T. S. Eliot and Salman Rushdie. I found myself
skipping through the chapters to read them all after coming across the first
ones. Most could stand on their own as the basis of a review essay or a
tutorial and they would make a good start for a scientific dictionary of
quotations. I hope they get read and thought about with the same care with
which they have been chosen.

Considering they are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, primates
and their evolution seem to receive little attention in most biology courses.
If any encouragement is needed to rectify this then it comes in the shape
of three new books on the subject. The first, by R. D. Martin, Primate Origins
and Evolution, has been 20 years in the writing and is a splendid book.
Sadly, the price will probably restrict the book to library shelves.

In a brief review it is impossible to do the book justice, but there
is so much more in it than is suggested by the title. For example, it covers
on the classification of mammals, the fossil record of mammalian origins,
continental drift and evolution, the problems involved in phylogenetic reconstructions,
the allometry of body size and genetic evolution. I hope the book is used
by students interested in mammals and evolutionary biology generally. We
must encourage students all the time to dip into books with unlikely sounding
titles, although I suspect most of us have given up doing it ourselves.

Primate Evolution by Glenn C. Conroy does not attempt to be as wide-ranging
as Martin’s book and the emphasis, nearly half the book, is on the evolution,
phylogeny and classification of hominoids. In tackling this, Conroy links
the fragmented anatomical record with behavioural and cultural trends in
a very readable way, while in An Introduction to Human Evolutionary Anatomy,
Leslie Aiello and Christopher Dean combine their skills in anthropology
and anatomy to provide a fascinating account of the subject, another example
of a book that contains much more than the title suggests.

An approach that I find rewarding in teaching is to concentrate on a
small group of animals, familiar to students, using particular features
of this biology to explore wider areas such as taxonomy, evolution, ecology,
energetics, social and reproductive biology. My own favourite animals for
this are the great whales, but I’m tempted to switch to penguins after reading
Penguin Biology edited by Lloyd S. Davis and John T. Darby.

The book is a selection of papers presented at a recent conference on
penguins, that have been skilfully edited together to make a very readable
account of the biology of these extraordinary birds. In the past 10 years,
the development of transmitters has meant that we have learned much more
about penguin behaviour at sea, and because of the continuity of field research
at Antarctic bases long-term studies of penguin population biology have
been possible.

The book brings together such diverse topics as palaeontology, behaviour,
physiological circa-dian rhythms, and diving physiology in a way that should
encourage students to think about biology as a science to be integrated
rather than subdivided. The introductory chapter by Bernard Stonehouse is
a particularly interesting one on the historical development of penguin
research. By describing the personalities of the people involved, he brings
life and interest to the subject in a way that we often neglect.

It’s my experience that biology students always have difficulties with
statistics. I suspect this may be because the subject is often taught, and
the textbooks written, by statisticians rather than statistically minded
biologists. An exception to this is Quantitative Ecology and Marine Biology
by Gerald J. Backus. It has all the statistical techniques ecology students
need, explained in an accessible way. Backus makes full use of nearly 30
years’ experience as a field biologist to relate the techniques to real
examples from marine biology.

Finally, in these depressing times of habitat destruction and impending
extinctions, every student should at least be aware of and, maybe, will
occasionally browse through the IUCN Red Data Books. Given the widespread
interest in cetaceans, the latest in the series, Dolphins, Porpoises and
Whales of the World compiled by Margaret Klinowska is a timely addition
to the series.

Obviously this account of cetaceans is a book to be consulted rather
than read at length, but Red Data Books are becoming much more than just
detailed accounts of conservation status. There is information on the general
ecology of individual species, backed up by excellent references, that should
make this book the starting point of many student essays for a long time
to come.

Robert Ralph lectures in the Department of Zoology, University of Aberdeen.

* * *

Biology: Concepts and Applications by Cecie Starr, Wadsworth/Chapman
& Hall, pp 600, £15.95 pbk

Principles of Genetics (8th edition) by E. J. Gardner, M. J. Simmons
and D. P. Snustad, John Wiley & Sons, pp 649, £21.50 pbk

Developmental Biology (3rd edition), by Scott F. Gilbert, Sinauer Associates/W.
H. Freeman, pp 891, £29.95

Primate Origins and Evolution by R. D. Martin, Chapman and Hall, pp
804, £89

Primate Evolution by Glenn C. Conroy, W. W. Norton, pp 492, £15.95
pbk

An Introduction to Human Evolutionary Anatomy by Leslie Aiello and Christopher
Dean, Academic Press, pp 596, £25.50 pbk

Penguin Biology by Lloyd S. Davis and John T. Darby, Academic Press,
pp 467, £56.50

Quantitative Ecology and Marine Biology by Gerald J. Backus, A. A. Balkema,
pp 157, £17.50. Uitgevers, Postbus 1675, NL-3000 BR Rotterdam, The
Netherlands, Tel: (+31.10) 4145822, Fax: (+31.10) 4135947

Dolphins, Porpoises and Whales of the World compiled by M. Klinowska,
IUCN/Pinter Publishers, pp 429, £30