"Cave Biology: Life in Darkness," by Aldemaro Romero, with photographs
by Danté Fenolio. Cambridge University Press (Ecology, Biodiversity
and Conservation Series), New York; 2009. 6 by 9 inches, 291 pp. plus
12 pp. color plates, softbound. $60.
Cave biology seems to be suddenly popular with British university
presses. This book was published almost simultaneously with Culver and
Pipan's The Biology of Caves and other Subterranean Habitats, Oxford
University Press, with the same list price of $60. Romero's book is
somewhat unusual. One nice feature is the first chapter, a lengthy and
interesting history of biospeleology and evolutionary theories. This
is followed by an unusually wide-ranging survey of cave life,
including things like the flora and fauna of sea caves, which are not
(reasonably enough) generally considered the subject of biospeleology.
The last major chapter is a survey of threats to caves and their
ecology, pretty conventional although no doubt valuable to someone who
has not already well-read on the subject.
Unfortunately, the main thrust of the middle of the book, on evolution
and ecology, seems to be to attack other work in the field as too
narrowly based. This becomes tiresome, as it consists largely of
wantonly misinterpreting things. Nobody ever claimed that the
principles that seem to govern evolution and ecology of troglobites in
Kentucky and Virginia also apply to bat caves in the tropics. When
authors write about the stability of the cave environment, they mean
from day to day and season to season, not over evolutionary or
geological time scales. Certainly cave biology looks a lot different
when one considers all the life that has ever been seen in caves.
That's why such life has traditionally been divided into troglobites
and others, with the troglobites getting the most research attention
for obvious reasons. That there are a lot of cave animals that don't
show troglomorphic traits is hardly surprising when one includes
everything. Romero does have a favorite cave-life-origin theory of his
own, that of phenotypic plasticity, although I didn't get a clear
notion of just how that relates to the genetic changes that define new
species. On first reading, it smells like Lamarckism.
The color plates in Romero's book don't add much, as they are just
color versions of photographs that appear in black and white elsewhere
in the book.
I recommend Culver and Pipan as a more main-stream survey of
biospeleology. Borrow a copy of Romero's book to read the historical
chapter.--Bill Mixon
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