book reviews think that’s a false dichotomy.” She quotes, ating input from new methodologies, this is as this there is much to take issue with. In my but seems far less at home with, Sarah Hrdy’s heroism. Since the author took 10 years over own areas of special interest I found almost flat statement: “I did not come into science the job, he must have been daunted by how more to question and argue with than to and primatology because of a love for non- much the ground changed beneath his feet as agree with; and Tudge inevitably can only human primates. I was first attracted to prob- he progressed. When the world around you afford space for a thin overview of the real lems and to things I wanted to understand … is bursting with new kinds of information issues that excite us today. Indeed, for animal There is really no one way of doing science … that are just beginning to shed fresh light on phylogeny, the book only sparsely applies we need people to stress theory as much as a key question, it is a brave man who decides the information that is now emerging observation.” One of Jahme’s subjects, read- to write about the answer! So why has Colin from ‘evolutionary developmental biology’ ing the section about herself, murmured: Tudge done it? (which is revealing underlying similarities “Oh dear. This is half right and all wrong.” To Tudge’s answer is twofold: to help put tax- between diverse species in the structure of me that sums up the book, including some onomy back at the centre of biology (and the genes that control pattern formation and amazing scientific slip-ups. biodiversity) teaching, and to point out that organ and body shape); its implications pass A chapter I did like treats apes in the media. nature is wonderfully varied. He aims to largely unnoticed. Jiggs, the chimp that played Cheeta in the help professionals knowledgeable about one The author sensibly gets his retaliation in Tarzanfilms, actually loathed women, includ- kingdom to find out about the others, and to first by telling us that he knows he will be ing “Jane”, whom he apparently cosies up to help amateurs find their way around all the criticized for falling between two stools — on the book’s cover. (The dislike was mutual.) kingdoms (especially the animal kingdom, but he does, and it was inevitable that he More telling is an incident when three televi- and it would help — as always — if they are would. Despite that, this is a lovely and sion crews simultaneously followed Birute particularly keen on vertebrates!). accessible book, fun to dip into and fun to Galdikas through the forest, filming over The first four chapters do a great job of disagree with. It will be hugely valuable as a each others’ shoulders. The Japanese director acquainting non-biologists with the nature source-book for student libraries, and high- insisted that Galdikas share a cup of sugary tea and history of taxonomy and the impacts of ly informative for any enthusiastic (and with a rehabitant orang-utan. Jahme and her cladistic and molecular analyses; they should patient!) lay naturalist curious about the life own crew winced, knowing how their British be widely read (although many will dispute around them and the fossils beneath them. audience idealizes “apes in the wild”. Galdikas Tudge’s emphases). Thereafter, however, There is also a fund of diverting notes on the humoured the Japanese. Her priority was to non-biologists may find themselves over- more curious of surviving and defunct living do whatever she could to influence a country whelmed by detail. things. whose loggers were felling Bornean rain- Professionals will probably pass over But I wish the book were either a bit forest. People are willing to sell their image these first chapters and go for the detail, and longer and more colourfully illustrated, or when it gives the research and the animals they probably will go for it — in a field such rather shorter, so that it would be able to themselves more chance of survival. That same dilemma appears in detail in Goodall’s letters, with the nuances that inevitably escape Jahme’s summary. You can read Africa in my Blood as a key document in the relation of human and animal, and of science and the demands of fame. Alterna- tively, just read it for fun. I Alison Jolly is in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544-1003, USA.

The spice of life The Variety of Life: A Survey and a Celebration of All the Creatures Snakes in the grass That Have Ever Lived by Colin Tudge ... and elsewhere Oxford University Press: 2000. 684 pp. £35, $49.95 The feathered bush viper shown above is to Pat Willmer be found in the trees of equatorial Africa, whereas the coral cobra on the left inhabits the There is never a good time to write a book, rocky outcrops of southern Africa’s dry especially one that addresses issues currently valley plains. The lifestyles, diversity, exercising the ingenuity and the advancing evolution and biogeography of these and technology of biologists. This volume sets many other variants of the predatory limbless out to give us an overview of all living lizard are addressed in Snakes: The Evolution organisms and how they are related, and of Mystery in Nature by Harry W. Greene, then doubles the difficulty of the task by with photographs by Michael and Patricia including all the known extinct life-forms Fogden (University of California Press, as well. At the turn of a century that has $29.95, £18.95; pbk). seen this field become the focus of an acceler- © 2000 Macmillan Magazines Ltd 346 NATURE | VOL 406 | 27 JULY 2000 | www.nature.com book reviews compete better in a difficult market-place. It deserves success for its heroic ambition. I A case of Pat Willmer is in the Bute Building, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews beetlephilia KY16 9TS, UK. Mating melolonthine scarabs (right) and an atlas beetle. From An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles by Arthur V. Evans and Charles Tangled strands in L. Bellamy, with photographs by Lisa Charles the double helix Watson (University of It Ain’t Necessarily So: The Dream California Press, of the Human Genome and $24.95, £15.95; pbk). Other Confusions by Richard Lewontin New York Review of Books/Granta: 2000. 330 pp. $24.95/£14.99 The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment by Richard Lewontin Harvard University Press: 2000. 144 pp. $22.95, £14.50 Mark Ridley also describes complica- on his own area of special tions caused by limited expertise. “Before the mid- Richard Lewontin is well known for his genetic variation, multiple peaks (one or two 1960s, experimental evolu- many positive contributions to evolutionary horns on a rhino) and epistatic fitnesses (in tionary genetics included a wide diversity of genetics, particularly the use of gel electro- the Australian grasshopper Moraba). questions,” he says, going on to list them. phoresis to measure genetic variation. He is These points, as Lewontin says, are well One of these questions was answered by gel also well known for his negative criticisms of known to biologists. “But this in-principle electrophoresis. “The result was an aban- certain genetic (or apparently genetic) ideas knowledge cannot become folded into the donment of the research in almost all aspects about humans, and of the ‘reductionist’ bio- structure of biological explanation unless it of evolutionary genetics other than the char- logical thinking that he believes underlies can be incorporated into the actual work of acterization of genetic diversity. A single, those ideas. biologists,” he adds. easily acquired technique changed and pau- These two books are mainly in the sec- This is the point at which the real con- perized, temporarily it is to be hoped, an ond, critical mode. It Ain’t Necessarily So is troversy begins. In the case of adaptation, entire field of study.” a collection of nine pieces from The New biologists have made more progress than His writing is consistently elegant and York Review of Books, together with short Lewontin recognizes. Organisms do indeed readable, frequently funny, and abounding updating epilogues; they are mainly influence, and in a sense partially construct, with provocative remarks. He can be a fero- about humans. The Triple Helix is more their environments. But methods exist cious polemicist, and an effective (if some- abstract. It is based on three lectures that to understand the situation, at least for times slippery) debater — I’d trust him were published in Italian in 1998; Lewontin frequency-dependent selection. In social always to say something interesting, but not has added a fourth chapter on “New direc- behaviour, the fitness of an organism always to be fair to an opponent. One of his tions in biology” for the English edition. The depends on what other organisms are doing; pet hates seems to be a remark made by Triple Helix is written more for biologists, each organism’s behaviour influences its Richard Dawkins [in The Selfish Gene] that although it assumes little technical knowl- social environment. The sex ratio is another the genes have “created us, body and mind”. edge: it is the material, rather than the level (non-behavioural) well-analysed case. The New York Review readers should have got the of treatment, that will (I suspect) mainly organisms and their social environment point, because Lewontin quotes it in four of confine it to biological readers. “coevolve”, as Lewontin says. the nine reprinted reviews. What he does not The Triple Helix looks at two big biologi- But what he does not say is that game tell them is that the word “created” has an cal questions: development and adaptation. theory allows us to model what will happen. evolutionary, not a developmental, sense and On development, Lewontin takes as text Syd- Lewontin takes a negative view of what he does not illustrate the “genetic determinism” ney Brenner’s remark that, if he had the com- calls “the metaphor of adaptation”, saying (or, more accurately, genetic fatalism) that plete sequence of DNA of an organism and a that it “is now an impediment to a real Lewontin is mainly concerned to criticize. large enough computer, he could compute understanding of the evolutionary process The publisher George Weidenfeld once the organism. Lewontin describes this as and needs to be replaced”. But there are received a phone call from Thomas Wilson, “bad biology”, because of the influence of the strands, such as game theory, within head of Harvard University Press, saying, environment and random factors in devel- existing research that should contribute to “I’ve got something important for you. opment. On adaptation, he criticizes the idea the constructionist research programme he Please don’t ask any questions, just come that the external environment poses prob- foresees. over.” “Next morning,” Weidenfeld says, “I lems to which the organisms evolve solu- Even for readers who do not agree with flew to Boston and called on Wilson. He tions. This, too, is “bad biology” because the Lewontin, there is much of value in both closed the door and said in an emphatic stage organism influences its environment too, books. He is superb at conceptually charac- whisper: ‘the syndics of Harvard Press have through behavioural choices as well as by terizing large research programmes in seen fit to reject a manuscript of epochal actively modifying it. He suggests that a biology, and putting them in their historical importance’.” It was The Double Helix. J. D. better metaphor would be to say that the context. In the penultimate paragraph of Watson (“the great panjandrum of DNA”) organism constructs its environment. He The Triple Helix, for instance, he comments predictably gets the sharp end of Lewontin’s © 2000 Macmillan Magazines Ltd NATURE | VOL 406 | 27 JULY 2000 | www.nature.com 347