Light from Underground

book reviews books like this one will tell us, very enjoyably, that there is work to be done. I New in paperback Jeremy Gray is in the Department of Mathematics, Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK. Constructing Quarks: A Sociological Nature Wars: People Vs. Pests History of Particle Physics by Mark L. Winston More on numbers by Andrew Pickering Harvard University Press, $15.95, £9.95 What is Random? Chance and Order in University of Chicago Press, $26, £18.50 Mathematics and Life The Handicap Principle: by Edward Beltrami Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the A Missing Piece of Darwin’s Springer, $22, £15.50 Liveliest Disputes Ever Puzzle by Hal Hellman by Amotz & Avishag Zahavi Imaginary Numbers: An Anthology of Wiley, $15.95, £9.99 Oxford University Press, £11.99, $16.95 Marvelous Mathematical Stories, Diversions, Poems, and Musings Science As A Way of Knowing: Consilience: The Unity of edited by William Frucht The Foundations of Knowledge Wiley, $27.95, £22.50 Modern Biology by Edward O. Wilson by John A. Moore Abacus, £8.99, $14 Harvard University Press, $18.95, £11.95 The Woman That Never Evolved Warmth Disperses and Time Passes: by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy Light from The History of Heat Harvard University Press, $16.95, £10.50 by Hans Christian von Baeyer underground Random House, $13.95, £11.99 Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Mosaic Evolution of Subterranean Cognitive Sociology Mammals: Regression, The Gospel of Germs: Men, by Eviatar Zerubavel Progression and Global Women and the Microbe Harvard University Press, $15.95, £9.95 Convergence in Modern Life by Eviatar Nevo by Nancy Tomes Blind Watchers of the Sky Oxford University Press: 1999. 413 pp. Harvard University Press, $16.95, £10.50 by Rocky Kolb £95, $175 Oxford University Press, £8.99 Hynek Burda Making Sense of Illness: Science, Society and Disease The Anti-Depressant Era Across the globe, at least 285 of 4,629 species by Robert A. Aronowitz by David Healy of mammals, representing 11 families, spend Cambridge University Press, £11.95, $29.95 Harvard University Press, $17.95, £10.95 most of their lives in moist, dark, oxygen- poor and carbon-dioxide-rich burrows, mammals, and their importance for science, organismal, oriented by natural selection. deprived of most of the sensory cues avail- has been awoken by Eviatar Nevo of the The book is filled with information. The able above ground. These mammals have University of Haifa, Israel. His contribution reader will find not only an up-to-date become fully specialized for a unique way of to the growth of our knowledge of sub- overview of subterranean mammals and life in which foraging, mating and breeding terranean mammals has not only inspired their evolutionary problems, but also take place underground. others; he has himself co-authored at least 20 detailed information and references to gen- Although most subterranean species per cent of all published studies. eral aspects of sensory and behavioural ecol- have been known to scientists for a long time, Growing knowledge, and the landmark ogy, morphology, physiology, genetics and their biology has remained largely unstud- dates of Nevo’s major contributions (1969, immunogenetics. This is all based on Nevo’s ied. This may be explained by their cryptic 1979, 1989), seemed to predestine 1999 as a 50 years of studies and experience, and on way of life and the related problems of keep- further important year, and the time was careful, critical and thoughtful study of ing, breeding and monitoring them, and also right for his book to appear. Undoubtedly, hundreds of articles and books. The book by the fact that scientists tend to be more Nevo is the most competent person to write provides excellent texts for seminars and attracted by animals confronting environ- it. And the expected monograph, which courses. It is richly illustrated, and there are ments and problems above ground that seem went unpublished for several decades, has at more than 1,800 entries in both the index far more complex than those encountered last appeared. and the well-balanced bibliography. The below ground (sensitive vision compared The book describes and analyses the 40 book is a ‘must’ for all students of subter- with blindness, echolocation compared with million years of global evolution of sub- ranean mammals, and will be very useful to human-like hearing, long-distance naviga- terranean mammals and its implications evolutionary biologists. tion/maze orientation across tens of metres, throughout biology. Although the under- Considering the hitherto catalytic effects thermoregulation in the cold/life in a ther- ground habitat is in many respects relatively of Nevo’s work, I would like to bet that the mally buffered burrow). Although many simple, monotonous, stable and predictable, number of studies dealing with subterranean specimens of moles (insectivorous subter- it is in others very specialized and stressful. mammals will rise dramatically in the com- ranean mammals) and mole-rats (subter- Consequently, the evolution of subterranean ing years (indeed, there is great potential ranean rodents) have been deposited in mammals involves dramatic and complex for surprising discoveries), and that there museums, not even the morphology of their adaptive structural and functional changes will quickly be a need for a second edition. digging specializations has received the that are both regressive (degenerative) and No doubt, subterranean mammals will soon attention it deserves. The convergent evolu- progressive (compensatory). This mosaic be burrowing their way into the textbooks tion of subterranean mammals, one of the convergent global evolution of subterranean of the future. I most remarkable examples of convergence, mammals is an example par excellence of Hynek Burda is in the Department of General is rarely mentioned in textbooks. comparative studies in evolution at all orga- Zoology, Faculty of Biosciences (FB 9), The ‘sleeping beauty’ of subterranean nizational levels, from the molecular to the University of Essen, D-45117 Essen, Germany.