Aquatic Ecology: Scale, Pattern and Process

Ecology, March, 1996 by Gary A. Lamberti

The book contains 21 chapters written by 29 authors representing 10 countries and 4 continents. A nice balance is achieved among aquatic habitats, with the chapters being about equally divided between freshwater and marine environments. Of the freshwater chapters, five are devoted to rivers and four to lakes. For the marine papers, habitats ranging from the rocky intertidal to the deep ocean are considered. The broad coverage of this volume is impressive, although wetlands (which cover some 5 million [km.sup.2] of the earth -about double the area of lakes) are largely ignored. It is evident that the editors took a great deal of care in the production of this book. The book is very well assembled; typographical errors are quite rare, the single-column type is very readable, and the figures and tables are well executed. Most chapters end with a useful discussion or conclusion section that summarizes the major points of the argument.

The first nine chapters deal with freshwater habitats. Decamps and Tabacchi discuss patterns of vegetation in riverine riparian zones, pointing out that frequent spatio-temporal disturbance by floods in these habitats maintains patchiness and thus high biodiversity. This theme of extreme environmental heterogeneity and biotic adjustment to it is echoed by Grimm in a thorough analysis of a North American desert stream ecosystem. Hildrew and Giller develop a spatially hierarchical view of river drainages, and suggest that higher levels constrain processes at lower levels in space and time. Water is a fluid medium and the importance of hydraulics (e.g., shear, currents, circulation) to biota is emphasized for river benthos by Statzner and Borchardt, for plankton by Reynolds, and later for oceanic food webs by Denman. In a related hypothesis, Tokeshi points out that directed movement by freshwater organisms should be energetically costly and replete with risk, which contributes to the patchiness. In a very stimulating chapter, Neill explores limnetic communities and observes that much limnology has been biased by studies at limited spatial scales (small, seasonal lakes) and with coarse taxonomic resolution, an often neglected source of scaling. The utility of paleolimnology for temporal reconstruction of past events is emphasized by Anderson and Battarbee for fresh waters and by Molfino for the ocean. Ribbink examines biodiversity and speciation in African cichlid fishes, and finds unexpected differences between lake and riverine faunas. Incredibly, over 50% of the African fishes remain undescribed.

The next set of chapters (Chapters 10-19) is co