Consider inviting Tatiana to your next dinner party—most assuredly there’ll never be a dull moment.
In the guise of an advice-to-the-lovelorn column, evolutionary biologist Judson masterfully conveys astonishing facts and figures about the sex lives of many, many creatures great and small.
“Dear Dr. Tatiana, I’m a queen bee, and I’m worried. All my lovers leave their genitals inside me and then drop dead. Is this normal? Perplexed in Cloverhill.” From openers like this, Tatiana provides reassurance along with a biological/natural selection rationale. “For your lovers, this is the way the world ends—with a bang, not a whimper,” she jokes, then explains that by plugging up the queen, the drone hopes to prevent her from coupling with another. And so it goes as Judson surveys the plant/animal/fungal kingdoms’ repertoire of sexual practices. They defy easy summary, so her chapters cluster in three parts: “Let Slip the Whores of War!” (long sex acts, the problems of sperm-making, lots and lots of philandering); “The Evolution of Depravity” (rape, necrophilia, the cannibalism of lady manti and spiders); and “Are Men Necessary? Usually, But Not Always,” which concludes with a chapter about Philodena roseola, a half-millimeter-long creature that has been reproducing asexually for 85 million years. This flouts the usual theories that eukaryotes (creatures with their genes enclosed in a cell nucleus) need gene recombination (meiosis) and the mixing up of genes that results when two parents have sex to avoid lethal mutations and fatal infections. Miss Philodena explains that her line has escaped extinction by periodically going dormant and blowing away, thus making a new life in a new environment. The tour-de-force backdrop for this chapter parodies the Jerry Springer TV show. You might think that all this whimsy would pall or seem heavy-handed. It doesn’t. Judson brings it off with great style and wit, laced with the authority of a research evolutionary biologist at Imperial College in London.
Consider inviting Tatiana to your next dinner party—most assuredly there’ll never be a dull moment.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2002
ISBN: 0-8050-6331-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
An authoritative, engaging study of plant life, accessible to younger readers as well as adults.
A neurobiologist reveals the interconnectedness of the natural world through stories of plant migration.
In this slim but well-packed book, Mancuso (Plant Science/Univ. of Florence; The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior, 2018, etc.) presents an illuminating and surprisingly lively study of plant life. He smoothly balances expansive historical exploration with recent scientific research through stories of how various plant species are capable of migrating to locations throughout the world by means of air, water, and even via animals. They often continue to thrive in spite of dire obstacles and environments. One example is the response of plants following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Three decades later, the abandoned “Exclusion Zone” is now entirely covered by an enormous assortment of thriving plants. Mancuso also tracks the journeys of several species that might be regarded as invasive. “Why…do we insist on labeling as ‘invasive’ all those plants that, with great success, have managed to occupy new territories?” asks the author. “On a closer look, the invasive plants of today are the native flora of the future, just as the invasive species of the past are a fundamental part of our ecosystem today.” Throughout, Mancuso persuasively articulates why an understanding and appreciation of how nature is interconnected is vital to the future of our planet. “In nature everything is connected,” he writes. “This simple law that humans don’t seem to understand has a corollary: the extinction of a species, besides being a calamity in and of itself, has unforeseeable consequences for the system to which the species belongs.” The book is not without flaws. The loosely imagined watercolor renderings are vague and fail to effectively complement Mancuso’s richly descriptive prose or satisfy readers’ curiosity. Even without actual photos and maps, it would have been beneficial to readers to include more finely detailed plant and map renderings.
An authoritative, engaging study of plant life, accessible to younger readers as well as adults.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63542-991-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!
It should come as no surprise that the gifted author of The Sea Around Usand its successors can take another branch of science—that phase of biology indicated by the term ecology—and bring it so sharply into focus that any intelligent layman can understand what she is talking about.
Understand, yes, and shudder, for she has drawn a living portrait of what is happening to this balance nature has decreed in the science of life—and what man is doing (and has done) to destroy it and create a science of death. Death to our birds, to fish, to wild creatures of the woods—and, to a degree as yet undetermined, to man himself. World War II hastened the program by releasing lethal chemicals for destruction of insects that threatened man’s health and comfort, vegetation that needed quick disposal. The war against insects had been under way before, but the methods were relatively harmless to other than the insects under attack; the products non-chemical, sometimes even introduction of other insects, enemies of the ones under attack. But with chemicals—increasingly stronger, more potent, more varied, more dangerous—new chain reactions have set in. And ironically, the insects are winning the war, setting up immunities, and re-emerging, their natural enemies destroyed. The peril does not stop here. Waters, even to the underground water tables, are contaminated; soils are poisoned. The birds consume the poisons in their insect and earthworm diet; the cattle, in their fodder; the fish, in the waters and the food those waters provide. And humans? They drink the milk, eat the vegetables, the fish, the poultry. There is enough evidence to point to the far-reaching effects; but this is only the beginning,—in cancer, in liver disorders, in radiation perils…This is the horrifying story. It needed to be told—and by a scientist with a rare gift of communication and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Already the articles taken from the book for publication in The New Yorkerare being widely discussed. Book-of-the-Month distribution in October will spread the message yet more widely.
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1962
ISBN: 061825305X
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1962
APPRECIATIONS
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