Useful, informative, beautifully illustrated, and well written—a superior introduction to understanding ecosystems.
This children’s book examines a scientist’s experiment that shows the importance of a single species within an ecosystem.
In her latest science work for young readers, Quinlan (The Case of the Monkeys That Fell From the Trees, 2003, etc.), a wildlife biologist, writer, and artist, explains the important ecological research of Robert T. Paine (1933-2016). Interested in the intertidal zone ecosystem, the scientist studied Washington state tide pools and their characteristic sea life, including barnacles, mussels, sponges, algae, limpets, anemones, and more. He noticed that ochre sea stars were important predators in this system and wondered what the effect would be of removing them from their rocky shoreline habitat. An experiment to test this question led to startling results: “More than 26 species of anemones, chitons, urchins, limpets, whelks, and algae that had thrived in the lower intertidal zone no longer had space to live. They were completely crowded out by the mussels.” When the ochre sea stars were reintroduced, the ecosystem gradually recovered. The experiment proved that “keystone species,” to use Paine’s phrase, were crucial to the health of Washington’s tide pools. Scientists studying other ecosystems also identified keystone species. Their work proved that the delicate balance of an ecosystem can be affected or even destroyed by just a single species’ disappearance. The author’s beautiful full-spread illustrations capture the atmosphere, variety, and splendor of Washington’s coast along with lovely depictions of sea life and other creatures. Without getting overly technical, Quinlan explains the sometimes-complicated concepts with clarity and energy. She gives readers a chance to see how a working scientist conducts experiments, conveying a sense of exploration, curiosity, and wonder at the interconnectedness of things. This is greatly bolstered by a section that provides capsule descriptions of other keystone species around the world, such as the northern flying squirrel, the little auk, the mound-building termite, and the African elephant, and why they’re crucial. For example, mound-building termites construct “extensive underground tunnels and farm fungi that break down wood and other plant material the termites gather. These actions enrich the soil with nutrients.”
Useful, informative, beautifully illustrated, and well written—a superior introduction to understanding ecosystems.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9970077-4-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Raven Mountain Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
This is our life, these are our lighted seasons, and then we die. . . . In the meantime, in between time, we can see. . . we can work at making sense of (what) we see. . . to discover where we so incontrovertibly are. It's common sense; when you-move in, you try to learn the neighborhood." Dillard's "neighborhood" is hilly Virginia country where she lived alone, but essentially it is all those "shreds of creation" with which every human is surrounded, which she is trying to learn, to know — from finite variations to infinite possibilities of being and meaning. A tall order and Dillard doesn't quite fill it. She is too impatient to get about the soul's adventures to stay long with an egg-laying grasshopper, or other bits of flora and fauna, and her snatches from physics and biological/metaphysical studies are this side of frivolous. However, Ms. Dillard has a great deal going for her — in spite of some repetition of words and concepts, her prose is bright, fresh and occasionally emulates (not imitates) the Walden Master in a contemporary context: "Trees. . . extend impressively in both directions, . . . shearing rock and fanning air, doing their real business just out of reach." She has set herself no less a task than understanding emotionally, spiritually and intellectually the force of the creative extravagance of the universe in all its beauty and horhor ("There is a terrible innocence in the benumbed world of the lower animals, reducing life to a universal chomp.") Experience can be focused, and awareness sharpened, by a kind of meditative high. Thus this becomes somewhat exhausting reading, if taken in toto, but even if Dillard's reach exceeds her grasp, her sights are leagues higher than that of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, regretfully (re her sex), the inevitable comparison.
Pub Date: March 13, 1974
ISBN: 0061233323
Page Count: -
Publisher: Harper's Magazine Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1974
IN THE NEWS
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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