A. Dafni. 1992: Pollination Ecology: A Practical Approach. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 250 pp. £22.50. ISBN: 0‐19‐963298‐7.

Abstract

A book celebrating Bonner's many achievements cannot fail to be stimulating. "Molds, Molecules, and Metazoa" lives up to expectations ~ it is wide-ranging, challenging, and, to use Bonner's words in the introductory essay, the contributors have dared to stand "at the edge of the precipice that leads to the future". Clearly, they also look at the past, and inevitably, the past guides their perception of the future, but we begin to have glimpses of new landscapes and new opportunities in evolutionary biology. The six essays reflect Bonner's interest in different levels of biological organization , from patterns of macroevolution, through ecology, behaviour, development and cell biology to molecular biology. Bonner's introductory essay attempts to place the new insights the essays offer in the framework of a new grand synthesis. The main differences between this synthesis and the one constructed 50 years earlier are that molecular biology has become the foundation of biology, that developmental biology ~ which was not part of the earlier synthesis ~ can now play its central role in evolutionary biology and theory, and that there is a more theoretically informed focus on ecological problems. Valentine's essay, "Lessons from the history of Life", describes three major observations in paleontology, in search of evolutionary explanations. The first is the explosive radiation of metazoan body plans at the beginning of the Cambrian; the second is the way that taxa with high turnover rates which dominated the fauna were gradually replaced by taxa with low turnover rates; the third is the observation that extensive changes in the composition of benthic marine communities did not increase extinction rates. Valentine believes these observations require a neontological explanation. For example, the radiation of metazoan body plans may be considered in terms of developmental genetics, with pattern-forming genes having dramatic effects on basic bauplans. But why did these genes suddenly appear (if they did), and what circumstances allowed them to produce such dramatic phenotypic effects? Valentine challenges biologists to answer the questions paleontology poses. In the next essay, "Five properties of the environment" Graham Bell points to the need for a theory of environment which will give a more robust basis to ecological studies. He suggests five generalizations about the environment which may form the basis of such a theory, and he proposes some directions for future research which are based on these generalizations. In her stimulating essay, "Behaviour and evolution", Mary West-Eberhard examines the role of the environment in shaping behaviours and morphologies. She 763