Integrative and Comparative Biology Advance Access originally published online on December 1, 2007
Integrative and Comparative Biology 2008 48(1):153; doi:10.1093/icb/icm103
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This article appears in the following Integrative and Comparitive Biology issue: Aeroecology: Probing and Modeling the Aerosphere–The Next Frontier [View the issue table of contents]
Book Review |
Flow Phenomena in Nature, Volumes 1 and 2. R. Liebe, editor.
Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology
Museum of Comparative Zoology
Harvard University
26 Oxford St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Correspondence: E-mail: Glauder{at}oeb.harvard.edu
Flow Phenomena in Nature, Volumes 1 and 2. R. Liebe, editor.
Southampton and Boston: WIT Press, 2006. 766 pp. ISBN 1-84564-001-2 (cloth), $423 for both volumes.
The topic of this two-volume set on flow phenomena in nature is of considerable interest to many members of SICB. The volumes are timely, and cover a diversity of topics relevant to the research of many SICB members—basic fluid mechanics, flight of birds and insects, aquatic locomotion, scaling of locomotor dynamics, vortex production, biomimetic vehicles of various kinds, and experimental methods for studying flow phenomena. These books recall, in topic at least, the highly influential two volumes entitled "Swimming and Flying in Nature" edited by Wu, Brokaw, and Brennen, published in 1975.
Unfortunately, the present books fall far short of that seminal 1975 work, which stimulated an enormous amount of research and was a timely and modern synthesis with authors at the leading edge of their fields. The present set has, unfortunately, little to recommend it, and at a cost of $423 for the two volumes one might have expected, at the very least, decent typesetting, and high-quality production values. I certainly did not anticipate poorly produced books that seem to have been typeset in Microsoft Word, with highly pixilated graphics (several of which are barely legible), a complete lack of color figures (the reader is referred to a website to see color renditions of several of the figures), and numerous out-of-date chapters that ignore much of the progress in biological fluid dynamics over the last 15 years. Many figures lack scales and axis labels, a basic scientific necessity for clear communication, making it difficult to evaluate the point of the author. Captions to many figures are so brief as to be uninformative. Editorial control over both content and presentation seems to have been minimal. Indeed, far from presenting "... the latest results from fluid dynamics ..." as is promised in the Preface, most chapters are either embarrassingly out of date, or seem to have been largely recycled from previous reviews of the authors, some published many years ago.
The few more modern treatments include interesting chapters by G. K. Taylor on flight stability, analyses of bird flight aerodynamics by A. Hedenstrom, an experimental and computational analysis of fanning in bees by M. Junge, and an overview focusing on biological aquatic propulsors by F. Fish, but many chapters in both volumes are remarkably out of touch with current work, and it is impossible to recommend these books to interested students.
The best course of action for those interested in the topic of flow phenomena in nature would be to save their time and the $423 cost of the set, and go to the library or log onto the web sites of the Journal of Experimental Biology and Integrative and Comparative Biology, and peruse the last 10 years of papers on all aspects of biological fluid dynamics. Recent books by Mark Denny, Mimi Koehl, and of course Steve Vogel will round out peer-reviewed articles from the JEB and ICB, and provide a fascinating introduction to current work in a dynamic field of study that is growing rapidly.
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