Integrative and Comparative Biology Advance Access originally published online on December 4, 2007
Integrative and Comparative Biology 2008 48(1):154-156; doi:10.1093/icb/icm101
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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 |
The Light and Smith Manual—Intertidal Invertebrates from Central California to Oregon (Fourth Edition). James T. Carlton, editor.
Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric
Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh,
NC 27695, USA
E-mail: tom_wolcott{at}ncsu.edu
The Light and Smith Manual—Intertidal Invertebrates from Central California to Oregon (Fourth Edition). James T. Carlton, editor.
Richmond, CA: The University of California Press, 2007. 1019 pp. ISBN-13: 9780520239395, $85.00.
The "Light and Smith Manual" has long been the "Bible" for biologists working in the Pacific intertidal of North America, along with its famous commentary companion, Ricketts and Calvin's Between Pacific Tides. The revised and expanded 4th instar of that venerable manual, Intertidal Invertebrates from Central California to Oregon, is, well, a really big indispensable tool kit. It weighs in at about 2.5 kg, with just over 1000 pages. Compared with the slim book I carried about as a graduate student on the Pacific Coast (when the ice sheets were just receding from North America and previous editors Ralph Smith and Frank Pitelka were goading me on), it can only be characterized as a "tome." Being asked to review it is rather like being brought into a large machine shop, with its banks of cabinets, tool drawers and machines, and being asked, "Well, what do you think of it?" Jim Carlton, the editor, points out that the book has just about doubled its content, and more than doubled the number of contributors, with each revision. The focus has been expanded to the region from the Washington–Oregon border down to Point Conception CA, but of course many of the species have wider ranges and the keys will be useful far beyond those limits.
The book begins with a series of introductory chapters. In the first is one of the "boxes" so popular in contemporary texts—this one emphasizing that the Pacific is not a tame ocean. Field zoologists are cautioned not to turn their backs upon it, and to be ever watchful for "killer waves." This is excellent advice, to which might be added, "Do not take this manual where you might be swept into the water unless you're really buoyant." While the 2nd edition could serve as a field book, if the owner would tolerate muddy/salty fingerprints, this 4th edition has outgrown that function. The animals will now need to come back to the book in the laboratory. This is true even with the advent of digital photography; unless one already knows the key characters that might be captured in macrophotographs, one really needs the key and the animal in the same place. The reasons for the book's expanded size are many. In addition to covering a larger geographic range, it also includes several previously passed-over groups. On the other hand, some portions have been left out of this edition—the intertidal algae, for instance, for which the reader is referred to other monographs.
A recurrent theme in the introductory chapters is that animals are more than vehicles for genes and interesting organic molecules. The contributors are vocal proponents of the principle that a real understanding of an animal's genetics and molecular biology is contingent on an understanding of the roles those organic molecules serve—that is, what the animal does for a living in its natural environment. After all, the genome presumably became part of the animal's makeup through natural selection. Armand Kuris used to tell his fellow graduate students, "You can't really understand an animal until you've eaten it." We thought this a bold statement (especially from someone working on bopyrid isopods,) and few of us bought in. We did, though, embrace Ralph I. Smith's dictum that "You've got to see the world through the animal's eyes." That means going to see the animal where it lives, identifying its challenges, and properly identifying it. That is what this book enables.
The introductory section is well worth thoughtful reading before the reader ventures into the field. The first chapter, by Thomas Niesen, summarizes the kinds of intertidal habitats found along the Pacific coast, and the salient features of intertidal zonation (especially evident on exposed rocky shores.) The second, by James Nybakken and Robert Higgins, presents the meiobenthos, a commonly overlooked group comprising representatives of many phyla (the species are discussed in the respective phylogenetically arranged chapters). As with many of the other chapters, this one also provides guidelines for collection and preservation of specimens. The third chapter, by Armand Kuris, gives an overview of parasites and commensals, another polyphyletic group whose representatives are treated in other chapters. Jim Carlton and Andrew Cohen provide an introduction to the issue of introduced species and the anthropogenic erasure of evolutionary history that has been underway for nearly two centuries due to maritime commerce. In the line of tools, Jonathan Geller introduces the role of molecular identification (in contrast to "molecular classification") in figuring out what's really a species, and whose larva a given weird critter actually is. Finally, Gary Williams and Robert van Syoc give a synopsis of how various groups can be immobilized, anaesthetized, and preserved for subsequent investigation.
The remainder of the book consists of "taxonomic accounts," that is, chapters focused on a particular phylogenetic group. The scope includes the major benthic groups, with some of the planktonic stages (e.g., medusae). Most of the chapters provide an overview of their taxon, and often guidelines for collection and preservation. In almost all chapters, this is followed by a dichotomous key, and then a species list of all the commonly found animals in the region. Having been on the "other coast" of North America for nearly four decades, I was unable to poke about the Pacific intertidal, collect mysterious organisms, and test various keys. I did, however, try my hand at keying out the animals (limpets) that I molested years ago for my doctoral research at Bodega Bay. I found the mollusk key easy to use. Even without specimens before me, using remembered characteristics I was able to run down each of the limpets I investigated. I was somewhat dismayed to discover that in almost all cases their names have changed—again. "Acmaea" became "Colisella," which has become "Lottia." With the increasing information about systematics (including molecular evidence), one of the major uses of a tool like "The Light and Smith Manual" is to minimize confusion by ensuring that we're all in accord about which organism we're discussing.
The scope of the "taxonomic accounts" is in many cases almost daunting. The section on arthropods includes 74 pages on gammarid amphipods alone, with roughly 1.5 zillion drawings to aid identification. There's even a section on intertidal insects. The section on mollusks includes 52 pages on bivalves. Just over 100 pages are devoted to the polychaetes, notoriously diverse and difficult to sort out. At the other extreme, several little-known groups get short shrift, although longer shrift than in previous editions. The Nematomorpha, for instance, rate only a single page and the disclaimer, "one of the few phyla never reported from marine environments along the west coast of North America." The chapter on kinorhynchs, loriciferans, and priapulids refers to organisms "more commonly found in the literature than in their habitats."
For the researcher (ecologist, physiologist, natural products chemist, whatever), or the student of invertebrate biology, or even the scientifically literate amateur who is interested in what's out there, what it does for a living, and how the ecosystem functions, this volume is an invaluable tool. It's not one of those books that one reads for relaxation, but a reference that, when you need it, you've got to have it. A host of us owe the 120 contributors our thanks, and Jim Carlton our kudos (and perhaps our sympathy) for accepting the task of pulling such a manifold group of contributions together into a harmonious whole.
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