Integrative and Comparative Biology Advance Access originally published online on February 23, 2008
Integrative and Comparative Biology 2008 48(3):441-442; doi:10.1093/icb/icn006
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Book Review |
Rodent Societies – An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective. Jerry O. Wolff and Paul W. Sherman, editors.
Department of Zoology
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695
Correspondence: E-mail: heather_patisaul{at}ncsu.edu
Rodent Societies – An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective. Jerry O. Wolff and Paul W. Sherman, editors.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 610 pp. ISBN 0-226-90536-5 (cloth), $125.00 and ISBN 0-226-90537-3 (paper), $49.00.
As the editors point out in the first sentence of the first chapter, "The Rodentia is the largest order of mammals consisting of more than 2000 species and comprising 44% of all mammals." This breadth makes the task of compiling a definitive and comprehensive anthology on rodent societies a nearly impossible task, but the result is undoubtedly the most exhaustive and progressive analysis of rodent social behavior to date. Deftly edited by Jerry Wolff and Paul Sherman, this well-organized book, consisting of 41 chapters from 61 contributors is, without doubt, a significant compendium of more than 50 years of research. That being said, only a true rodent lover is likely to love this book.
Its creation was prompted by the success of the two volumes within this series that preceded it: Primate Societies and Cetacean Societies (published by University of Chicago Press). Thus, the scope and format of Rodent Societies is in many ways similar to that of the previous two volumes. The text is organized into nine sections, beginning with a succinct, but satisfying, overview of rodent evolutionary history and proceeding through sexual behavior, life histories and behavior, behavioral development, social behavior, antipredator behavior, comparative socioecology, conservation and disease, and a final concluding section written by the editors on potential directions for future research. Each chapter concludes with a summary that briefly reviews the material, identifies caveats, and frequently suggests strategies for future research. The chapters are written by some of the most productive and well-known scholars in the field but, as expected in a multi-authored work, the quality is uneven. Some chapters do a better job than others of achieving the stated goal to "synthesize and integrate the current state of knowledge about the social behavior of rodents" and to "provide ecological and evolutionary contexts for understanding rodent societies." However, it generally succeeds in combining ideas and strategies from a wide range of disciplines to generate new theoretical and experimental paradigms for exploring rodent social behavior. Despite this, it feels outdated in many places. Much of the work cited in the text is not new, with the majority of citations dating before 2000 and a substantial number dating before 1985. Even the photographs, all in black and white, are fairly old and some date back to the 1950s. Some of the illustrations are even hand-drawn. This makes the book feel like historical retrospective rather a breakthrough collaborative of evolutionary and behavioral biology.
What is also missing, but would have greatly added to the wider appeal of this book, is a chapter presenting a critical analysis of how rodents are currently used in the biomedical sciences and how techniques developed for this purpose, such as the creation of transgenic animals, might be useful for a broader range of disciplines. Rodents have undoubtedly revolutionized biomedical and genomic science, and are frequently responsible for breakthroughs in human medicine, and "-omics" biology. Authors Manuel Berdoy and Lee C. Drickamer state in Chapter 32 that "While the motivation behind large-scale sequencing efforts is obviously medical, some of the current and most probably future results stemming from such genomic comparisons should be heeded by whole animal and field biologists." That the editors did not share this sentiment and include this information for the reader is unfortunate.
The book will most likely appeal to researchers, and those who maintain captive rodents, such as zoo personnel, but perhaps not to those who use rodents in the laboratory to try to elucidate the behavioral biology of humans or other mammals. For students, it will likely serve as a handy and valuable reference but would be difficult to use as a textbook. At a hefty 610 pages the volume certainly does not qualify as light reading and is hardly engrossing. Nevertheless, particular chapters are likely to be of substantial interest to students and scholars and is undoubtedly the most significant and thorough presentation of rodent social behavior available to date.
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