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Ormond, Rupert E G., John D. Gage, and Martin Vivian Angel, editors. 1997. Marine biodiversity: patterns and processes. Cambridge University Press, New York. xxii + 449 p. $74.95, ISBN: 0-521-55222-2.
Since the term biological diversity (Lovejoy, T. 1980. "Foreword" in Michael E. Soule and Bruce A. Wilcox, editors. Conservation biology-an evolutionary-ecological perspective. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Massachusetts; Norse, E. A., and R. E. McManus. 1980. Ecology and living resources: biological diversity. pp. 31-80 in Council on Environmental Quality. Environmental quality-1980: the eleventh annual report of the Council on Environmental Quality. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.) and its synonym biodiversity (Wilson, E. O., editor. 1988. Biodiversity. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.) emerged from the conservation literature into the broader lexicon, stopping biodiversity loss has become the focus of conservation worldwide and provided impetus for public funding of systematics, biogeography and ecology. Because biodiversity on land has received the lion's share of attention and books on marine biodiversity are few, I awaited this book eagerly.
I was disappointed to find that the book focuses mostly on descriptions of species diversity patterns and the processes that could shape them, giving insufficient attention to lower and higher levels of genetic diversity within species and ecosystem diversity. The relevance of such patterns to conservation is explicit in only a few chapters, which is unfortunate because many will buy this book for insights into a realm increasingly dominated by humans. Moreover, marine biodiversity patterns are frustratingly complex, and some herein are plagued by sparse data or have underlying mechanisms so obscure that the authors' best efforts cannot yet contribute much to the conceptual foundation for marine stewardship. Simply put, we do not yet have the data or theory that we need. Other chapters, however, are intriguing, well written, and highly relevant. The book's topics range broadly, from subpolar to tropical, nearshore to oceanic, benthic to...