Geckos: The Animal Answer Guide

Geckos: The Animal Answer Guide. A. M. Bauer. 2013. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9781421408521. 159 p. $50.00 (hardcover). —Have you ever wondered . —Aaron Bauer, like all good naturalists, has sought answers to nearly every imaginable question one could ask about his favored group of animals, geckos. Detailed answers are hidden in the vast scientific literature, a literature that requires a solid scientific background to digest. Much of this highly technical research has been published by Aaron, and no one would dispute that Aaron is the world expert on geckos. In Geckos: The Animal Answer Guide, Aaron brings the vast technical literature to the public in an engaging and readable fashion. It is a breath of fresh air to read a well-written book on this level by the person who knows the most about these fascinating animals. By design, Geckos is a question–answer book as part of a Johns Hopkins series that includes animals from turtles, frogs, and fishes to parrots and porcupines. The list of questions addressed in the table of contents begs the reader to dive in and find the answers. What are geckos? Do geckos sleep? What are flying geckos? What roles do geckos play in native cultures? Are geckos pests? Will geckos be affected by global warming? —The list goes on and on, with more than 100 questions in 12 broad categories posed and answered. Answers to these and other questions are detailed, biologically accurate, and interestingly put together with specific examples. We learn that the Namib Day Gecko (Rhoptropus afer) can run 6.7 miles per hour (10.8 km/h). Although most small geckos have short life spans, some of the larger species, such as Duvaucel’s Gecko (Hoplodactylus duvaucellii) from New Zealand can live at least 36 years. Some gecko species have only females and reproduce clonally by a process known as parthenogenesis. As a result, a single individual can start a new population. In Southeast Asia and China, geckos suspended in rice wine bottles supposedly have health benefits! (I wonder if the benefits go only to the person swallowing the gecko? ) Nearly 1500 gecko species are known and many remain to be discovered or described. Some live with people (on and in their houses) and others live in remote forests. Most have legs, but some are limbless and could easily be mistaken for snakes (another limbless group of lizards). For some geckos, sex of offspring is determined by temperature during development, whereas in others, it is genetically determined. Geckos were considered ‘‘unclean’’ in the Bible, based on the Modern Hebrew translation of Leviticus. As many as a billion tiny spatulae (tips on highly branched setae) on the bottom of the feet of many gecko species create molecular bonds between the toes and surfaces allowing them to climb walls and cling to glass. Like many other lizards, geckos can release (autotomize) their tails when attacked by a predator, escape while the predator is distracted, and later regenerate a new tail. In the final section, called ‘‘Geckology’’ (a term that brings up 6250 hits on Google, but does not exist as a university ‘‘ology’’ course! ), Aaron brings us back to the scientists who have studied geckos and the relatively recent explosion of interest in geckos by ecologists, behavioral biologists, and herpetoculturalists. Images on T-shirts, tattoos, wine bottles, and billboards, combined with the Geico gecko (strangely modeled after Day Geckos [Phelsuma] occurring largely on islands in the Indian Ocean, but speaking distinct Aussie English! ) have brought geckos into the minds of most of the human population. Two very useful appendices appear at the end of the book. The first is a list of geckos of the world, which includes both extant and recently extinct species, indicating which species are vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered. The second appendix lists the most prominent herpetological organizations and publications that focus either partly or fully on geckos. Together, these should aid those reading Geckos to dive as deeply into ‘‘geckology’’ as their hearts desire. No strictly factual errors stand out in the text, although a few points might be debatable. For example, on page 3, the statement that geckos may be only secondary to bats in eating nocturnal insects might be true in some places, especially islands with few or no frogs (Rodda and DeanBradley, 2002) or the Australian deserts (Pianka, 1986, 1994), but frogs far outweigh geckos in density and biomass in most of the continental temperate and tropical world (e.g., Hofer and Bersier, 2001) and likely have a greater impact on nocturnal insect populations than geckos. This may also be true for the larger islands in the Indian Ocean (e.g., Madagascar), where a majority of geckos are diurnal and the nocturnal frog fauna includes many frogs in the families Hyperoliidae and Microhylidae (Blommers-Schlösser and Blanc, 1991; Henkel and Schmidt, 2000; Glaw and Vences, 2007). An unfortunate grammatical error (editorial) exists in the last sentence of the first paragraph of the book—either ‘‘lets’’ should have been ‘‘allow’’ or ‘‘to’’ should have been deleted. This, however, is a minor distraction and will likely be missed by most readers. Considering how spectacular geckos are in coloration and patterns, it would have been nice to have the entire book in color, which has become nearly universal in books on amphibian and reptile diversity (e.g., Greene, 1997; Pianka and Vitt, 2003; Lotters et al., 2007; Grismer, 2011). Changing some of the photographs from color to grayscale (e.g., pp. 9, 13, 19, 23, 31, etc.) lost definition that would have been evident in color. These are all trivial when balanced against the vast amount of neat information in the book. At a price of $50 for the hardback version, this book is a steal. It is well written, informative, accurate, well illustrated, and most importantly, answers virtually every question one might ask about geckos. I can’t bring to mind a single book on a specific group of lizards that contains so much information at this level. Moreover, much of the conceptual information covered for geckos applies to other lizards as well. Geckos will be of interest to reptile biologists, naturalists, world travelers, and members of the public who have taken geckos into their homes. This is the kind of book that brings science to the public, instilling an increased awareness of both the diversity and value of life on Earth. Have all questions about geckos been answered—of course not, because science is about asking questions. It should be evident from reading this book that for every answer to a specific question, new questions arise, sending Aaron Bauer and other committed ‘‘geckologists’’ back to work!