Invertebrates are here again

An introduction to the invertebratesAn Introduction to the Invertebrates by Janet Moore, Cambridge University Press, 2001, (£40.00) (pbk) (372 pages)ISBN 0 521 77076 9.Anyone who is concerned about biological diversity and the current extinction crisis realizes that we desperately need to train more people in invertebrate biology. There are simply not enough people working on invertebrates and to ever have a hope of naming them all, let alone understanding the myriad of tasks these organisms undertake. Hopefully, this super book will encourage more undergraduates to follow paths that will take them to a career in invertebrate biology. Certainly, if they are not inspired by the wonders laid out in this book, they deserve duller lives, muddling in the money markets, fondling the arthritic knees of jaded athletes, or getting in a surreal state about real estate.Most of my first year as an undergraduate zoologist was dedicated to a systematic review of the animal kingdom. The relative length of time devoted to each phyla closely approximated its phylogenetic duration. Two weeks were spent discussing the hypothetical ancestral mollusk. However, when it came time to revise, there were tons of poorly organized notes and drawings, and a huge tome of an invertebrate textbook, which was totally indigestible in the two days before the exam. Luckily, I was saved by the wonderful two-volume Animals without Backbones by Ralph Buchsbaum (University of Chicago Press), a regular mine of information.This new book by Janet Moore steps proudly into the breach as an eloquent replacement. It provides an excellent overview of the invertebrates, organized in a clear and logical fashion, clearly illustrated and written with great insight and eloquence. Each chapter is organized in essentially the same way with sections on body plan, reproduction, movement and locomotion, and begins with a brief and insightful answer to the question ‘What is a?’. These sections are particularly valuable in setting the stage for the myriad of useful facts and important insights that follow. Special boxes deal with bigger concepts and subjects, such as parasitism, and there are several link chapters that deal with important general topics such as on being a worm, what defines an arthropod and animals with lophophores. This book also contains two introductory chapters and two concluding chapters: the introductory chapter divides the process of evolution into a chapter on natural selection and one on molecular evidence. The concluding two chapters focus on development and invertebrate evolutionary history. These four chapters serve as useful revision documents for students needing general background information on essential pieces of biological knowledge. The last two chapters are particularly valuable in providing insightful and instructive introductions to areas that have developed massively in the last twenty years.I strongly recommend this book to all undergraduates who are interested in biology: it provides a lucid, yet comprehensive, introduction to a significant proportion of the diversity of life on Earth. I wish I had a copy all those years ago when I wrestled with that hypothetical ancestral mollusk.