UNDERSTANDING WHAT WE SEE IN NATURE: HOW TO SPEND YOUR LIFE AS AN EVOLUTIONARY ECOLOGIST

Review of: Losos, J. B (ed.). 2011. In the Light of Evolution. Essays from the Laboratory and Field. Roberts and Company Publishers. 330 pp. ISBN: 9780981519494; $59.95 HB. Have you ever wondered what evolutionary ecologists do? What sorts of questions drive them and how do they approach the answers to these questions? Are you interested in understanding patterns and phenotypes seen in nature? Are you wondering what to do with the next 20 years of your life? If you answered yes to at least two of these questions, then I recommend that you read “In the Light of Evolution,” a volume of 17 essays edited by Jonathan Losos. He has brought together a loosely connected set of individuals, many from Harvard, where he works, together with others who he has collaborated with, shares interests with, or simply admires, to write about their obsessions. Yes, for the most part, these are people who obsess and in doing so they have illuminated aspects of nature that were in the dark prior to their probing. They have helped us understand their small part of the world in the light of evolution and thereby provide us with parts of a framework that can be applied to other systems. As I tell my students in my evolution course, it is worth trying to see the world through the eyes of an evolutionary biologist, which is what this volume is all about and something I hope my students can learn to do. Many of the essays in this book differ from traditional chapters on any given scientific topic, because the focus is on how answers are found as much as on what the answers are. On display are the inspiration, perspiration, and motivation of the individual researchers. This includes the four essays that discuss Darwin and/or Wallace, two eccentric individuals who profoundly changed how we view the natural world. In the essay on Darwin by Janet Browne, she weaves aspects of Darwin’s upbringing, his travels, his home life, and his beliefs throughout, and thereby brings the humanity of the man and his writing to the fore. Importantly, both she and Carl Zimmer (in his essay on researchers of microbes) note that Darwin was not only an observer, but also a lover of experiments and their interpretation, and hence the “theory” of evolution by natural selection was the product of a naturalist/experimentalist. The importance of observation is also highlighted in the essay by Marlene Zuk and Teri Orr, who point to the disagreement between Darwin and Wallace on whether female choice, as a component of sexual selection, existed. Apparently Wallace felt that ornamentation of males was a consequence of their relatively heightened vigor compared to females. All Darwin had to go on at the time were patterns of ornamentation, rather than experiments, but as this essay points out, he remained convinced that female choice was involved in male ornamentation until the day he died. Michael Ryan’s essay, which is devoted to the question of whether female choice has influenced the mating calls of tungara frogs, shows how far we have come. It outlines an impressive set of field observations rich in the ecology of the frogs, experiments, and knowledge of the phylogeny of the genus that allows him to say yes, female choice has heavily influenced the evolution of male mating calls.