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Blackwell Publishing Ltd.Oxford, UKDDIDiversity and Distributions1399-3054Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 200394BibliodiversionsBibliodiversionsBibliodiversions

THE COSTS OF BIOLOGICAL INVASIONS

Pimentel, D. (ed.) (2002)

Biological invasions:economic and environmental costs of alien plant,animal, and microbe species

. CRC Press, BocaRaton, Florida, USA. x + 369 pp, figs, tables,halftones, index. Hardback: Price US$129.95.ISBN 0849308364.

This book reviews the impact of introducedorganisms on both human-dominated and natu-ral ecosystems, and tries to cost these impacts.Some staggering figures are presented including acurrent world-wide estimate of damage caused byinvasive species of US$1.4 trillion a year. Theseriousness of the problem is highlighted by theoutbreak of the introduced

Helminthosporiumoryzae

, a disease of rice, in Bengal in 1943 thatresulted in the death of around 2 million people.Numerous examples are given, many of which,while being less dramatic than the Indian famine,have vast impacts on agricultural production,human health and the environment. The relativebalance of information provided on impact andcosts is variable between chapters.

Eighteen chapters, three of them publishedelsewhere before, are grouped into nine sections,seven of which deal with specific regions (called‘countries’); these are Australia (3 chapters),British Isles (3, but Ireland hardly gets a men-tion), Brazil (1), India (1), New Zealand (4),South Africa (2) and the USA (1). In additionthere is one introductory and two overview chap-ters. Themes addressed are: pathogens (2 chap-ters), plants (4), invertebrates (2), vertebrates (5),diseases (1) and mixtures (4). An overview ofballast-mediated invasions would have comple-mented the themes covered. Although these topicswould suggest a good coverage of the invasivebiodiversity around the earth, the book is infact highly biased towards the rich world. Otherthan the two chapters on pathogens in Brazil andIndia, there is no information relating to plantsand animals in the Developing World. Indeed,this information is limited and the total financialcosts may be small compared with those esti-mated for Western countries; however, relatively

the costs may be much greater to these poorrural populations, and their ability to deal withthese issues is limited.

The coverage for the regions represented isgood and provides an excellent overview. How-ever, there are some repetitions — for instance,the two New Zealand invertebrate chapters shouldhave been amalgamated. Also, there are somesurprising omissions. In the case of the BritishIsles there is no mention of the invasive NewZealand flatworms. Chapter 18, by Pimentel

et al.

is a world overview of economic costs caused bybiological invasions, and logically one wouldexpect that it would incorporate and summarizethe information provided in previous chapters.But this is not the case, as the chapter was pub-lished elsewhere almost two years before most ofthe other contributions were completed. Chapter18 should have been updated in the light of therest of the book — for instance, New Zealanddoes not get a mention even though it constitutesa substantial part of the book — but the relevantinformation is summarized instead in the intro-duction. The final chapter deals with six intro-duced global diseases and provides a short,focused account of the history, impact and costsof each of them. However, this chapter has nointroduction, discussion or conclusion, and thebook ends abruptly with its section 18.6.4, asingle paragraph on Hepatitis C.

A recurrent theme highlighted by most authorsis the difficulty of estimating costs, especiallythose relating to the environment, including spe-cies extinction (this theme is also reflected by thecontroversy sometimes generated by the size ofcost estimates in the literature). Most financialfigures (given in local currencies) are basedprimarily on the impact of the invasions on agri-cultural systems, or human health. Figures forenvironmental costs are available in some cases.Clearly we need to have more data, and here thelimitations of the book are clear. How does oneidentify problematic species? How does one goabout estimating costs? What are the pitfalls? Forinstance, how should one approach the rapid, butlargely ignored, spread of

Prosopis

spp. in muchof the dry tropics? These questions, which in a

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way reflect the general state of the subject (muchis unknown and few certainties exist), are notaddressed. At the very least, an appendix shouldhave been included to provide a lead into theassessment of impact and economic costs, as wellas to provide guidelines.

On the whole, this book is well put together,with few typos, but unfortunately the index is notup to standard. Common names instead of sci-entific ones are used and listed under headings,often arbitrarily, but more importantly the pagesof many entries are wrong. References are pre-sented at the end of each chapter and are incon-sistent — they are either listed chronologically oralphabetically, and with or without full pagina-tion. Most chapters have a conclusion but onehas an abstract and three others end abruptly.The quality of the figures varies from generallygood to very poor (e.g. Figure 9.1).

In view of the plethora of books currentlybeing published on biological invasions, and con-sidering the reservations made earlier, the obvi-ous question is: should one buy this book? Thereis a great need to convince both the public andpoliticians that introduced organisms are a seri-ous cause for concern world-wide, and this bookhighlights the problems humanity faces in rela-tion to the impacts and costs of biologicalinvasions by providing a wide array of examples.It also conveys the message that, unless action istaken to deal with established invaders and pre-vent the introductions of more organisms withpotential to cause havoc, the economic and socialcosts will become prohibitive. On that basis thistome is recommended, but its high cost willpreclude it from having a large audience.

PIERRE BINGGELISchool of Agricultural and Forest SciencesUniversity of Wales, BangorUK

July 200394Book ReviewBibliodiversionsBibliodiversions

SONORAN DESERT INVASIONS UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

Tellman, Barbara (ed.) (2002). Invasive exoticspecies in the Sonoran Region. The University ofArizona Press and The Arizona-Sonoran DesertMuseum, Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A. xxvi+424 pp.,figs, line drawings, tables, glossary, appendices,

index. Hardcover: Price: $75.00 (Available fromhttp://www.uapress.arizona.edu). ISBN 0-8165-2178-6.

Deserts, like tropical forests and savannas, havelagged behind other biomes in suffering severeimpacts from rampant alien species. Severalreviews have shown deserts to be among theleast-invaded systems worldwide, at least in termsof the number of naturalized and invasive species(e.g. Lonsdale, 1999). Ecologists are divided onwhether this means that deserts are inherentlyless susceptible to invasions than other systems,or whether the pattern simply reflects the greaternumber of introductions to other biomes that aregenerally more amenable to, and more modifiedby, humans. The number of widespread andhugely damaging invasions in arid areas through-out the world has increased rapidly over the pastfew decades. For example, several species of aliengrasses have spread rapidly over large areas inthe deserts of western North America.

Pennise-tum ciliare

(buffelgrass) has invaded large partsof the Sonoran Desert, changing fuel propertiesand causing more-frequent and larger wildfires,decreasing water infiltration to the soil andchanging nutrient-cycling regimes. Such changesthreaten to eliminate many native plant species,converting these desert shrublands to alien-dominated, fire-driven grasslands. Such invasionsare forcing ecologists to look more closely at thedynamics of introduced species in arid systems.

This book, the product of a 1998 symposiumin Tucson, provides the first detailed account ofbiological invasions in any desert region. It dealswith North America’s Sonoran Region whichincludes the Gulf of California coast and itsislands; the low desert, desert uplands and grass-lands of southern and central Arizona, northernSonora, south-eastern California and Baja Cali-fornia in Mexico; and the lower Colorado Riverthrough the Grand Canyon.

The first four chapters provide a ‘broadperspective’: van Devender describes the ‘deephistory of immigration’ in the region, Tellmandiscusses the history of introductions, McLaughlincompares the Sonoran Region with the rest ofthe Western USA with respect to invasions, andMack gives a general account of natural barriersto naturalization and invasion. These contribu-tions provide an excellent background, by clearly

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showing how changing physical conditions, nota-bly due to fire management, dam constructionand overgrazing in the twentieth century, havepaved the way for the naturalization and invasionof a rapidly increasing number of introducedspecies. Tellman’s selection of case studies (

Erodiumcicutarium, Apis mellifera, Cynodon dactylon,Sorghum halapense, Ailanthus altissima, Tamarixramossima, Passer domesticus, Sturnus vulgaris,Salsola tragus, Alhagi maurorum, Salmo

spp. and

Rana catesbeiana

) is excellent for demonstratingthe many interacting factors that have sown theseeds of the problems that the region now faceswith invasive aliens.

Part 2 of the book has nine chapters groupedunder the heading ‘Exotics in various areas ofthe Sonoran Region’. Special attention is given tothe Central Gulf Coast and the Gulf Islands,Sonoran desert thornscrub, grasslands and ripar-ian areas. The nine chapters in this section pro-vide a solid review of the status of invasive aliensin the region. There is, however, surprisingly littlequantitative data on distribution patterns or spe-cies–environment interactions.

Part 3 of the book is devoted to managementand includes an account of the USDA’s PlantProtection and Quarantine Program to excludeforeign pest species, a history of biological con-trol of alien plants, and a detailed account ofmanagement strategies for

Pennisetum ciliare

inArizona’s Organ Pipe National Monument.

There are three useful appendices providing alist of laws, agreements and executive ordersdealing with exotic species, and checklists of nat-uralized plant and animal species. I would haveliked to see some criteria for inclusion of speciesin these lists and some attempt to classify speciesaccording to their status as aliens.

This is a timely summary of what is knownabout biological invasions in one of the world’sbest-studied desert regions. The problems aregetting much worse very quickly, and scenarios forfurther invasions, especially with climate change,are dire. Hopefully this book will help to raiseawareness of the severity of the problems andfocus research efforts.

DAVID M. RICHARDSONInstitute For Plant Conservation University Of Cape Town South Africa

REFERENCE

Lonsdale, W.M. (1999) Global patterns of plantinvasions and the concept of invasibility.

Ecology

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, 1522–1536.

July 200394Book ReviewBibliodiversionsBibliodiversions

A PLANT MANUAL FOR THE CALIFORNIA DESERTS

Baldwin, B.G.

et al

. (eds) 2002

The Jepson desertmanual: vascular plant of southeastern California

.University of California Press, Berkeley, USA.xiv + 626 pp., tables, line diagrams, halftones,colour plates, glossary and index. Paperback:Price £24.95 $35.00. ISBN 0-520-22775-1.

The Jepson desert manual

is the first in a series ofmore compact guidebooks to be distilled fromthe much larger

The Jepson manual: higher plantsof California

(1993). As its title suggests, this newguidebook is focused on the plants that grow inthe southern Great Basin, the Mojave Desert,and the Sonoran Desert regions of California,regions that do not fall within the California Flo-ristic Province, with its distinct Mediterraneanclimatic regime. It does not, however, containinformation on the desert plants of the ModocPlateau of the northern Great Basin. This bookfollows the original 1993 manual in style andabbreviations, including the use of geographicalregions rather than counties to describe where aplant occurs. This was an innovation that hasbeen both a blessing and a curse, for althoughthe regions are more meaningful geographically,sometimes the regions are so broad that one isnot quite sure where a species occurs exactly (andone goes back to previous floras to see if itoccurs in a particular county).

Although designed as a more compact guide-book, this is definitely not a book for beginningbotanists. It is a taxonomic work with identifica-tion keys and scientific descriptions of species;and names are not emphasized. However, theaddition of 300 new illustrations and 130 photo-graphs not included in

The Jepson manual

, willhelp beginners gain an entry point to the book.in addition, following the philosophy of the orig-inal

Jepson Manual

(and the glossary of thatbook), the terminology is not as dense as thatfound in Munz and Keck’s (1974)

A flora ofsouthern California

. The point of this book is to

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be inclusive of all desert species (except typicalCalifornia Floristic Province species that happento spill over in a few places), to provide keys tothe species, and to provide descriptions. It is notmeant to replace picture books of a more in-formal nature that specialize in a narrowergeographical range such as Knute’s

Plants of theEast Mojave

and Stark’s

A flower-watcher’s guideto wildflowers of the western Mojave Desert

.The guiding influence for this particular effort

was Bruce Baldwin, Jepson Curator at the Uni-versity of California, Berkeley, who as lead editorsaw this project to completion. He made numer-ous plant-collecting trips to the deserts ofCalifornia to increase his knowledge of particularplant species and their distributions, thereforeadding information not available in

The JepsonManual

. The addition of flowering times to thespecies descriptions is a very welcome change, forinstance. Baldwin also added interesting newchapters on the history and floristic diversity ofthe Californian deserts. much of the informationin this book is exactly the same as in

The Jepson

Manual

. The ‘up side’ of this decision is that thisbook is compatible with the original work interms of nomenclature, symbols, and abbreviations— something that many Californian botanists willappreciate. The down side is that some changesthat should have been made, such as updating theinformation on species rarity, were not made. Thedecision to leave the nomenclature ‘as is’, despitethe marked changes that have been proposed infamilies and genera will probably be welcomed bymost Californians. The editors do provide infor-mation on new names for some species at theend of the species treatments; this is a compro-mise most of us can live with.

All in all, this book is a wonderful addition tocurrent floras and will be added to the library ofmost Californian desert explorers.

ELLEN DEAN

UC Davis Herbarium Section of Plant BiologyUniversity of California, DavisUSA