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Geckos: The Animal Answer GuideAuthor(s): Laurie J.VittSource: Copeia, 2013(4):781-782. 2013.Published By: The American Society of Ichthyologists and HerpetologistsDOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1643/OT-13-034URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1643/OT-13-034

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BOOK REVIEWS

Copeia 2013, No. 4, 781–788

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 answersto nearly every imaginable question one could ask about hisfavored group of animals, geckos. Detailed answers arehidden in the vast scientific literature, a literature thatrequires a solid scientific background to digest. Much ofthis highly technical research has been published by Aaron,and no one would dispute that Aaron is the world expert ongeckos. In Geckos: The Animal Answer Guide, Aaron bringsthe vast technical literature to the public in an engagingand readable fashion. It is a breath of fresh air to read awell-written book on this level by the person who knowsthe most about these fascinating animals.

By design, Geckos is a question–answer book as part of aJohns Hopkins series that includes animals from turtles,frogs, and fishes to parrots and porcupines. The list ofquestions addressed in the table of contents begs the readerto dive in and find the answers. What are geckos? Do geckossleep? What are flying geckos? What roles do geckos play innative cultures? Are geckos pests? Will geckos be affected byglobal warming?—The list goes on and on, with more than100 questions in 12 broad categories posed and answered.Answers to these and other questions are detailed, biolog-ically accurate, and interestingly put together with specificexamples. We learn that the Namib Day Gecko (Rhoptropusafer) can run 6.7 miles per hour (10.8 km/h). Although mostsmall geckos have short life spans, some of the larger species,such as Duvaucel’s Gecko (Hoplodactylus duvaucellii) fromNew Zealand can live at least 36 years. Some gecko specieshave only females and reproduce clonally by a processknown as parthenogenesis. As a result, a single individualcan start a new population. In Southeast Asia and China,geckos suspended in rice wine bottles supposedly havehealth benefits! (I wonder if the benefits go only to theperson swallowing the gecko?) Nearly 1500 gecko species areknown and many remain to be discovered or described.Some live with people (on and in their houses) and otherslive in remote forests. Most have legs, but some are limblessand could easily be mistaken for snakes (another limblessgroup of lizards). For some geckos, sex of offspring isdetermined by temperature during development, whereasin others, it is genetically determined. Geckos were consid-ered ‘‘unclean’’ in the Bible, based on the Modern Hebrewtranslation of Leviticus. As many as a billion tiny spatulae(tips on highly branched setae) on the bottom of the feet ofmany gecko species create molecular bonds between thetoes and surfaces allowing them to climb walls and cling toglass. Like many other lizards, geckos can release (autoto-mize) their tails when attacked by a predator, escape whilethe predator is distracted, and later regenerate a new tail.

In the final section, called ‘‘Geckology’’ (a term thatbrings up 6250 hits on Google, but does not exist as auniversity ‘‘ology’’ course!), Aaron brings us back to thescientists who have studied geckos and the relatively recentexplosion of interest in geckos by ecologists, behavioralbiologists, and herpetoculturalists. Images on T-shirts,

tattoos, wine bottles, and billboards, combined with theGeico gecko (strangely modeled after Day Geckos [Phelsuma]occurring largely on islands in the Indian Ocean, butspeaking distinct Aussie English!) have brought geckos intothe 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 bothextant and recently extinct species, indicating which speciesare vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered. Thesecond appendix lists the most prominent herpetologicalorganizations and publications that focus either partly or fullyon geckos. Together, these should aid those reading Geckos todive as deeply into ‘‘geckology’’ as their hearts desire.

No strictly factual errors stand out in the text, although afew points might be debatable. For example, on page 3, thestatement that geckos may be only secondary to bats ineating nocturnal insects might be true in some places,especially islands with few or no frogs (Rodda and Dean-Bradley, 2002) or the Australian deserts (Pianka, 1986,1994), but frogs far outweigh geckos in density andbiomass in most of the continental temperate and tropicalworld (e.g., Hofer and Bersier, 2001) and likely have agreater impact on nocturnal insect populations thangeckos. This may also be true for the larger islands in theIndian Ocean (e.g., Madagascar), where a majority ofgeckos are diurnal and the nocturnal frog fauna includesmany frogs in the families Hyperoliidae and Microhylidae(Blommers-Schlosser and Blanc, 1991; Henkel andSchmidt, 2000; Glaw and Vences, 2007). An unfortunategrammatical error (editorial) exists in the last sentence ofthe first paragraph of the book—either ‘‘lets’’ should havebeen ‘‘allow’’ or ‘‘to’’ should have been deleted. This,however, is a minor distraction and will likely be missed bymost readers.

Considering how spectacular geckos are in coloration andpatterns, it would have been nice to have the entire book incolor, which has become nearly universal in books onamphibian and reptile diversity (e.g., Greene, 1997; Piankaand Vitt, 2003; Lotters et al., 2007; Grismer, 2011). Changingsome of the photographs from color to grayscale (e.g., pp. 9,13, 19, 23, 31, etc.) lost definition that would have beenevident in color. These are all trivial when balanced againstthe vast amount of neat information in the book.

At a price of $50 for the hardback version, this book is asteal. It is well written, informative, accurate, well illustrated,and most importantly, answers virtually every question onemight ask about geckos. I can’t bring to mind a single book ona specific group of lizards that contains so much informationat this level. Moreover, much of the conceptual informationcovered for geckos applies to other lizards as well. Geckos willbe of interest to reptile biologists, naturalists, world travelers,and members of the public who have taken geckos into theirhomes. This is the kind of book that brings science to thepublic, instilling an increased awareness of both the diversityand value of life on Earth. Have all questions about geckosbeen answered—of course not, because science is aboutasking questions. It should be evident from reading this bookthat for every answer to a specific question, new questionsarise, sending Aaron Bauer and other committed ‘‘geckolo-gists’’ back to work!

F 2013 by the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists DOI: 10.1643/OT-13-034

LITERATURE CITED

Blommers-Schlosser, R. M. A., and C. P. Blanc. 1991.Amphibiens (premiere partie). Faune Madagascar75:1–379.

Glaw, F., and M. Vences. 2007. A Field Guide to theAmphibians and Reptiles of Madagascar. Third edition.Vences and Glaw Verlag, Cologne.

Greene, H. W. 1997. Snakes. The Evolution of Mysteryin Nature. University of California Press, Berkeley,California.

Grismer, L. L. 2011. Lizards of Peninsular Malaysia,Singapore and Their Adjacent Archipelagos. EditionChimaira, Frankfurt am Main.

Henkel, F.-W., and W. Schmidt. 2000. Amphibians andReptiles of Madagascar and the Mascarene, Seychelles, andComoro Islands. Krieger Publishing, Malabar, Florida.

Hofer, U., and L.-F. Bersier. 2001. Herpetofaunal diversityand abundance in tropical upland forests of Cameroonand Panama. Biotropica 33:142–152.

Lotters, S., K. H. Jungfer, F. W. Henkel, and W. Schmidt.2007. Poison Frogs: Biology, Species and Captive Hus-bandry. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt am Main.

Pianka, E. R. 1994. Biodiversity of Australian desert lizards,p. 259–281. In: Biodiversity and Terrestrial Ecosystems.Vol. 14. C. I. Peng and C. H. Chou (eds.). Institute ofBotany, Academia Sinica Monograph, Taipei.

Pianka, E. R. 1986. Ecology and Natural History of DesertLizards. Analyses of the Ecological Niche and CommunityStructure. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.

Pianka, E. R., and L. J. Vitt. 2003. Lizards. Windows to theEvolution of Diversity. University of California Press,Berkeley, California.

Rodda, G. H., and K. Dean-Bradley. 2002. Excess densitycompensation of island herpetofaunal assemblages. Jour-nal of Biogeography 29:623–632.

Laurie J. Vitt, Sam Noble Museum and Biology Department,University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73072; E-mail:vitt@ou.edu.

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