2012 Noteworthy Books 143 Community Ecology of Stream Fishes: Concepts, Approaches, and Techniques. Keith B. Gido and Donald A. Jackson (Eds.). 2010. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, MD. 664 pp. $79, softcover. ISBN 9781934874103. Stream fish community ecology is an exciting field of research that has expanded rapidly over the past two decades. Both conceptual and technological advances have increased our ability to characterize patterns of community structure across multiple scales and evaluate processes that regulate those patterns. A main focus of this book is to synthesize those advancements and provide directions for future research. Chapters are grouped into five main themes: macroecology of stream fishes, stream fish communities in landscapes: importance of connectivity, conservation challenges for stream fishes, structure and dynamics of stream fishes, and role of fishes in stream ecosystems. An international group of renowned authors have contributed chapters and theme summaries that provide examples of current research within each of five themes as well as ideas for new research directions. A Field Guide to Carex of New England. Lisa A. Standley. 2011. New England Botanical Club, Cambridge, MA. 182 pp. $26, softcover. If you have any interest in learning more about and improving your ability to identify the numerous species of sedges that comprise the genus Carex, then this is a reference you will definitely want to have in your collection. There are 188 species of the more than 2000 Carex species worldwide, that inhabit New England. Dividing them up into 21 groups, this guide provides easy-to-use keys, descriptions, and illustrations to allow for field identification without recourse to microscope characters or technically difficult-to-discern features. The clearly written introduction provides basic background information about the genus, its status in New England, and its taxonomy, along with a brief overview of the important plant structures used for identification. For each species, distinctive features are given along with habitat information and relevant helpful notes. A Landscape History of New England. Blake Harrison and Richard W. Judd. 2011.MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 376 pp. $34.95, hardcover. ISBN 9780262016407. This volume takes a 143 view of New England’s landscapes that goes beyond picture-postcard vistas of white-steepled churches, open pastures, and tree-covered mountains. Its chapters describe, for example, the Native American presence in the Maine Woods; offer a history of agriculture told through stone walls, woodlands, and farm buildings; report on the fragile ecology of tourist-friendly Cape Cod beaches; and reveal the ethnic stereotypes informing Colonial Revivalism. Taken together, they offer a wide-ranging history of New England’s diverse landscapes, stretching across two centuries. The book shows that all New England landscapes are the products of human agency as well as nature. The authors trace the roles that work, recreation, historic preservation, conservation, and environmentalism have played in shaping the region, and they highlight the diversity of historical actors who have transformed both its meaning and its physical form. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines—including history, geography, environmental studies, literature, art history, and historic preservation—the book provides fresh perspectives on New England’s many landscapes: forests, mountains, farms, coasts, industrial areas, villages, towns, and cities. Generously illustrated, with many archival photographs, A Landscape History of New England offers readers a solid historical foundation for understanding the great variety of places that make up New England. The Hudson Primer: Ecology of an Iconic River. David L. Strayer. 2011. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. 224 pp. $24.95, softcover. ISBN 9780520269613. This succinct book gives an intimate view of the day-to-day functioning of a remarkable river that has figured prominently in history and culture—the Hudson, a main artery connecting New York, America, and the world. Writing for a wide audience, David Strayer distills the large body of scientific information about the river into a non-technical overview of its ecology. Strayer describes the geography and geology of the Hudson and its basin, the properties of water and its movements in the river, water chemistry, and the river’s plants and animals. He then takes a more detailed look at the Hudson’s ecosystems and each of its major habitats. Strayer also discusses important management challenges facing the river today, including pollution, habitat Noteworthy Books Received by the Northeastern Naturalist, Issue 19/1, 2012 144 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 19, No. 1 destruction, overfishing, invasive species, and ecological restoration. The Highlands: Critical Resources, Treasured Landscapes. Richard G. Lathrop, Jr. (Ed.). 2011. Rutgers University Press, Piscataway, NJ. 352 pp. $45, hardcover. ISBN 9780813551333. Think of the Highlands as the “backyard” and “backstop” of the Philadelphia– New York–Hartford metroplex. A backyard that spans over three million acres across Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut, the Highlands serves as recreational open space for the metroplex's burgeoning human population. As backstop, Highlands’ watersheds provide a ready source of high-quality drinking water for over fifteen million people. The Highlands is the first book to examine the natural and cultural landscape of this four-state region, showing how it’s distinctive and why its conservation is vital. Each chapter is written by a different leading researcher and specialist in that field, and introduces readers to another aspect of the Highlands: its geological foundations, its aquifers and watersheds, its forest ecology, its past iron industry. In the 1800s, the Highlands were mined, cutover, and then largely abandoned. Given time, the forests regenerated, the land healed, and the waters cleared. Increasingly, however, the Highlands are under assault again—polluted runoff contaminating lakes and streams, invasive species choking out the local flora and fauna, exurban sprawl blighting the rural landscape, and climate change threatening the integrity of its ecosystems. The Highlands makes a compelling case for land-use planning and resource management strategies that could help ensure a sustainable future for the region, strategies that could in turn be applied to other landscapes threatened by urbanization across the country. The Book of Fungi: A Life-size Guide to Six Hundred Species from Around the World. Peter Roberts and Shelley Evans. 2011. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. 656 pp. $55, hardcover. ISBN 9780226721170. Colorful, mysterious, and often fantastically shaped, fungi have been a source of wonder and fascination since the earliest hunter-gatherers first foraged for them. Today there are few, if any, places on Earth where fungi have not found themselves a home. And these highly specialized organisms are an indispensable part of the great chain of life. They not only partner in symbiotic relationships with over ninety percent of the world’s trees and flowering plant species, they also recycle and create humus, the fertile soil from which such flora receive their nutrition. Some fungi are parasites or saprotrophs; a number are poisonous or hallucinogenic; others possess life-enhancing properties that can be tapped for pharmaceutical products; while a delicious few are prized by epicureans and gourmands worldwide. In this lavishly illustrated volume, six hundred fungi from around the globe get their full due. Each species here is reproduced at its actual size, in full color, and is accompanied by a scientific explanation of its distribution, habitat, association, abundance, growth form, spore color, and edibility. Location maps give at-a-glance indications of each species’ known global distribution, and specially commissioned engravings show different fruitbody forms and provide the vital statistics of height and diameter. With information on the characteristics, distinguishing features, and occasionally bizarre habits of these fungi, readers will find in this book the common and the conspicuous, the unfamiliar and the odd. There is a fungal predator, for instance, that hunts its prey with lassos, and several that set traps, including one that entices sows by releasing the pheromones of a wild boar. Mushrooms, morels, puffballs, toadstools, truffles, chanterelles—fungi from habitats spanning the poles and the tropics, from the highest mountains to our own backyards—are all on display in this definitive work. Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground. Tom Koch. 2011. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. 344 pp. $45, hardcover. ISBN 9780226449357. In the seventeenth century, a map of the plague suggested a radical idea—that the disease was carried and spread by humans. In the nineteenth century, maps of cholera cases were used to prove its waterborne nature. More recently, maps charting the swine flu pandemic caused worldwide panic and sent shockwaves through the medical community. In Disease Maps, Tom Koch contends that to understand epidemics and their history we need to think about maps of varying scale, from the individual body to shared symptoms evidenced across cities, nations, and the world. Disease Maps begins with a brief review of epidemic mapping today and a detailed example of its power. Koch then traces the early history of medical cartography, including pandemics such as the European plague and yellow fever, and the advancements in anatomy, 2012 Noteworthy Books 145 printing, and world atlases that paved the way for their mapping. Moving on to the scourge of the nineteenth century—cholera—Koch considers the many choleras argued into existence by the maps of the day, including a new perspective on John Snow’s science and legacy. Finally, Koch addresses contemporary outbreaks such as AIDS, cancer, and H1N1, and reaches into the future, toward the coming epidemics. Ultimately, Disease Maps redefines conventional medical history with new surgical precision, revealing that only in maps do patterns emerge that allow disease theories to be proposed, hypotheses tested, and treatments advanced. The Theory of Ecology. Samuel M Scheiner and Michael R. Willig (Eds.). 2011. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. 416 pp. $40, softcover. ISBN 9780226736860. Despite claims to the contrary, the science of ecology has a long history of building theories. Many ecological theories are mathematical, computational, or statistical, though, and rarely have attempts been made to organize or extrapolate these models into broader theories. The Theory of Ecology brings together some of the most respected and creative theoretical ecologists of this era to advance a comprehensive, conceptual articulation of ecological theories. The contributors cover a wide range of topics, from ecological niche theory to population dynamic theory to island biogeography theory. Collectively, the chapters ably demonstrate how theory in ecology accounts for observations about the natural world and how models provide predictive understandings. It organizes these models into constitutive domains that highlight the strengths and weaknesses of ecological understanding. This book is a milestone in ecological theory and is certain to motivate future empirical and theoretical work in one of the most exciting and active domains of the life sciences. Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science. David N. Livingstone and Charles W.J. Withers (Eds.). 2011. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. 536 pp. $55, hardcover. ISBN 9780226487267. In Geographies of Nineteenth- Century Science, David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers gather essays that deftly navigate the spaces of science in this signifi- cant period and reveal how each is embedded in wider systems of meaning, authority, and identity. Chapters from a distinguished range of contributors explore the places of creation, the paths of knowledge transmission and reception, and the import of exchange networks at various scales. Studies range from the inspection of the places of London science, which show how different scientific sites operated different moral and epistemic economies, to the scrutiny of the ways in which the museum space of the Smithsonian Institution and the expansive space of the American West produced science and framed geographical understanding. This volume makes clear that the science of this era varied in its constitution and reputation in relation to place and personnel, in its nature by virtue of its different epistemic practices, in its audiences, and in the ways in which it was put to work. Plant Physics. Karl J. Niklas and Hanns-Christoff Spatz. 2012. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. 448 pp. $55, hardcover. ISBN 9780226586328. From Galileo, who used the hollow stalks of grass to demonstrate the idea that peripherally located construction materials provide most of the resistance to bending forces, to Leonardo da Vinci, whose illustrations of the parachute are alleged to be based on his study of the dandelion’s pappus and the maple tree’s samara, many of our greatest physicists, mathematicians, and engineers have learned much from studying plants. A symbiotic relationship between botany and the fields of physics, mathematics, engineering, and chemistry continues today, as is revealed in Plant Physics. The result of a long-term collaboration between plant evolutionary biologist Karl J. Niklas and physicist Hanns-Christof Spatz, Plant Physics presents a detailed account of the principles of classical physics, evolutionary theory, and plant biology in order to explain the complex interrelationships among plant form, function, environment, and evolutionary history. Covering a wide range of topics—from the development and evolution of the basic plant body and the ecology of aquatic unicellular plants to mathematical treatments of light attenuation through tree canopies and the movement of water through plants’ roots, stems, and leaves—Plant Physics is destined to inspire students and professionals alike to traverse disciplinary membranes. Practical Handbook for Wetland Identification and Dileneation, Second Edition. John Grimson Lyon and Lynn Krise Lyon. 2011. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. 208 pp. $119.95, hardcover. ISBN 9781439838914. Wetland identification, although theoretically straight146 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 19, No. 1 The Northeastern Naturalist welcomes submissions of review copies of books that publishers or authors would like to recommend to the journal’s readership and are relevant to the journal’s mission of publishing information about the natural history of the northeastern US. Accompanying short, descriptive summaries of the text are also welcome. forward, is not cut and dry as a practice. Despite the time and expense, it is an economic and environmental necessity. The second edition of the bestselling Practical Handbook for Wetland Identification and Delineation offers solutions to real-world problems in the scientific and regulatory aspects of wetlands. The authors present characteristics and indicators of wetlands that are the focus of the jurisdictional issue, and discuss strategies and methods for making wetland identifications and delineations that meet federal requirements. This guide offers the latest techniques for conducting wetland evaluations; includes regulatory/permitting requirements, statutes, and other legal guidance; contains increased options for scientific evaluation of problematic areas; shows advances in mapping in surveying technologies; and includes numerous new photographs and external references. Updated and revised to reflect changes in the science and technology, this second edition brings together technical criteria, field indicators, and vital regional information in clear language and focused practical utility. Biology and Management of White-tailed Deer. David G. Hewitt (Ed.). 2011. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. 686 pp. $119.95, hardcover. ISBN 9781439806517. The backbone of many state wildlife management agencies’ policies and a featured hunting species through much of their range, White-tailed Deer are an important species ecologically, socially, and scientifically in most areas of North America. Highly adaptable and now living in close proximity to humans in many areas, White-tailed Deer are both the face of nature and the source of conflict with motorists, home-owners, and agricultural producers. Capturing the diverse aspects of Whitetailed Deer research, Biology and Management of White-tailed Deer is a reflection of the resources invested in the study of the species’ effects on ecosystems, predator-prey dynamics, population regulation, foraging behavior, and browser physiology. This volume, co-published with the Quality Deer Management Association, organizes and presents information on the most studied large mammal species in the world. The book covers the evolutionary history of the species, its anatomy, physiology, and nutrition, population dynamics, and ecology across its vast range (from central Canada through northern South America). The book then discusses the history of management of White-tailed Deer, beginning with early Native Americans and progressing through management by Europeans and examining population lows in the early 1900s, restocking efforts through the mid 1900s, and recent, overabundant populations that are becoming difficult to manage in many areas. This text highlights the importance of deer habitat management within the context of the management of wildlife at the ecosystem scale, while filling a void in information on modern management techniques that can be utilized by both professional and lay managers and addressing the new set of management challenges in urban/ suburban areas where traditional management techniques are not feasible. Includes a CD-Rom with color images. Challenges for Diadromous Fishes in a Dynamic Global Environment. Alexander J. Haro et al. (Eds.). 2009. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, MD. 943 pp. $69, hardcover. ISBN 9781934874080. Based on a 2007 international symposium, this book reviews the biology, ecology, human importance, and management and conservation of diadromous fishes, with the goal of providing innovative interpretations and opportunities for sustainability. Because diadromous fishes use different environments and migration corridors to complete their life history in ocean and freshwater environments, they are particularly vulnerable to direct and indirect consequences of human development and global climate change. This volume also presents new ecological and evolutionary concepts and experimental and modeling tools that advance understanding of the significance and the resilience of the diadromy life history strategies within ecosystems. The contributions within Challenges for Diadromous Fishes in a Dynamic Global Environment consider creative approaches for habitat protection and restoration to sustain stocks in the future.