too shortly in Lurquin’s book. Developmentsin the pipeline, ‘pharming’ edible vaccinesfrom bananas, approaches aimed at alteringthe biochemical food composition for addednutritional value (take the sugar beet thatproduces fructans instead of saccharose), sus-tainable non-food applications such as starch-es or fatty acids with altered physicochemicalproperties or the production of degradablebiopolymers in cotton are either dealt with fartoo shortly or not at all. I would not expect ageneral rise in enthusiasm for exciting newthings to come from green gene biotechnologyamong readers of this chapter.

The average reader of this book shouldhave some background in molecular geneticsand then, like the molecular biologist, canenjoy reading many parts of the book and findthe historical outline and anecdotes, some ofwhich are incorporated in footnotes, enter-taining, even if he may find the weighting of itsparts strongly skewed. The title Green Phoenixis supposed to denote a phoenix-like re-emergence of transgenic plant research afterthe initial claims of direct DNA uptake byplants had been proven wrong. But this readerfailed to grasp the connection that is suppos-edly made between different lines of research.By the way, in searching for this book in storesor databases do not mix it up with GreenPhoenix by William Allen. Subtitled Restoringthe Tropical Forests of Guanacaste, Costa Rica,this is a book that may possibly carry its titlesomewhat more fittingly.

Volker KnoopBonn, Germany

Metcalfe I., Smith J. M. B., Morwood M.,

Davidson I. (eds.): Faunal and floral migrations

and evolution in SE Asia-Australasia. 20 tabs.,124 figs., 416 pp. A.A. Balkema Publishers,Rotterdam, 2001. Hardcover 142.25, £ 79.00,US $ 130.00. ISBN 90 5809 349 2.

Ever since Wallace commented in 1858 on theremarkably rapid change from a Eurasianto an Australasian fauna between Borneo and

Sulawesi, the region has fascinated biogeogra-phers. The result has been a regular flood ofresearch papers and books, and there is noindication that this flood is about to stop. Thebook edited by Ian Metcalfe, Jeremy Smith,Mike Morwood and Iain Davidson is just thelatest of this parade, and one might ask why weneed another publication on this already well-researched area. Faunal and Floral Migrationsand Evolution in SEAsia-Australasia is based onthe proceedings of the conference on ‘WhereWorlds Collide: Faunal and Flora Migrationsand Evolution in South East Asia-Australasia’held in Armidale, Australia in November 1999.The result is an eclectic mix of 31 papers. Thesevary from lengthy anddetailed reviewpapers, toshort research reports.

The taxonomic coverage of the book isremarkable: conodonts, brachiopods, radiola-rians, trichopterans, butterflies, dinosaurs,birds, mammals (inclusive of Homo sapiens),plants, Angiosperms. And within the morepopular groups, such as Angiosperms andMammals, several papers dealing with morespecific groups are found: Restionaceae,Lauraceae, Proteaceae and Alectryon (Sap-indceae), and rodents, macaques and humansin the latter. This taxic range is alsoexpressed in the time span covered, withseveral fossil groups (e.g. conodonts anddinosaurs), as well as numerous fossils ofextant groups. There is less emphasis on theextant groups.

This diverse and taxonomically variousassemblage of papers is more or less organisedinto six sections: (1) Palaeogeography, (2)Palaeozoic and Mesozoic Geology and Bioge-ography, (3) Wallace’s Line, (4) Plant Bioge-ography and Evolution, (5) non Primates andfinally, us: (6) Primates. Space prohibits adetailed discussion of each paper; instead I willuse the sections of the book as organisingprinciples.

The book starts with a two-paper sectionfocusing on the palaeogeographic backgroundof the region. These two review papers providea good introduction to the book, as well as tothe complex tectonic history of the area. Ian

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Metcalfe deals with the bewildering Palaeozoicand Mesozoic period in an excellent way, and Iwould recommend his chapter as one of thebest on this period. Particularly good forAngiosperm botanists is Robert Hall’s long,and excellent review of the Cenozoic recon-structions. Unfortunately this chapter ismarred by some very dark maps, which looklike colour images processed by a black-and-white printer. They might have been very nicein colour.

The second section includes five papersdealing with the information from diversefossil faunas and floras. For a neotologicalbotanist, it was nice to read about the fossilsupport for the geological scenarios presentedin the first section. The third section is a ratherdiverse assemblage, collected under the title of‘Wallace’s Line’. It starts with a paper byClode and O’Brien evaluating what Wallacemeant by his Line, and how much empiricalsupport he had for this concept. Very nice,indeed, to see a concept like that in the contextof its first formulation almost 150 years ago.And sobering to realize how such concepts canchange. Also delightful is Erdelen’s assessmentof the value of these lines we love drawing onmaps. They may be over-simplifications, butwithout them biogeography would be muchless exciting!

Section Four, on plants, starts with Mor-ley’s paper on the remarkable diversity ofprimitive Angiosperms in the rain forests ofAsia–Australasia. This led Takhtajan to sug-gest that this area is the cradle of theAngiosperms. But Morley argues cogently,and with good fossil support, that thesefamilies are relictual. They have been lostfrom the rest of the planet, where climaticchange during the Tertiary resulted in envi-ronments inimical to the survival of theseancient rain forest taxa. Relative climaticstability in the Malesia area protected thelast pockets of these Cretaceous families.Consequently their unique presence in thisarea reflects not an area of origin, but an areaof persistence. This is consistent with theopinions of Kershaw et al., expressed in the

next chapter, that the extent of rain forest inSouth East Asia was not reduced during thelast glacial maximum, but may even havebeen increased by the more extensive coastalshelf.

Sections Five and Six, predictably, dealwith non Primates and Primates respectively.Four papers are dedicated to humans – it isnice to see us featured so directly as aproduct of biological evolution! Does thismean that this book will be banned inKansas? Section Five piles on the evidenceof the disjunction across Wallacea, and dem-onstrates how few animals were involved inthe Austral–Asian interchange, despite the ca.10 my time span available for this. It mattersnot whether isopleths of species and genericrichness are used (Kitching, Eastwood andHurley), or whether the taxa are listed byisland (Keast).

What are the positive elements of thisvolume? Firstly, there is the substantial cov-erage of fossils, from conodonts to fossilProteaceae. Secondly, I rather liked the em-pirical feel of the book. There is little ideo-logical posturing, mostly papers got on withtheir data and analyses, without much navel-gazing about their own methods, or attackingthe methods used by others. The book is notconfrontationalist. Thirdly, the broad taxo-nomic coverage means that there is somethingin there for all biologists, and further, itshowed how broad-based the support forWallacea is! Finally, although it is not anintroductory primer, the book is structured sothat it will be totally accessible for somebodywho had never heard of Wallace’s Line (arethere such biologists?). But there are alsoweak points. Firstly, the analytical rigouris often absent. Maybe this is a necessaryconsequence of a less confrontationalistapproach. Or possibly many biogeographersare getting weary of long debates aboutbiogeographical methods, without any resultsto actually explain where these patterns wecan see come from. Thirdly, I missed a goodsynthetic chapter on modern plant distribu-tions (possibly because I am a botanist!). And

Book reviews 113

lastly, although many different methodologi-cal approaches were used in at least somepapers in this volume, there are no pan-biogeographical papers, no dispersal-vicari-ance analyses, and no area-cladistic analyses.Have these methods fallen from favour? Orwere there simply no adherents of theseschools at the meeting?

It is a nicely produced book, with veryfew errors (well, I did not find any . . .), andis well-bound. The only disturbing elementare the illustrations. I found them too heavyand dark, in some instances it becomesdifficult to see the details of the images,either because the colours are too dark, or

because the images are not clear. I wouldhave preferred crisper images, with a some-what paler print. All in all, it is a goodbook, which complements the diverse previ-ous books on Wallacea. And despite itseclectism, or maybe because of it, it providesan excellent introduction into the biogeo-graphical problematic of Wallace’s Line.To those interested in biogeography, andparticular, those interested in Wallacea, it ishighly recommended.

Peter LinderZurich, Switzerland

114 Book reviews