J. Field Ornithol. 85(3):339–345, 2014 DOI: 10.1111/jofo.12073

RECENT LITERATURE

Edited by Sabrina S. Taylorstaylor@lsu.edu

BOOK REVIEWS

Birds and PeopleMark Cocker with photographs by DavidTipling. 2013. Random House, UK. 592pages, hundreds of color photographs. ISBN9780224081740. Approximately $70 (Hard-cover). Also available as an e-book.

Did you know that one of the Tanzaniannames for the Black-bellied Bustard (Lissotismelanogaster) is Ntasilalupweko, which means“my diarrhea never ends,” and that the HoubaraBustard (Chlamydotis undulata) can use its “defe-catory prowess” as a defense, so traumatizingattacking falcons that they forsake bustard hunt-ing forever, and even causing them to crash-land? Or that an individual parrot encounteredin Orinoco by the famous German explorer,Alexander van Humboldt, was the last livingkeeper of a language spoken by an extinctAmerindian race? I certainly didn’t, but dip-ping in and out of Mark Cocker’s “Birds andPeople” has provided me with material for mylectures, fascinating snippets to entertain friendsand family, and a deeper appreciation of thehistory, diversity, and depth of our interactionswith birds. “Birds and People” represents theassimilation of a vast pool of knowledge aboutour relationships with birds, contributed by650 people from 81 different countries, andpresented in entertaining and informative proseby Mark Cocker, with photographs by DavidTipling. The authors explain that this collectionof stories and information about birds servesto illustrate how people’s lives are entwinedwith and shaped by birds, both in the distantpast and today. The accounts are presented asa personal view of the authors, rather thanan exhaustive review, and are the product ofthousands of stories, reflections, and observa-tions sent in by contributors acknowledged andcited throughout the text. Although there are

common elements across the species’ accounts,such as exploitation and cultural significance,the book is organized according to taxa, ratherthan themes.

Some taxa inevitably receive more attentionthan others. For example, the section on pigeonsand doves starts with a detailed account of theDodo (Raphus cucullatus), including the originof its name, its use by humans, and possiblereasons for the strange caricature-like and an-thropomorphized images of the Dodo. It thenmoves on to discuss pigeons as symbols of peace,love, and fertility on the basis of evidence fromSumerian archaeological sites, and associationsbetween doves and fertility that are rooted in theJudaeo-Christian tradition. Also discussed is thevalue of pigeons to both ancient and modernpeople as carriers of information (in ancientRome as well as during World War II), as delica-cies, or just as birds to breed, fly, and “fancy.” Thetale of the extirpation of the Passenger Pigeon(Ectopistes migratorius) is illustrated with manyquotations describing the events that led totheir demise, followed by an analysis of culturalresponses to the demise of this super-abundantspecies. I enjoyed the section on albatrosses,which included an interesting and detailed anal-ysis of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “TheRime of the Ancient Mariner,” including spec-ulation on the possible origin of the symbolicuse of the albatross and the degree to which thisiconic poem shaped society’s attitudes towardsalbatrosses. The section on parrots covers odd-ities, such as New Zealand’s Kakapo (Strigopshabroptilus), discusses both trade in and thecultural significance of parrots to Amerindians,and details how parrots featured in literature,art, and religious imagery over the centuries.

Although the authors acknowledge that acomprehensive treatment of the subject wouldrun to 20 volumes, this book is still probablytoo large at 592 pages because the typeface

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is too small and difficult to read unless wellilluminated. The authors do not explain whythey chose to present the material according tobird species, arranged taxonomically following“Birds of the World” by Gill and Wright (2006).However, there are disadvantages associated withthis structure. For readers interested in a par-ticular theme (e.g., fashion, religion, hunting,or popular culture), locating the different birdspecies that are relevant to that theme is verydifficult. For example, you might know thatthere is a diving bird used for fishing, but thebook does not provide a means for locatingwhich species that might be. There is an attemptat referencing species together for some topics,such as “feather trade” in the general index, butthere needs to be more of this, or a separate indexfor the various themes.

There are many interesting facts, but somesections go into extraordinary detail, such as the>3 pages devoted to ostrich eggs and feathers,and could be dealt with more concisely. Thestories of contributors’ experiences and folklorescattered throughout make the book very en-gaging, but would have been better presentedin boxes separate from the main body of text.The authors emphasize that this account is notcomprehensive, but when I looked up speciesthat I am very familiar with, I found thatoccasionally the information could have beenmore up-to-date or better balanced. I felt thathuman–wildlife conflicts were perhaps under-represented, as was nature-based tourism involv-ing birds.

This is a book that many people will enjoyowning. It is very attractive with some stun-ning photographs, and even for those who areindifferent towards birds, among the diversityof themes covered there will be something thatappeals to all. But for those readers over theage of 50, don’t forget your ultra-strong readingglasses!

Yolanda van Heezik, Department of Zoology,University of Otago, New Zealand, yolanda.vanheezik@otago.ac.nz.

LITERATURE CITED

GILL, F., AND M. WRIGHT. 2006. Birds of the world:recommended English names. Princeton UniversityPress, Princeton, NJ.

A Feathered River Across the Sky: ThePassenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinc-tionJoel Greenberg. 2014. Bloomsbury, New York.289 pages, 16 color plates, additional blackand white photos, notes, index, and appendix.ISBN 9781620405345. $26.00 (Hardback).Also available as an e-book.

The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)is an enduring icon of extinction and the powerof humans to decimate even the most abun-dant and prolific species. The last PassengerPigeon died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914,a century ago this year. Now, 100 years afterthe loss of the species, there is renewed buzzabout Passenger Pigeons. A group called “ProjectPassenger Pigeon” seeks to educate people aboutthe Passenger Pigeon to prevent similar human-caused extinction. The Revive and Restore group(an offshoot of the Long-Now Foundation) isfocusing on genetic rescue of endangered speciesand the real possibility of “de-extincting” thePassenger Pigeon. And the new book by JoelGreenberg, “A Feathered River Across the Sky,”is the most important popular or scholarlywork on Passenger Pigeons in many decades.Greenberg has been working on this book forseveral years, releasing it earlier this year as arallying point for conservation and a host ofother discussions (such as on de-extinction) tocome.

The book begins with stories of the naturalhistory of Passenger Pigeons that are so incred-ible, so beyond any 21st century experience,that they almost cannot be believed. But thestories flow, one after the other, each welldocumented and cited so that soon the readerbecomes comfortable with the awe and scaleof the species and their behavior. So movingwere actual experiences with the pigeon thatAnthony Philip Heinrich composed an entiresymphony—an eight part requiem performedin Prague in 1857. So many were hunted byearly European colonists that they filled theirbellies when in season, likely even saving onesmall outpost from starvation after a severe cropfailure. The bounty was so huge that the extrawere fed to pigs, used as fertilizer, and evenplowed under in gardens to grow “more colorfulflowers.”

One could easily imagine that the huge flocksof birds could take a toll on agriculture. Duringplanting, the pigeons would descend and devour

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freshly sown seed. During harvest, the birdscould decimate fruit and grain from fields andorchards. So, of course, this provided additionalincentive to persecute and exploit the pigeons.

Despite the seeming waste and thoughtless-ness, it is possible that the harvest was somewhatsustainable until the mid-1800s. Most of theexploitation satisfied only local appetites andhunting methods were simple. By the 1850s,however, two major technologies—telegraph foralerting hunters and railways for transport ofcarcasses—opened the way for a large well-organized game-market business. Hundreds ofthousands or even millions of birds could becollected from a single nesting aggregation andshipped to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia,and other cities in between. Pigeons weresmoked, pickled, and dried for rugged traveland, at the opposite end of the spectrum, someof the finest recipes were prepared for fancy NewYork feasts. The fat was made into shorteningand soap, and chubby squabs were reduced to oilthat could be shipped or stored. Beds and pillowswere filled with pigeon feathers. Live birds werecollected for the sport of trapshooting.

The luring and netting techniques were manyand ingenious. Netters caught and trained “stoolpigeons” as decoys and, in some cases, woulddevise bizarre ways to temporarily blind “bait”pigeons to get them to perform. A single netcould sometimes catch so many birds (as manyas 300 dozen birds have been claimed in a singlenet at a salt spring) that men would have to usetheir teeth to crush pigeon heads to spare theirtired hands or use special instruments designedto quickly separate neck vertebrae.

By the mid-1880s, only three decades later,populations had declined to the point thathunting was no longer profitable for the largerprofessional hunting groups. However, localhunters and amateurs continued to exact theirtoll on any migrating flocks, and populationscontinued to crash.

After the many descriptions of the capturemethods used, the crowds of collectors, and sizeof the breeding flocks, the reader can conjurea vivid image of what must have occurred atthe larger nesting aggregations in the 1800s,such as the 1871 Wisconsin pigeon nesting,the huge Shelby, Michigan nestings of 1874and 1876, or the Petosky, Michigan nesting of1878. The throngs of hunters and trappers, thecrazy fanfare, the celebratory atmosphere, the

barrels of pigeons being sent to market, andthe live captures boxed for sport. It was likea migratory biological gold rush. But, by 1883,the pigeon gatherings were already a skeletonof what they once were. By 1887, only twostates reported nestings, and the pitifully smallnumbers of birds were still harassed. By the late1890s, reports were mostly of single birds or verysmall flocks, and usually ended with the bird inquestion being shot. And the last specimen wascollected from the wild in 1902; only captivebirds remained.

Of these captive birds, the last and mostfamous was Martha, who died in the CincinnatiZoo in September 1914. Greenberg expertlychronicles the last remaining captive flocks andwhat was known of them (and what was notrecorded). Many of the details about Martha’slife were poorly documented and even the doc-umented reports contain conflict and inconsis-tencies. What is known is that she was old andinfirm in her final days and, on the late afternoonof 1 September 1914, she was found dead in hercage. No other wild birds had been documentedfor the decade before Martha’s death, and nonewere seen after.

As I read Greenberg’s book, I was astonishedto read the details of the earlier mass roosting andbreeding events and horrified by the accounts ofthe carnage. Most scholars and authors agreethat the pigeons disappeared by our doing—that our slaughter of the adults, our harvest ofthe squabs, and our disturbance of the breedingcolonies made it impossible for the birds toreplace themselves. Over time, each of the maincolonies collapsed until nothing was left. Oneof the great questions was whether we reallyaccomplished this in just a few short decades,or whether, in fact, the birds had been slowlydeclining by our hands since the early 1600s, andthe scale of the decline simply quickened due totheir stressed biology and our own advances intechnology and commerce.

I also wondered how much we have learnedfrom the Passenger Pigeon. On one hand, theslaughter of birds has declined, and many lawsare in place to protect most avian species. On theother hand, there are still species that continueto be overharvested and for which hunters andmarkets fight to maintain rights to overexploitnatural stocks.

Greenberg presents us with a crystal-clearparable of such dramatic proportions that it

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almost seems unbelievable. The book was notalways an easy read, and even for a biologistwho is roughly familiar with the story, the scopeof the pigeon’s population size and the scope ofour human folly were so large as to challenge mymind. The book is logically organized almostas a series of vignettes, each providing insightinto some aspect of pigeon biology, harvest,market, and so on, until the reader can almostimagine being back in a small Midwest townduring a pigeon nesting. The work is thoroughlydocumented, as a scholarly work should be,with excellent footnotes, bibliography, and in-dex. I also thoroughly enjoyed “Appendix A,”which is a collection of other Passenger Pigeonmiscellany that did not quite fit anywhere else.The book is a must-read for any conservationist,and is packed with quotable or citable material.And as we move toward the possibility of “de-extincting” Passenger Pigeons, the book gives usmuch to think about. Wouldn’t it be amazingto recreate phenomena like the mass roostingsand breedings of Passenger Pigeons? And wouldthe average modern American welcome such ahuge impact on the landscape as these nativepigeons brought? Could the small remainingforests of the Midwest even sustain them if theywere revived from extinction?

John Dumbacher, California Academy of Sciences,CA, USA, dumbacher@calacademy.org.

The Ornaments of Life: Coevolutionand Conservation in the TropicsTheodore H. Fleming and W. John Kress. 2013.University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. ix-xii+ 588 pages, 98 color plates, 2 halftones, 15line drawings, 53 tables. ISBN 9780226253411.$50 (Paperback). Also available as an e-book.

In this impressive tome, Theodore Flemingand John Kress provide us with an absorbingoverview of the ecology and evolution of pollenand seed dispersal mutualisms in the tropics,delving into their ecology and developmentthrough evolutionary time. Motivated by aquote from Robert Whittaker (1977), whichseemed to trivialize the ecological role of birdsin tropical systems (“Birds do pollinate certainflowers, distribute certain seeds . . . . On thewhole, however, birds seem to be evolution’sornaments on the tree of community function”),

the authors set out to demonstrate that tropi-cal vertebrate pollinators and frugivores are anintegral component of ecosystem functioningand have been important protagonists in speciesdiversification and plant evolution. Over 10chapters, the authors beautifully demonstratehow interconnected plant and animal life is inthe tropics.

The Ornaments of Life naturally falls intotwo sections; the first few chapters describingthe ecology of plant-pollinator and frugivoreinteractions and the latter chapters providingan in-depth exploration of the co-evolution ofplant and animal traits associated with pollina-tion and seed dispersal. The chapters providea logical progression through the topic, fromfirst principles describing the taxonomic diver-sity of plants and animals involved in thesemutualisms, to the nature of pollen and seeddispersal mutualisms and the consequences ofanimal dispersal for plant populations, throughto a macro-ecological and evolutionary perspec-tive on the role of dispersal mutualisms inspeciation and the development of floral andfruit traits. Throughout the book, the authorsdid a phenomenal job of reviewing and syn-thesizing the massive literature on pollinationand seed dispersal, and presenting it in a veryapproachable and readable form. At each step,the authors aim to identify the emerging patternsfrom their data review to provide some gen-eralized ecological and evolutionary principlesgoverning plant-pollination and seed dispersalmutualisms.

In the first chapters, we learn that tropicalplants rely on relatively few nectar-feeding ver-tebrates (mostly birds and bats) for pollination,but a larger range of fruit-eating animals (birds,bats, possums, and primates) are essential forseed dispersal. The spatial distribution and,in particular, the predictability of floweringand fruiting in tropical plants is important indetermining the make-up and the biomass ofplant-visitor communities and appears to con-tribute to community assembly rules, especiallyin Neotropical forests. The authors then describethe interactions between floral traits (e.g., nectarcomposition), plant mating systems, and polli-nator behavior (e.g., territoriality and traplining)in determining patterns of outcrossing and seedset and the consequences of these for plant pop-ulation genetic diversity and structure. Similarly,the authors investigate the role of seed dispersal

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and recruitment limitation in determining thespatial structure of plant populations, as well asdiscussing the outcomes of frugivore dispersalbehavior (e.g., clumping of seeds in roosting ordisplay sites).

In the later chapters, the discussion turns tothe contribution of pollinators and frugivoresto speciation patterns and as drivers of floraland fruit trait evolution. The authors pointout that co-evolution between plants and theirpollinators appears to be stronger than therelationships between plants and their seed dis-persers, though a few generalizations can still bemade about different seed-dispersal syndromes(e.g., bird-dispersed fruits are typically high incarotenoids). This tighter co-evolution in plant-pollinator relationships appears to contribute tohigher speciation rates in plants with more spe-cialized pollinator interactions, and sometimesalso in their pollinators (e.g., hummingbirds).Again, in these latter chapters, the authors doa great job of synthesizing information on theevolution of a large range of plant traits andlinking them with ecological or physical traits ofpollinators and frugivores to gain a handle on theselective pressures acting on trait development. Itis clear throughout that the authors have a greatdepth of knowledge on the ecology of tropicalsystems.

Finally, underlying all of these observationsis a deep concern by the authors that many ofthese mutualisms are being lost at an unprece-dented rate through degradation, defaunation,and fragmentation of tropical forests. The truelegacy of these perturbations is yet to be fullyrealized and is likely to represent a substantialextinction debt.

The Ornaments of Life is an expertly written,comprehensive introduction to the topic ofplant-pollinator and seed dispersal mutualismsand will be of use particularly to upper-levelundergraduates and post-graduates studying thetopic or, more broadly, to anyone with anappreciation of the natural history of tropicalfauna and flora. The book is accessible to thegeneral reader, but sufficiently detailed and well-referenced for students who may want to follow-up with the primary literature. The book isalso well presented, printed on glossy paper,and containing many color plates (includingsome beautiful illustrations) and color figures.One minor complaint is that legends were notincluded on the graphs (a style decision?), but in

the figure captions, making it difficult to quicklyinterpret the information presented in graphs.

Although the authors necessarily restrict theiranalyses to higher vertebrate pollinators andfrugivores and only in the tropics, it does lead thereader to wonder whether similar analyses canbe conducted on invertebrate plant-pollinatorinteractions (which are likely to be just as inter-esting due to a longer period of co-evolution)and also how temperate and tropical systemscompare in terms of the range of adaptations anddifferences in selective pressures, and whetherthe same general patterns may persist. Theauthors also just briefly touch on two areas ofresearch in this book, which I think offer excitingopportunities for further insight into plant-pollinator and frugivore interactions: networkanalysis (e.g., Jordano et al. 2002, Petanidouet al. 2008) and the opportunities offered bygenetic analysis of dispersed pollen and seeds(e.g., Jordano et al. 2007, Grivet et al. 2009,Karubian et al. 2010, Ottewell et al. 2012). Ifthere was to be a second edition of this book,it would be great to expand on and provide thesame rigorous review of these areas of research.

Kym Ottewell, Science and Conservation, Depart-ment of Parks and Wildlife, Western Australia,Australia, kym.ottewell@dpaw.wa.gov.au.

LITERATURE CITED

GRIVET, D., J. J. ROBLEDO-ARNUNCIO, P. E. SMOUSE,AND V. L. SORK. 2009. Relative contribution of con-temporary pollen and seed dispersal to the effectiveparental size of seedling population of Californiavalley oak (Quercus lobata, Nee). Molecular Ecology18: 3967–3979.

JORDANO, P., J. BASCOMPTE, AND J. M. OLESEN. 2002.Invariant properties in coevolutionary networks ofplant-animal interactions. Ecology Letters 6: 69–81.

———, C. GARCIA, J. A. GODOY, AND J. L. GARCIA-CASTANO. 2007. Differential contribution of frugi-vores to complex seed dispersal patterns. Proceedingsof the National Academy of Sciences USA 104:3278–3282.

KARUBIAN, J., V. L. SORK, T. ROORDA, R. DURAES, ANDT. B. SMITH. 2010. Destination-based seed dispersalhomogenizes genetic structure of a tropical palm.Molecular Ecology 19: 1745–173.

OTTEWELL, K., E. GREY, F. CASTILLO, AND J. KARUBIAN.2012. The pollen dispersal kernel and mating systemof an insect-pollinated tropical palm, Oenocarpusbataua. Heredity 109: 332–339.

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PETANIDOU, T., A. S. KALLIMANIS, J. TZANOPOULOS, S.P. SGARDELIS, AND J. D. PANTIS. 2008. Long-termobservation of a pollination network: fluctuationin species and interactions, relative invariance ofnetwork structure and implications for estimates ofspecialization. Ecology Letters 11: 564–575.

Ten Thousand Birds: OrnithologySince DarwinTim Birkhead, Jo Wimpenny and Bob Mont-gomerie. 2014. Princeton University Press,Princeton, NJ. vii-xvii + 524 pp, 94color illustrations and 60 halftones. ISBN9780691151977. $45 (Hardcover). Also avail-able as an e-book.

This fascinating, wide-ranging synthesis of or-nithological history since Darwin brings a mix ofscience, discovery, innovation, eccentricity, andpersonality to ornithology. Perhaps more impor-tantly, it brings to life some of the people whomade some basic contributions, illustrating howthey made their discoveries, and the birds thatinduced them to pursue ornithology. Becausebirds are beautiful, abundant, and diurnal, scien-tists focused on them earlier than other creaturesthat are much harder to study. Ornithologistsdeveloped theories that ultimately drove otherbranches of science, especially animal behavior,physiology, and evolution. Ornithology has con-tributed much to the study of biology, and thebook chronicles these discoveries. Ernst Mayris quoted as noting that, “birds are such agood stepping-stone to do researches in generalbiology because there is no other group oforganisms that is as well-known as birds.” Thisbook is an incredible and impressive tale ofdiscovery.

The book is divided into 11 chapters, fromyesterday’s birds to tomorrow’s birds. And inbetween are some of the major topics in ornithol-ogy: the origin and diversification of species,birds on the tree of life, ecological adaptationsfor breeding, form and function, instinct, be-havioral adaptations, sexual selection, and pop-ulation studies. There are small autobiographiesscattered through the book that bring to lifesome of the ornithologists who made key discov-eries that moved beyond ornithology. Anecdotesare liberally sprinkled: Stresemann once got atattoo of a headhunter on his arm while inMalaysia, Robert Hinde built a window birdbox outside his window when he had German

measles at ten, and Colonel R. Meinertzhagenstole specimens from museums and quite likelymurdered his wife. Not only are the topics fasci-nating and scholarly treated, but the delightfulaccounts of the scientists involved will keep anyundergraduate interested.

Several aspects of the book contribute toits appeal. There are fine illustrations of birdsand people by some important artists, such asRobert Bateman and Guy Tudor. A noveltyis the chronologies illustrated by a few of thebooks that transformed ornithology. The timelines that chronicle people, books, and discover-ies make ornithological history fun.

Because it is ultimately a book about scien-tists, written by scientists, it is selective in itschoice of people to illustrate the ideas, and manyquite creative ornithologists will feel left out.The intent of the book was to include discoveriesthat had broad biological relevance, changed thecourse of ornithology, made an important point,or simply appealed to the authors’ interests. Itis by its very nature, impossible to be inclusive,and others would make different choices. Bydescribing the development of ideas by someof the people who developed them, it providesa valuable tale of discovery. It is a fascinatingaccount of ornithological history that bringstogether a wide range of topics.

It will be of interest to professional ornithol-ogists, and people interested in animal behav-ior, physiology, evolution, science history, aswell as birders, naturalists, and conservationists.Philosophers of science will find it a fascinatinghistory of the development of ornithologicalthought since Darwin. I highly recommend thebook—I found it fascinating.

Joanna Burger, Department of Cell Biologyand Neuroscience, Rutgers University, NJ, USA,Burger@dls.rutgers.edu.

Wildlife in Airport Environments:Preventing Animal–Aircraft Collisionsthrough Science-Based ManagementTravis DeVault, Bradley Blackwell, and JerroldBelant. 2013. Johns Hopkins University Press,Baltimore, MD. 200 pages, 53 black & whiteillustrations. ISBN 9781421410821. $75.00(Hardback). Also available as an e-book.

If a book like this had been available someyears ago when I started my research on wildlife

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strikes as a human–wildlife conflict issue, itwould have saved me a lot of time on biblio-graphical research and helped me to distinguishreliable literature from anecdotal information;one of the advantages of this book is its selectionof grey literature among the large quantityavailable. This book will be helpful to airportsafety managers and new researchers studyingthe subject because it summarizes much ofthe literature available. The research is stronglybiased to the United States, but considering thatthe United States has almost 35% of the world’sairports, the book is a good starting point thatcould be expanded to integrate internationalresearch.

Wildlife strikes at airports are a two-foldproblem: airport safety managers need an easilyapplied solution, but researchers face complexand multidisciplinary problems that require suf-ficient time to investigate for delivery of resultsapplicable in practice. Thus, finding robustsolutions in the timeline required by managersis often difficult. This book summarizes mostof the research conducted and highlights goodpractices that may be rapidly and efficientlyadopted by managers.

The first part of the book is organized intosix chapters where the authors describe in detailmany management practices, such as exclud-ing wildlife from airports and behavioral andsensory cues important for managing wildlife.The authors then propose a variety of solutions.Most interesting and useful to airport safetymanagers are the comments on the effectivenessof management methods for different species,

and the wide variety of examples outliningpotential methods.

The second part, consisting of four chapters,is a useful summary of many papers, comments,reports, manuals, and general literature availableon management. There is not much novelty inthis section, but its real value lies in how itcondenses the information, focusing the readeron best management practices. Many importantsubjects are addressed here, from behavioralobservation and diet analyses of wildlife tostormwater and turfgrass management.

Part three, consisting of four chapters, sum-marizes information on wildlife monitoring. Inmy opinion, this section is critical and wouldhave benefitted from a more detailed discus-sion of monitoring schemes and, importantly,risk assessment methodologies that have beenadopted (or not) worldwide. These two pointsare essential, the first to understand an airport’scircumstances and thus implement appropriatestandardized monitoring protocols, and the sec-ond to evaluate the effectiveness of wildlife strikerisk assessment methodologies. A more globallyoriented text would have provided a comparisonof the different practices used worldwide to helpairport managers choose their working tools.

The last chapter of the book outlines futureareas of research, and seems to be a call for in-tegrating modeling approaches. Could a secondvolume of the book be in preparation?

Cecilia Soldatini, GECI, Grupo de Ecologıa yConservacion de Islas, A.C., Ensenada, BajaCalifornia, Mexico, cecilsol@gmail.com.