Book review: An integrative overview on alpine habitats

Abstract

news and update ISSN 1948-6596 book review An integrative overview on alpine habitats The Biology of Alpine Habitats, by Laszlo Nagy & Georg Grabherr Oxford University Press, 2009, 336 pp. ISBN13: 978-0-19-856703-5 http://www.oup.com/ Mountains, and specifically alpine habitats, are fragile and extremely sensitive to perturbations, because of intense gravity effects on flows of en- ergy and materials. As a consequence, they are highly exposed to global change impacts. Under- standing the abiotic and biotic patterns and proc- esses involved in alpine habitats is not only of ut- most importance for researchers interested in mountain regions, but also for those looking to gain deeper insights in current biological debates, such as the effects of nutrient limitations on spe- cies diversity, dispersal/colonization dynamics and niche space filling, the changing nature of species interactions in harsh habitats, or impacts of global change in “nowhere to go” habitats. Nagy and Grabherr’s The Biology of Alpine Habitats deals, among others, with those topics and it is a neat inspection of the upper part of mountains, their constituent elements and the challenges that they face under global change. The book is organized in eleven chapters. The first part (chapters 1, 2, and 3) focuses on de- fining alpine habitats, describing the different mountain regions across the globe from high lati- tudes to the tropics, and also the distribution of the main abiotic and biotic factors along eleva- tional gradients. The second part of the book (chapters from 4 to 8) describes the main abiotic factors constituting alpine habitats, such as en- ergy, climate, landforms, hydrology and soils, and the relation of these factors to alpine communi- ties. These first two parts of the book provide the necessary foundations to discuss global change impacts on climate, nitrogen deposition and land uses in alpine habitats, and to offer a brief sum- mary on conservation issues (chapters 9 and 10). The way the authors frame and organise the book provides the reader with the chance to surf smoothly across the key elements constituting alpine habitats and the relationships between these elements. This easy-to-follow flow also con- tinues when it comes to integrate the variety of spatial and temporal scales in which the drivers shaping current alpine habitats operate: from ex- planations of the evolutionary and biogeographic processes behind the formation of alpine floras and their traits, to the role of species interactions and their specific abilities in the colonization of new areas. This journey across scales allows Nagy and Grabherr to integrate knowledge that belongs to disciplines such as geology, climatology, bio- geography, community ecology or eco-physiology. Their definition of ecological communities (“…net outcome of all biotic interaction and abiotic con- straints in a given location at a given time, with a given background of history, species pool)” illus- trates the integrative perspective in which this book is framed. The role of historical biogeographic proc- esses to explain the formation of alpine floras and current alpine biodiversity patterns is explicitly discussed in Chapter 7. Readers will find that the authors highlight how biogeographical disciplines such as phylogeography (Box 7.1) are of utmost interest for linking past dynamics and structure of alpine populations with current biodiversity pat- terns. An excellent idea was to devote the last part of this chapter to the adaptation and survival of alpine organisms. In doing this, the authors rec- ognise the evolutionary foundations of issues that have been often perceived as pure ecological phe- nomena, such as eco-physiology or reproduction (adaptations to alpine existence across different time scales are summarized in Fig 7.12). This inte- gration of evolutionary and ecological aspects in a biogeographical framework to better understand adaptation and survival abilities of alpine habitats provides a robust venue to better discuss future responses of alpine biodiversity to global change. In summary, The Biology of Alpine Habitats, which is part of the Habitat Series published by Oxford University Press, intends to provide stu- frontiers of biogeography 2.2, 2010 — © 2010 the authors; journal compilation © 2010 The International Biogeography Society