Book review: Plants and Islands revisited

Abstract

news and update ISSN 1948‐6596 book review Plants and Islands revisited The Biology of Island Floras, edited by David Bramwell & Juli Caujape‐Castells, 2011, Cambridge University Press, 522 pp. $120 (hardback) ISBN: 978‐0‐521‐11808‐8; http://www.cambridge.org In April 1977, David Bramwell, at the time recently appointed as director of the Canarian Botanical Garden Viera y Clavijo in Gran Canaria (Canaries, Spain), hosted a scientific meeting commemorat‐ ing the 25 th anniversary of the garden. Two years later this yielded an excellent book, appropriately entitled Plants and Islands (Bramwell, 1979), which became a classic reference on the state of knowledge on island evolution and conservation. It signalled the end of a golden age of island‐ themed books that began with Sherwin Carlquist's Island Life (1965), and included Robert MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson’s The Theory of Island Bio‐ geography (1967), Carlquist’s Island Biology (1974) and David Lack’s posthumous Island Biol‐ ogy (1976). Thirty‐two years later, close to his retire‐ ment, David Bramwell, together with the current Head of the Department of Molecular Biodiversity at the Botanical Garden, Juli Caujape‐Castells, have edited a new text. In it they revisit the sce‐ nario of island plants, but now in light of the geo‐ logical, molecular and phylogeographic tools de‐ veloped since the publication of the original Plants and Islands which have impressively enhanced our understanding of the biology of island floras. The book encompasses 21 chapters written by 48 relevant authors (of these only two are sur‐ vivors of Plants and Islands: David Bramwell and Vernon Heywood) plus a preface and subject in‐ dex. An introduction prepared by David Bram‐ well, in which the structure of the book is ex‐ plained, is followed by two interesting generalist chapters. These reflect the development, over the last three decades, of the state of knowledge on “The reproductive biology of island plants” and “Spatial methodologies in historical biogeography of islands.” In the former, Daniel Crawford et al. present an updated and easy‐to‐read synthesis, stressing the importance of comparing island plants with their continental relatives for under‐ standing the changes in mating systems induced by the selective pressure existing on islands. In the latter, Paula Posadas and colleagues provide a simple and straightforward example‐based expla‐ nation of the new possibilities that appear when phylogenetic data and spatial distribution tech‐ niques in biogeography are combined. In the central part of the book, the present knowledge on the origin and evolution of the flora of the more important islands and archipelagos worldwide are given, including Hawai’i, Galapa‐ gos, the Caribbean islands, Madagascar, Socotra, Macaronesia, Pitcairn, New Zealand and New Caledonia. From this part I would like to highlight the high level of all the contributions. Those of par‐ ticular interest may include the highly informative “Origins and evolution of the Galapagos vascular plants” by Alan Tye & Javier Francisco‐Ortega, and the chapters written by Juli Caujape‐Castells (“Jesters, red queen, boomerangs and surfers: a molecular outlook on the diversity of the Canarian endemic flora”) and by Alain Vanderpoorten et al. (“Dispersal, diversity and evolution of the Macaronesian cryptogamic floras”) in which an audacious interpretation of the role of Macarone‐ sia, and hence of islands worldwide, as climate refugia for continental back‐colonisation is sup‐ ported. Unfortunately the list of islands included is incomplete. Although a plethora of literature has been recently published in this respect, an up‐to‐ date summary of present knowledge on the origin and evolutionary features of many islands and archipelagos that have contributed significantly to our understanding of insular floras is missing. Among them are the Mediterranean islands, Sey‐ chelles, Mascarenes, Juan Fernandez, South Atlan‐ tic islands and French Polynesia. The conservation‐focused last part of the book, for me the less polished, includes several general chapters, such as “Invasive alien species © 2012 the authors; journal compilation © 2012 The International Biogeography Society — frontiers of biogeography 4.3, 2012