Book Reviews

Abstract

B. Moss (1998) Pp. xvi+557. Blackwell Science, Oxford. ISBN 0-632-0312-9. Price £24.95 (paperback). Many will be familiar with the earlier editions of 1980 and 1988 and note how the size and full title of this book have progressively increased. Photographs have been introduced on a wider scale, and there has been substantial rewriting in this edition, which retains the same readable style and organization of content as in the second. The fundamentals of freshwater science are updated and coverage of their application to practical problems has been considerably strengthened. The complex Pantanal wetlands of the Matto Grosso in Brazil replace the Pongolo floodplain of Africa to illustrate general features, before conditions for life in freshwaters are described in detail. There are shifts in emphasis in the treatment of the chemical milieu, and the impact of human settlement, agriculture, industry and atmospheric pollution receive greater attention than before. In the first of two chapters on rivers, adaptations and energy flow in turbulent, erosive waters are fully dealt with but for further coverage of some continuing research themes in stream ecology – community structuring, persistence, disturbance and recovery – we are referred elsewhere. Here, as in the following account of lowland rivers and wetlands, prominence is given to applied aspects, ranging from human disease and fisheries to floodplain restoration, pollution and biomonitoring. Reservations about current toxicity testing practice re-emerge and the previous listing of ‘approved’ herbicides has been deleted. The excellent coverage of lakes, their structure, plankton and fish communities, fisheries and evolution, is maintained in four chapters which marginally occupy the greater share of this book. Complications introduced by knowledge of microbial loops, phagotrophs and omnivores amongst others, into the traditional concept of a grazing food chain and energy pathway in lakes are discussed. Other topics which are revisited and expanded include eutrophication, competition between submerged plants and phytoplankton, biomanipulations of the trophic cascade, and the restoration of shallow lakes to plant dominance (with a summary of the characteristics of emergent plants of relevance in choosing species for restoration projects). Less anticipated is a relatively short but pithy examination of issues associated with still-water angling in the fisheries section. The latter retains Garrod's ‘classic’ analysis of a commercial tilapia fishery from the first edition and further material is used from the developing case-history of the great Lake Victoria, namely the impacts of its apparent enrichment and the introduction of Nile perch (but not, surprisingly, of the massive invasion of the lake by water hyacinth). The separate, challenging and philosophical endpiece justifies a lengthened subtitle to the third edition. Confronted by the vulnerability of freshwaters to human population growth, resource use and technological development, the author questions the values of responses relying on fashionable research in genetics, molecular biology and ecotoxicology. Few ecologists would disagree with him that ecological problems are best approached at as near to whole system studies as can be obtained. The contrasting progress of recent environmental treaties and legislation is traced and Professor Moss concludes by developing his fascinating analogy between the alternative stable state models of shallow lakes – clearwater, plant-dominated and turbid, phytoplankton-dominated, and those of human societies – traditional complex sharing systems and Western technological society. Without any doubt the new edition will serve to maintain and broaden the appeal of this established text book for university courses in freshwater ecology.