COMMUNITY ECOLOGY OF SALAMANDERS

Abstract

Salamanders (Amphibia: Caudata) are often dismissed, even by biologists, as interesting oddities: small, unobtrusive animals, seemingly far-removed from the mainstream of vertebrate evolution and largely irrelevant to ecosystem function or to the development of ecological theory. In this slim volume, one of our preeminent ecologists has gone far toward correcting this inaccurate view. N. G. Hairston is uniquely well-qualified for the task he has set for himself. It is only a slight exaggeration to state that Hairston and an outstanding cadre of his former graduate students (including D. E. Gill, K. C. Nishikawa, M. T. Southerland, S. G. Tilley, and H. M. Wilbur) have virtually defined experimental salamander ecology. Because a number of the other important researchers in this area (notably R. G. Jaeger and his coworkers) have employed approaches that are consistent with those of the Hairston school, experimental salamander ecology forms a relative cohesive whole. This book is, however, much more than a mere compilation of what is known about the community ecology of salamanders, for Hairston is a man with a mission: to call into question the entire body of concepts that constitutes current community ecology. Community theory, which emerged some 25 years ago with the seminal theoretical papers by R. H. MacArthur, R. Levins, and their coworkers, is considered by Hairston (p. 201) to be unacceptable . . . too many facts must be ignored. Hairston's chief weapon in his assault on current community theory is the controlled field experiment (the hallmark of acceptable scientific procedure [p. 35]). Although he acknowledges at one point that field experiments do not necessarily succeed, he proceeds as if they are the only way to study ecology. Alternative approaches (such as descriptive studies, analysis of patterns of correlation, observation of uncontrolled natural experiments, etc.) are dismissed as providing, at best, weak inference (p. 173). Many readers of Evolution may find this dichotomy between good and bad science to be overstated and needlessly stark. For all their clarity and rigor, field experiments are impossible or impractical to apply to a great many important problems. The reader is referred to T. W. Schoener's (1983) review for a more measured, though still very favorable, assessment of the role of field experiments in ecology. Hairston begins with a very useful historical review of the development of community theory and a spirited critique of that theory's untested, and often patently