On the Origin of Bird SpeciesA review of Speciation in Birds. By Trevor Price . Greenwood Village (Colorado): Roberts and Company Publishers. $59.95 (paper). x + 470 p.; ill.; indexes of common and scientific names and subject index. ISBN: 978-0-9747077-8-5. 2008.

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A review of Speciation in Birds. By Trevor Price. Greenwood Village (Colorado): Roberts and Company Publishers. $59.95 (paper). x 470 p.; ill.; indexes of common and scientific names and subject index. ISBN: 978-0-9747077-8-5. 2008. In Norway we have a saying for daring, seemingly impossible tasks: “jumping after Wirkola.” Admired and feared by his competitors, Bjorn Wirkola reigned ski jumpers’ arenas in the late 1960s. He became double World Champion in 1966 and won the prestigious German-Austrian Ski Jumper’s Tournament three years in a row, in 1967, 1968, and 1969, an accomplishment no one has managed to copy ever since. Trevor Price is succeeding with more than one “Wirkola” in his recent book on speciation. Not only is he bound to be compared with the grand old master in evolutionary biology, taxonomy, and ornithology Ernst Mayr (e.g., Mayr 1942, 1963), but this volume also comes shortly after the publication of other important books within the same field of research, namely Coyne and Orr’s comprehensive and critically acclaimed review on speciation (Coyne and Orr 2005), and Gavrilets’s thorough review on speciation theory (Gavrilets 2004). With this background, it is a pleasure to learn that Price not only has written an entertaining and good volume, but also a significant review on speciation. Birds have been an important taxonomic group in speciation research for decades. For example, Ernst Mayr’s work on island birds in Melanesia inspired his ideas on the role of geography in speciation (Mayr 1942, 1963), and David Lack’s work on Darwin’s Finches on the Galapagos Islands inspired his ideas on the role of ecology in forming new species (Lack 1947). Being relatively easy to observe and sharing our mainly “sound-and-vision” perception of the world, birds are also popular study objects in behavioral research, another highly relevant discipline for speciation. However, compared to other speciation model systems (Drosophila in particular), avian genetics has been relatively little explored as of yet. Speciation in Birds is a significant contribution because Price has made an insightful, comprehensive, and up-to-date review, particularly on the role of ecology and behavior in (bird) speciation. In this respect, the book nicely complements Coyne and Orr’s Speciation, which emphasizes the genetics of speciation, and Gavrilets’s Fitness Landscapes and the Origin of Species, which highlights speciation theory. Although the volume deals with a difficult subject in a scientifically sound way, it is surprisingly easy to read. The author has avoided unnecessary technicalities or, when needed, put them in appendixes at the end of the appropriate chapter. Moreover, important ideas are illustrated by a wealth of fascinating examples of relevant avian natural history. The beautiful