book reviews ISSN 1948-6596 Distribution ecology – any way forward? Distribution Ecology: From Individual Habitat Use to Species Biogeographical Range. Marcelo H. Cassini, 2013, Springer. 219 pp. £135 (Hardback) ISBN: 9781461464143; http://www.springer.com Distributions are the basic stuff of biogeogra- phy—species’ distributions mostly, but also the distributions of species’ assemblages, populations, individuals and genes. An im- proved perspective on the drivers of distribu- tions at these different organisational levels would help biogeographers investigate the mechanisms underlying whatever types of distributions they study. Such a perspective would also help those researching distribution processes at organisational levels far below the species level, e.g. behaviour or population dynamics, to identify the broader implications of their work. The premise of this book is to help sci- entists frame their research at any one organ- isational level in the context of the processes that occur at other levels. To achieve this goal, the book covers both processes underly- ing distributions at different scales and com- mon techniques for studying these processes. The book is structured hierarchically, first dealing with individuals, then moving through genes, aggregations, societies, sub- populations, populations, species, and species assemblages. Two chapters attempt to dem- onstrate the applied importance of distribu- tion biology, one on conservation biology and one on animal production. The animal pro- duction chapter reads as somewhat out of date, and I wonder how many readers it will be relevant to, but the conservation biology chapter is certainly pertinent. The book ends with the author’s perspective on how re- search could be integrated between organisa- tional levels, and future directions for distri- bution ecology. The book is intended to be an introduc- tory overview, primarily aimed at graduate students. Its scope means that there is much ground to cover, especially since it covers modelling approaches as well as concepts. Unfortunately I found the outcome unsatisfy- ing. For example, an explanation of species distribution models, including their concep- tual foundation, issues with extrapolation, different modelling techniques, variable selec- tion, model fitting, and controversy regarding their accuracy, are all crammed into three pages. So much information is touched on that someone approaching the subject for the first time would struggle to comprehend the concepts introduced. In fairness, the book makes no pretence to be a one-stop shop to explain all of distribution ecology. It is made clear that anyone wishing to do research at a single organisational level would need a spe- cialist text, and the reader is pointed in the right direction with extensive reference lists. Nevertheless, clarity would have been im- proved by identifying the most fundamental principles to be explained in each chapter, rather than touching too lightly on many top- ics. The added value to be gained from the book’s broad approach is a new perspective on integrating distribution ecology across multiple organisational levels. This could have been capitalised upon to a greater degree. The linkages between processes at different levels, and how they can be included in mod- els, are rarely made explicit. This was a major disappointment of the book for me, as there are several great examples in the literature— species’ distributions have been predicted us- ing metapopulation models (Anderson et al. 2009) and with the behaviour of individuals (Kearney et al. 2009), and options for cross- frontiers of biogeography 6.2, 2014 — © 2014 the authors; journal compilation © 2014 The International Biogeography Society