news and update ISSN 1948‐6596 book review Fifty years of Elton Fifty Years of Invasion Ecology: The Legacy of Charles Elton, by David M. Richardson (ed.) 2011, Wiley‐Blackwell, 432 pp. ISBN: 978‐1‐4443‐3586‐6 Price: £95.00 (Hardback) / £45.00 (Paperback); http://www.wiley.com/ The year 1958 marked the publishing of The Ecol‐ ogy of Invasions by Animals and Plants (henceforth EIAP) by Charles Elton. In this book, Elton examined the introduction and subsequent success of numerous non‐native species and put forth a set of hypotheses about why certain spe‐ cies become invasive (invasiveness) and why cer‐ tain communities may be more susceptible to in‐ vasion (invasibility). Fifty years after EIAP was pub‐ lished, David Richardson organized a symposium in Stellenbosch, South Africa, that brought to‐ gether 137 people from over 14 different coun‐ tries to discuss how the study of biological inva‐ sions has progressed since the publication of EIAP. Fifty Years of Invasion Ecology (henceforth Fifty Years), edited by Richardson, grew out of that symposium and provides a comprehensive exami‐ nation of what knowledge has been gleaned in the past 50 years by studying the subset of organisms that have become prolific when moved, by acci‐ dent or purpose, out of their native range. Some might find it strange for an entire book to be devoted to updates on the ideas pro‐ posed in one monograph, particularly when that monograph was written for a lay audience. Yet anyone who has read EIAP knows how captivating the book is, how many ideas about community invasibility were set out in it, and how the book set the groundwork for a field of biological inquiry that now generates thousands of publications per year. Whether or not Elton founded the field of invasion biology (and this is covered by a chapter by Daniel Simberloff), it is clear that EIAP was an “important milestone in the history of invasion ecology” (Richardson page xiii), and following up on the ideas Elton set forth and species he case‐ studied was a worthwhile endeavour. The book is split into seven parts, some of which are stronger than others. The first part is one of the strongest – it provides a historical per‐ spective on Elton, the field of invasion biology, and the idea of “nativeness.” The chapters in the next two parts, “Evolution and Current Dimen‐ sions of Invasion Ecology” and “New Takes on In‐ vasion Patterns” don’t hang together as well, but I’m not sure where I would have put these chap‐ ters either. The meat of the book is called “The Nuts and Bolts of Invasion Biology,” and it is these nine chapters that people interested in determin‐ ing the state of knowledge on ecological and evo‐ lutionary explanations of invasion success will be most keen to read. Almost all of the chapters cite very recent literature, including papers and books published in 2010. The fifth part contains two chapters on “poster‐child invaders”, while the penultimate part marks new directions and technologies being used to detect and evaluate the spread and im‐ pact of invasive species. This part has one of the more polemical chapters in the book, by Mark Davis. He critiques invasion ecology for relying on niche‐based paradigms of community assembly and for overstating conclusions. Although this chapter is a rearrangement of one in his 2009 book Biological Invasions, I liked the inclusion of a chapter in Fifty Years that cautions against falling into the same “mess” that permeates community ecology. The link to Elton and EIAP are tenuous for some chapters, but that doesn’t matter because almost every chapter provides a comprehensive, synthetic review of a topic of interest to ecolo‐ gists. Interested in the state of the diversity‐ invasibility debate? Read chapter 10 by Jason Fridley. Interested in new techniques to detect invasive species at the point of entry? Read chap‐ ter 22 on the possibility of hand‐held devices to perform DNA barcoding on the spot. In addition, several chapters discuss whether propagule pres‐ sure, the number of times and number of indi‐ viduals of a species that are introduced, can ex‐ © 2011 the authors; journal compilation © 2011 The International Biogeography Society — frontiers of biogeography 3.2, 2011