Journal of Chemical Ecology, Vol. 11, No. 10, 1985

Book Review

Chemical Ecology of Insects. W.J. BELL AND R.T. CARDI~ (eds.). Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates, Inc. Publishers, First published London, Chapman and Hall Ltd., 1984. $28.50(P), $45.00(C) ISBN 0-87893-0698, ISBN 0-87893-070-1(pbk.). 524 pp. The best short description of the present volume might be that it is six (or seven) books in one. The first being Perceptual Mechanisms (normally considered as physiology, but indispensable in this context), ls it mere chance that both authors, St~dler (Contact Chemoreception) and Mustaparta (Olfaction) are Europeans, or does it reflect a difference in emphasis laid on biological approaches on both sides of the Atlantic? The editors Bell and Card6, plus Elkington, continue with Odor Dispersion and Chemo-orientation Mechanisms. They first treat various dispersion models and consider walking and flying insects separately. These first five chapters cover roughly one quarter of the total text. PlantHerbivore Relationships; Predators, Parasites, and Prey fill the next twenty percent of the book. Whether they cover one section or two .(as is done by the editors) is a matter of taste. The first has two chapters, the second only one. Miller and Strickler (Finding and Accepting Host Plants) and Scriber (HostPlant Suitability), whereas Vinson summarizes parasitoid-host relationships. The following five chapters cover, under two main headings (Chemical Protection and Chemical-Mediated Spacing) another quarter of the book. One of them, however, breaks through the chemical fence guarding the "ecology": it is Huheey's paper Warning Coloration and Mimicry. The chemical protection proper (by Nault & Phelan) is devoted to presocial insects. Resource Partitioning (Prokopy, Roitberg, and Averill); Aggregation in Bark Beetles (Birch), and Sexual Communication with Pheromones (Card6 and Baker) are brought together in the section on spacing. The remaining part of the volume is on sociochemicals of bees (Duffield, Wheeler, and Eickwort), ants (Bradshaw and Howse), and termites (Howse). This enumeration of the total 16 chapters, each of a length between 10 and 37 pages already demonstrates that the editors have succeeded in bringing something new to the ever growing list of titles which, as a rule, contain only one or two of the six or seven topics mentioned above. One might argue, however, the validity of the term "ecology" in the title. The first sentence on the cover of the paperback edition gives a much more appropriate description: "a probe into the mechanisms involved in chemical s i g n a l l i n g . . . " Chemical ecology is more 1457 0098-0331/85/1000-1457504.50/0 9 1985 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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BOOKREVIEW

than communication alone, and the book restricts itself in many instances not to that subdiscipline of biology. Apart from this, I consider the book as another attractive addition to the series of texts published by Sinauer during the last years. It brings together the discussions of specialists operating in their growing and consequently diverging fields, which share, however, many concepts and techniques. In my opinion, this makes the book especially useful for teachers and libraries rather than the student interested in one of the particular aspects only. It contains many references after each chapter; it is well illustrated; and the unavoidable printing errors are not abundant. A handsome book on chemical signaling. W. M. Herrebout University of Leiden The Netherlands