This is the second in a series of books recently published by the Australian Antarctic Division, the first being R.D. Seppelt's (2004) The Moss Flora of Macquarie Island. Greenslade's volume provides something that is currently unavailable for any other sub-Antarctic island and, indeed, for the Antarctic continent itself - a readable synthesis of the state of biodiversity and ecological knowledge across all of the major terrestrial invertebrate groups. Taken together, these two volumes provide a benchmark that should be the envy and aim of the various national authorities administering the other sub-Antarctic islands. In most instances (with the admirable exceptions of Marion Island vegetation and South Georgia lichens) these have no accessible recent treatments even of the individual major elements of their flora or invertebrate fauna, let alone syntheses across groups. This volume is particularly timely in the context of the continuing damage to Macquarie Island's terrestrial habitats through the currently uncontrolled rapid expansion of the island's introduced rabbits. The threat to the unique ecosystems of this island, themselves a major factor underlying its current World Heritage Site status, is acute and immediate. It is only with access to fundamental baseline information such as in this volume that any objective assessment of current trends, or of the effectiveness of any mitigation measures that may eventually be introduced by the island's managers in the future, can be made.

The volume is organized in three main sections - the first, a relatively short Introduction to Macquarie Island (16 pages), is followed by the ‘Systematics and Biology of the Terrestrial Invertebrates’ (174 pages), and finally a short concluding Discussion (12 pages). In addition there is an extended series of three Appendices incorporating 13 Tables (55 pages), a thorough Glossary, extended citation list and indexes, giving the volume a total of xvi + 326 pages. This book is not one that can be simply picked up and read. The somewhat unusual form of citation required for the ‘Insecta’ element of the Systematics section is a little frustrating, as this element appears little different to any other element of this section in the actual text, while its lead author is also acknowledged in the volume as the author of the first draft of several other systematic elements.

The Introduction provides a nice brief background for the reader unfamiliar to the island - covering its geology, climate, soils and vegetation. The concluding Discussion unfortunately reads in places as something of an afterthought. It is difficult to balance the need for a short, clear summary, and to lead the reader towards the most authoritative current literature in the fields covered. In this task I feel an opportunity has been missed, with several of the subsections being overly superficial and failing to identify important literature sources.

The majority of the book is given over to as thorough a taxonomic and biological examination of the terrestrial invertebrate fauna as is possible at present. Working through the various taxonomic groups covered, it very quickly becomes apparent that, even on an island such as Macquarie (which, as the authors state, has probably received more expert invertebrate systematic attention than most comparably-sized areas of Australia), there is a vast amount more to be learned. For many of the groups covered, taxonomic uncertainty remains the norm, while there is also a continued lack of long term directed survey and monitoring data. On the one hand the authors of the volume, applying their considerable expertise, have assembled the best possible baseline information on invertebrate diversity and distribution for Macquarie Island. Such authoritative baseline information is a prerequisite for anybody seeking to document and understand patterns in biodiversity and assess the impacts (if any) of climate change and other human activity. On the other hand, the volume contains an implicit and stark warning: survey and taxonomy may not be seen as ‘sexy’ science, but are fundamental to advancing the state of knowledge and our ability to identify change. This is a message that authorities responsible for scientific funding and environmental management ignore at their peril.

The systematic section of the book provides a thorough taxonomic and literature resource relating primarily to Macquarie Island, but extending outwards to distributions across the sub-Antarctic. This section will be of great value to students of terrestrial invertebrates across the region - while the specific taxonomy relating to each sub-Antarctic island will be slightly different, in no other place that I am aware of is information brought together in such an accessible fashion allowing one to approach the taxonomy of these generally unfamiliar groups. In this sense, the volume provides a literature and practical taxonomic source that, in practice, will be ‘dipped into’ by specialists and students requiring specific information. In combination with the extended Appendix Tables, the book does indeed contain a vital new resource ‘for invertebrate biologists with an interest in high latitude environments’, as it is described on the flysheet.