In this age of electronic publishing some scientists seem to think that the monograph has lost its value. I would disagree, still seeing an important role for well organized and researched synthesis volumes that provide whole fields with a baseline against which to measure progress and understanding. This is one such key book, providing an outstanding summary of what has been achieved in the SCAR international research programme Regional Sensitivity to Climate Change in Antarctic Terrestrial and Limnetic Systems (RiSCC) and integrating this with earlier data.
The terrestrial and freshwater scientists have less than 0.3% of the continent to research, together with the sub-Antarctic islands. Despite this limited footprint the biological questions posed by the fauna and flora of these areas have interested scientists for the last 150 years. The thesis of this programme, which ran for just over five years, was that as well as having intrinsic value these ecosystems could also help in understanding the impacts of climate change at a much more general level. The book is edited by three well known international scientists and consists of 16 chapters in which all three editors have played a major part. Convey has contributed to eight, Bergstrom to six and Huiskes to three! Another 36 authors assisted them and this demonstrates very well how the RiSCC programme brought the community together in a way that had not been achieved before. Given that terrestrial and freshwater science has generally not been as strongly funded as marine science for many years it is interesting to see also that the chapter authorship comes from 12 countries, a surprisingly wide range of active contributions. Indeed, they claim that over 200 papers were produced in the five years of RiSCC by scientists from 18 countries.
The chapters are organized along functional lines, with a scene-setting initial chapter, describing why Antarctica should be seen as a useful global indicator, and a final conclusions chapter. Chapter 2 by Bergstrom et al. describes the physical setting in terms of the elements of importance to biology, with an emphasis on biodiversity and colonization processes and their controls. I was surprised to see in Fig. 2 a map of the distribution of Acaena magellanica in which the Falklands was not included, despite possessing widespread stands of the tetraploid form.
Chapter 3 by Hughes et al. entitled “Colonisation processes” provides an excellent overview of the dispersion transport systems for all the major groups, emphasising the importance of molecular techniques in determining the origins of particular species and the problems for establishment. This also points up one of the major concerns of RiSCC which was the introduction of alien species, a subject to which they devote the whole of Chapter 10. Indeed, given the Reference Frenot, Chown, Whinam, Selkirk, Convey, Skotniki and Bergstrom2005 paper by Frenot et al. on biological invasions it might be supposed that this latter chapter simply covered the same ground. There is, of course, considerable overlap but there is also considerable new material drawn together as case studies and some crystal ball gazing into future scenarios. Despite the efforts of the authors there are still interesting papers missing - for example on introduced salmonids on Kerguelen (Ayllon et al. Reference Ayllon, Davaine, Beall, Martinez and Garcia-Vacquez2004).
Biogeography in Chapter 4 (Chown & Convey) is a short but masterly overview of a complex subject, suggesting how modern techniques can provide new perspectives and where human visitation can be shown to play a crucial role in driving change through introductions.
The chapters on life history traits by Convey et al. (Chapter 6) and on physiological traits by Hennion et al. (Chapter 7) are especially rewarding in the way they attempt to cut across the traditional plant and animal lines to look for the more general features.
There are three different approaches to lakes dealing with biogeography in Chapter 5 (Gibson et al.), lakes in the landscape in Chapter 11 (Quesada et al.), and lake systems and climate change in Chapter 13 (Lyons et al.). All three are excellent and show just how much research has gone into the aquatic systems, especially those accessible to the American and Australian scientists. I was especially pleased to see how the authors had taken a bipolar approach to Chapter 11, providing some valuable explanations for particular processes from research on Arctic lakes.
Chapter 8 on plant biodiversity is rather disappointing. Given the title I had expected a full review of all plant diversity but the chapter is almost entirely limited to the application of molecular techniques to mosses on the continent. Other groups of plants, including lichens, get a simple cursory mention. So, for example, the reader is not to learn that the new Antarctic lichen flora by Øvstedal & Lewis Smith (Reference Øvstedal and Lewis Smith2001) has dramatically changed the previous beliefs in the endemism of Antarctic species, established a strong bipolar element and described many new species. A series of papers have also added considerably to the lichen floras of the sub-Antarctic islands and there has been a major review of the hepatics on the islands (Grolle Reference Grolle2002). Since the authors do mention sub-Antarctic phanerogamic floras in their introduction it seems reasonable to expect some mention of the very limited work that has been done such as the cytogenetical work on Kerguelen Ranunculus.
I do have some criticisms of the chapters on conservation and management. In Chapter 14 (Whinam et al.) dealing with the sub-Antarctic islands the authors state that the relevant international treaties and management plans are listed in the first chapter of the volume. They are not. In fact there are no references to existing published management plans from South Georgia, Macquarie, Heard or the Prince Edward Islands. Yes, the authors attempt to extract some general features of all plans but since they provide no details of the documents from which these are taken the reader is deprived of valuable sources of information that contain far more than the chapter. There is no discussion of which islands are covered by the Agreement for the Conservation of Albatross and Petrels, or the Convention on Biological Diversity etc and I would also draw a clear distinction between the government authorities which have published management plans after public consultation and those from whom it is impossible to get a management plan at all.
Chapter 15 (Hull & Bergstrom) is in many ways an excellent summary of Antarctic conservation and management. However, ACAP is not part of the Antarctic Treaty System but a part of the Convention on Conservation of the Migratory Species of Wild Animals, it might have been helpful to explain that the Convention on Biological Diversity cannot be applied to the Antarctic and thus there is no framework for managing genetic resources, and that the Liability Annex is very much the lowest common denominator and avoids almost all the controversial issues. I think that on p.335 some mention should have been made of the tremendous tourism monitoring efforts of the Oceanites Foundation whilst it seems a shame not to note on p.333 that SCAR tried for five years to include the Antarctic within the UNEP State of the Environment reports and failed because of the intransigence of one Party.
Since the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than most places on Earth it seems appropriate that Chapter 12 (Convey) is devoted to assessing the implications of global change for terrestrial ecosystems. His synthesis draws attention to the complexity and subtlety of the ecosystem responses, the single example of a multifactorial field experiment to assess the interaction of environmental factors on natural communities and the almost complete lack of data on, for example, life history strategies of bryophytes and lichens needed to build useful models. Add that to the limited microclimatic data and it demonstrates we are still a long way from being able to predict future states.
The final chapter draws some of the many elements together. It notes our lack of ability at present to develop quantitative models of how climate change will affect these ecosystems but the value of long-term studies and monitoring in providing a basis for the future. Perhaps the authors could also have been more direct in making a case for better funding to realize their holistic approach for the future? Biologists need to be much less reticent in pressing their case if they are to compete with new expensive fields (like Antarctic astronomy)!
One of the very valuable outcomes of this volume is a clear indication of where research is weak or missing. There has been a remarkable lack of studies in plant competition despite the comparative simplicity of the flora, and there is almost no data on seed/spore banks and very limited data on reproduction and phenology for sub-Antarctic phanerogams. Indeed, many aspects of plants, from physiology to population dynamics, appear to have fared less well than invertebrate research.
This is an important book, providing what appears to be an active and growing international group with a timely synthesis of their Antarctic research and some clear connections to the Arctic, which I am sure will mature further as the research in the replacement for RiSCC - Evolution and Biodiversity in the Antarctic (EBA) - develops. The book is a real mine of information almost completely free of spelling errors and well edited into a consistent style. Despite my more critical comments I would strongly recommend it as a landmark volume in Antarctic terrestrial and freshwater research.
