Download 2014 113 vocabularies for any given word. My

2014
113
BOOK REVIEWS
vocabularies for any given word. My own experience
in constructing lists of Latin words for translation and
indexing is that about 2400 nouns, 3200 adjectives, and
1,500 adverbs, together with a range of prefixes and
suffixes, are sufficient for the majority of higher plant
descriptions and diagnoses, and are close to adequate
when fungi and algae are included. Now, this count of
mine of c. 7100 distinct words includes many that would
be listed by both Stearn and Short & George, in the
same vocabulary entry; in other words, a vocabulary of
6000–7000 entries (given that pronouns, verbs, and other
forms of speech would be additional to my basic list)
seems quite comprehensive.
This book is also available in e-book format on various
operating systems and platforms, which I would expect
to provide a full text search. This would enhance the
reader’s ability to locate words in examples or in tables
of declension that might otherwise be quite difficult
to find.
I concur with R.K. Brummitt, who reviewed the book
for the publishers: “It will stand alongside Stearn’s
work as an essential tool for many botanists for years
to come.”
REFERENCES
Baranov A. 1971. Basic Latin for plant taxonomists. Germany: J. Cramer.
Bostock P.D. Undated. Pagina domestica Linguae Latinae botanices.
http://botanicallatin.com.
Hallier H. 1914. Liliaceae. Nova Guinea 8:989–1004.
Lehmann C. (ed.) 1844. Plantae Preissianae, band 1. Hamburg:
Meissner.
Lewis C.T., Short C. 1890. An elementary Latin dictionary. New York:
American Book Company.
Manara B. 1992. Latín y Griego básicos para botánicos [Basic Latin and
Greek for botanists]. Venezuela: Fundación Planchart.
McNeil J., Barrie F.R., Buck W.R., Demoulin V., Greuter W.,
Hawksworth D.L., Herendeen P.S., Knapp S., Marhold K., Prado
J., Prud’homme Van Reine W.F., Smith G.F., Wiersema J.H., Turland
N.J. 2012. International code of nomenclature for algae, fungi and
plants (Melbourne code) adopted by the Eighteenth International
Botanical Congress, Melbourne, Australia, July 2011. Königstein:
Koeltz Scientific Books.
Rizzini C.T. 1978. Latim para biologistas [Latin for biologists]. Rio de
Janeiro: Academia Brasileira de Ciências.
Stearn W.T. 1992. Botanical Latin, fourth edition. Newton Abbot,
Devon: David & Charles Publishers.
Peter D. Bostock, Queensland Herbarium, Mt Coot-tha Road, Toowong 4066
QLD, Australia; E-mail: [email protected]
Syst. Biol. 63(1):113–114, 2014
© The Author(s) 2013. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Society of Systematic Biologists. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: [email protected]
DOI:10.1093/sysbio/syt055
Advance Access publication August 28, 2013
Mutation-Driven Evolution. Masatoshi Nei. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2013. xi+244 pp. ISBN 9780-19-966173-2 $US89.95 £55 (hardback).
Many evolutionary biologists are fascinated by the
seemingly perfect fit of organisms to their environment.
These persons presumably regard natural selection as
the central and most important process of biological
evolution, to the point that these two terms (“biological
evolution” and “natural selection”) are often treated
as synonymous, or interchangeable. It is a fact that,
among the various processes contributing to biological
evolution, natural selection has attracted the strongest
interest, the sharpest controversies, and the vast majority
of scientific studies.
There must be reasons for this, of which one is perhaps
historical. To convince people that biological entities
were not god-made creatures, Darwin and its followers
had to simultaneously argue 1) that living forms change
in time and 2) that their adaptations are sufficiently well
explained by the process of natural selection. So, the two
concepts have been and still are tightly associated in the
context of anticreationist arguments. There might also be
psychological reasons. Natural selection, unlike divine
creation, is not an intuitive idea. Those who adopt it
typically like it very much, and can hardly resist coming
back to it again and again, finding the living world
[14:36 29/11/2013 Sysbio-syt056.tex]
even more marvelous knowing that it was not generated
by a creator. In a way, natural selection has somewhat
replaced divine creation in many people’s minds as the
process responsible for the beauty of nature.
The new book Mutation-Driven Evolution firmly
opposes this view of natural selection as the unique
biological creative force. This ambitious contribution is a
vigorous reminder that the innumerable adaptive traits
observable in the living world have all initially appeared
as random, spontaneous, purposeless genetic changes,
without which selection would be helpless. Prof. Nei
argues that the biological evolutionary literature, both
old and recent, puts too much emphasis on natural
selection, and disregards the importance of mutation,
which he here aims to rehabilitate as the major driver of
biological evolution.
The main message of the book is delivered in the
dense and thoughtful first three chapters. The author
exposes his view of the history of concepts in population
genetics and evolutionary biology during the past one
and a half centuries. He recalls that Darwin defined
natural selection as primarily purifying, and he criticizes
Fisher’s “panselectionism” and Mayr/Dobzhansky’s
comparisons of natural selection to an “artist” working
with the “raw material” generated by mutation. Rather,
Nei suggests that the classical Neodarwinian models are
too simplistic by typically assuming a constant selective
Page: 113
111–117
114
pressure in space and time, and large amounts of preexisting genetic variation. He argues that what matters
in the first place in evolution is where and when a specific
mutation will happen (or not).
This viewpoint is developed in the following six
chapters, each of which treats a specific aspect of
evolutionary biology to which the author has himself
contributed at some point of his career—theoretical
population genetics, molecular evolution, evo-devo,
speciation, and adaptation.
Chapter 4 is about the neutral and nearly neutral
theories of molecular evolution, and the influence of
natural selection on protein evolution. Nei reviews
early reports of the detection of positive selection
at the molecular level (e.g., MHC, hemoglobin),
and expresses doubts about more recent approaches,
such as codon substitution models, the McDonald–
Kreitman test, Fst -outlier methods, and haplotypebased methods, all of which he says are dependent
on assumptions that are typically not verified in
practice. The next chapter discusses the evolution
of genome size, repeated elements and multigene
families, emphasizing the author’s favorite birth-anddeath model—but no mention is made of Lynch’s recent
contribution to this topic. Chapter 6 addresses gene
expression regulation and developmental evolution. It
offers a compilation of remarkable case studies in which
the genotype/phenotype link has been uncovered by
molecular biologists, such as hox genes in animals,
eyeless in drosophila, stickleback pelvic fins, and sex
determination in amniotes. Regarding speciation, finally,
it is argued in Chapter 7 that the Dobzhansky–
Muller incompatibility model of the evolution of hybrid
depression is not very well supported by empirical
data. A number of alternative models are proposed—of
which several could admittedly be called Dobzhansky–
Muller sensu lato. The author favors the idea that
incompatibilities between diverging populations are
most often fixed by genetic drift rather than by local
selection.
The final three chapters recapitulate the many ideas
and arguments developed so far, and specifically address
the issue of whether mutation or selection drives
biological evolution and adaptation. This is perhaps
the most disputable part of the whole book, in part
because these two processes are probably not actually
opposed, as acknowledged in the very first paragraph
of Chapter 9. Actually, many of the examples taken as
evidence for the predominance of mutation (such as the
regressive evolution of cave fish eyes due to destructive
mutations) might just as well be interpreted as reflecting
instead the action of natural selection (such as relaxed
functional requirements in the case of cave fish eyes).
The author is obviously aware of this difficulty, but still
vehemently defends his view that mutation is the leading
force. He argues that natural selection is not a magic
process able to solve every environmental challenge
posed to living species—and this is demonstrated by
the occurrence of species extinctions, in which the
[14:36 29/11/2013 Sysbio-syt056.tex]
VOL. 63
SYSTEMATIC BIOLOGY
decisive factor is the ability for a declining species to
find, or not, the appropriate rescue mutations before
disappearing.
A bit frustratingly, no review is made of the literature
on experimental evolution and its associated theory
(e.g., based on Fisher’s geometric model) even though
several of the questions implicitly asked by the book
have been, or might be, more or less directly addressed—
for example, does mutation limit adaptation? Are there
few or many mutational “solutions” to a given selective
challenge? Standing variation versus new mutations;
large effect versus small effect mutations. The variation
in space and time of selection coefficients has also been
widely discussed and modeled by ecological geneticists.
This body of literature has already formalized some of
the ideas introduced in this book, such as the “niche
filling” and “constraint breaking evolution” concepts.
For this reason it is unclear whether the arguments
developed in the book actually deserve to be called a
“new theory”.
Among the numerous merits of Mutation-Driven
Evolution is the survey that it makes of the author’s
impressive career, which started in the 1960s before the
neutral theory of molecular evolution was conceived.
Largely built upon the empirical and theoretical
achievements of Nei’s laboratory, this book brilliantly
illustrates how molecular data have illuminated the
Neodarwinian synthesis and affected evolutionary
biology. Mutation-Driven Evolution is not a textbook, but
rather a highly opinionated piece, in which the author
intends to disseminate his own views on molecular
and organismal evolution. Controversial opinions and
provocative claims are not avoided regarding, for
example, the definition of (near-)neutrality, the impact
of organismal complexity on genome evolution, and the
usage of statistical methods in sequence analysis; and
the contributions of even the most famous scientists of
our field are criticized without indulgence. A majority
of readers, including this reviewer, will presumably
disagree with many of these statements—and this
perhaps makes the book even more enjoyable.
Overall, this is a fascinating piece of science and an
impressive amount of work, thematically broad but still
remarkably synthetic and focused in each of its sections.
As a masters student I learned molecular evolution
largely thanks to Nei’s (1987) Molecular Evolutionary
Genetics. I would warmly recommend this update
to 21st century students, if only for its clarity and
originality.
REFERENCE
Nei M. 1987. Molecular evolutionary genetics. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Nicolas Galtier, Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution, Université
Montpellier 2, Place Eugene Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier, France;
E-mail: [email protected]
Page: 114
111–117