A Naturalist's Guide to the Tropics

The word tropics conjures images of swaying palm fronds and white sand beaches. That is surely part of the picture, writes Italian science journalist Marco Lambertini in this fine environmental handbook, but keeping such a view is "reductive and risky," ignoring as it does the low temperatures, aridity, choppy seas, fogs, torrential rains, and general unpleasantness of so many tropical areas. Lambertini offers a fine survey of the many environments that make up "the tropics," which include not only coral reefs and monkey-dense hardwood forests, but also deserts and savannas, areas both rich in flora and fauna and almost unpopulated. Lambertini stresses the diversity of life in the world's tropical areas, offering accounts of several indicator species from aricas to zebras. He also observes that this diversity of life is in ever-increasing peril, and that "we are faced with a life or death struggle for the conservation of tropical wildlife and their habitats." The destruction of the tropics--whereby, for instance, only five percent of Brazil's original Atlantic forest now stands, many of the world's coral reefs have disappeared, and deserts have encroached on once-fertile grasslands--is not merely unfortunate, Lambertini insists; it also amounts to the depletion of an irreplaceable genetic bank. His guidebook makes for a catalog of the riches the tropics hold, and a highly useful reference. --Gregory McNamee