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Tue Mar 4 16:45:48 EST 2008


Rachel Carson's
alarming prediction of a "silent spring," but few remember that she
also
predicted a "fruitless fall." This dire phenomenon is inevitable: if
the bees,
bats, butterflies, birds, and beetles that pollinate plants go
extinct, the
plant species they fertilize will die, too. What we're really seeing
in the loss
of biodiversity is the "extinction of ecological relationships"
between plants
and animals. Nature is, after all, interaction and mutuality.
Buchmann, a
research entomologist, and Nabhan, author of eight books, including
The
Geography of Childhood (1994), and director of science at the
Arizona-Sonora
Desert Museum, offer their own form of mutualism in this eye-opening
and, thanks
to illustrations by Paul Mirocha, eye-pleasing book. Buchmann and
Nabhan take
turns relating their fascinating observations of the habits of various
pollinators in such diverse locales as Utah's Virgin River watershed
and the
Galapagos Islands in an effort to convey a sense of what exactly is at
risk:
nothing less than our sources of nutrition--ultimately, our very
lives. Donna
Seaman  Copyright 1996, American Library Association. All rights
reserved --This
text refers to the hardcover edition of this title  


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