Bennett, Robb

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The Canadian Field-Naturalist (E-Journal)

wildlife law to the 200-mile exclusive economiczone. However, some federal legal decisions haverestricted these laws to the 12-nautical-mile territori-al zone. Offshore pollution monitoring flights aremade by Transport Canada and by the CanadianCoastguard; the Department of National Defence andDepartment of Fisheries and Oceans are encouragedas well. Although the Canadian Shipping Act, theMigratory Bird Convention Act, the Canadian Envi-ronmental Protection Act and the Fisheries Act dealwith oil pollution issues, suspected ships have rarelybeen turned back to a Canadian port for furtherinvestigations. Only the Migratory Bird ConventionAct protects migratory seabirds from oil-relatedoffences; but so far, only five vessels were charged.Knowing that approximately 2500 offshore oil spillsare reported per year in Atlantic Canada, one getsquickly an idea of the issue. Obviously, pollutionpays … and as the report convincingly shows, thepollutor gets almost awarded due to the competitivebusiness advantage when not punished. AtlanticCanada is simply the cheapest place to dump bilgeoil on the Great Circle route between North Atlanticand Europe. No doubt, the enforcement needs to bestronger in Canada, higher fines are required, and onboard disposal facilities, increased monitoring,increased awareness and other measures are neces-sary. Even the European Union uses RADARDSAT(SAR), a satellite image product from Canada, inorder to trace and to monitor offshore oil pollution.As Wiese’s WWF report presents, Canada does notreally have a national standard for an EDA (Environ-mental Damage Assessment). It is surprising that theexact number on “how many seabirds are reallyoiled” is hard to get and not available with high accu-racy; accurate numbers seem not to play a role in thelegal decision and discussion even! Perhaps courtfines should consider a price per oiled seabird, andthus could change the current dilemma?!This document reports that approximately 40 mil-lion pelagic seabirds reside during the year on theGrand Banks off Newfoundland. However, some ofthe presented numbers are puzzling and might causeconfusion for the informed Naturalist. It was report-ed earlier that over 200 000 Thick-billed murres arekilled annually during the Murre hunt off Newfound-land. Now, chronical oil pollution is even added, butbreeding Thick-billed Murres in the Canadian Arctic– the seabird species believed to be affected the mostby chronic oil pollution – does not show a signifi-cantly declining population trend at all. Are Canadi-an seabirds sensitive indicators of the marine envi-ronment ? Or are birds from other areas in the worldand being present in Canadian waters, such as Green-land’s Thick-billed Murres and Manx Shearwatersfrom England (both populations are known to bedeclining), better indicators ? More research isrequired. Some other confusion might arise from thepresented population numbers of wintering EasternHarlequin Ducks, and that no direct relationship isknown to exist between the amount of oil spilled andthe numbers of seabirds killed. For my taste, somekey references such as J. Burger’s 1997 book on “OilSpills” would have been a great addition. Of interestmight also be the seabird oil pollution work inBritish Columbia by A. Burger, the Festucca OilSpill Trust Fund and the Provincial Government’swork. Globally speaking, it might be interesting forthe reader to learn how Norway, a country with majoroffshore oil resources and with a very long coastlineand huge seabird resources, deals with chronic oilpollution! Perhaps it would also be informative tohave a list of all known oil vessel accidents in Cana-dian waters.However, this informative report provides manyimportant details and baseline information on thesligthly overlooked but very relevant chronic oil pol-lution topic in the offshore waters of Eastern Canada.It focuses on seabirds; but many other species andthe entire ecosystem suffer from oil pollution, too.“Chronic oil pollution is an international problemwhose solution requires national and internationaleffort”.FALK HUETTMANNBiology and Wildlife Department, University of Alaska,Fairbanks, Alaska 99777-7000 USA2005 BOOK REVIEWS 303Spiders of Australia: An Introduction to their Classification, Biology and DistributionBy T. J. Hawkeswood, 2003. Pensoft Publishers, Geo MilevStreet 13a, 1111 Sofia, Bulgaria. 264 pages. EURO 19.95paper, 34.95 clothThe past few decades have seen the production ofa considerable number of landmark volumes on thenatural history of regional spider faunas. Volumes byDippenaar-Schoeman and Jocqué (1997), Song et al.(1999), Ubick et al. (2005) among others have set ahigh standard for concise, useful, in-depth coverageof regional faunas. With this in mind, I readily agreedto review Spiders of Australia: an Introduction to theirClassification, Biology and Distribution.I tried, I really did try, to find good things to sayabout this book. Certainly the dust cover of this vol-ume, with its border of 24 colour images of variousAustralian spiders surrounding an anthropomorphicphotograph of the front end of an immature maledeinopid spider (looking as charmingly pugilistic asonly an immature male can), promises an interestingand engaging piece of work. Unfortunately, as they say,you can’t judge a book by its cover. The content of Spiders of Australia falls far short offulfilling the promise of either the cover or title. Inter-esting observations on the natural history of a varietyof relatively common and fairly well known spidersfrom Oz are marred by errors of fact and/or presenta-tion on nearly every page. One is left with the impres-sion that the well-meaning author has little profes-sional knowledge of spiders and that the text neverreceived professional content or copy editing. This volume commences with a brief preface fol-lowed by several short introductory chapters coveringspider morphology, natural history, classification andother general topics. Anyone with more than basic knowl-edge of spiders will find much to criticize or questionwithin these pages. For instance, we are presented withthe following dubious “facts.”• Spiders are important in controlling mosquito pop-ulations. In reality, fish, birds and various otherorganisms are vastly more important for mosquitocontrol than are spiders.• There are about 20 000 and 1800 spider species inthe world and Australia respectively. The actual fig-ures are closer to 40 000 (Platnick 2006) and 3300(R. J. Raven, Queensland Museum, personal com-munications).• Male and female spider genitalia fit together like a“lock and key mechanism.” Wrong! Spider geni-talia are one of the best known examples of rapidevolution likely resulting from sexual selection byfemale choice (Eberhard 1985).• Palps of male spiders are “hollowed out” to holdsperm. An insult to male spiders everywhere! Maturemale spiders are unique in (and defined by) their pos-session of palps bizarrely modified into complexsperm storage and transfer organs.• A considerable number of Australian spiders pose“a serious threat to humans in Australia.” Wrong!Among Australian spiders, only widows (Latrodec-tus hasselti) and a couple of funnel-web spiders(Atrax and Hadronyche spp.) pose any threat andtrue bites from these spiders are exceedingly rare(Isbister 2004, Isbister and Gray 2002). Australiansare better off spending their paranoia time worry-ing about being hit by lightning.Things don’t get much better in the subsequentchapter (“Species described in this book”) which formsthe bulk of the text. Approximately 125 pages discuss141 species in 29 families (or about 4 and a little morethan 30% of the currently recognized species andfamilies represented in Oz). Each family section liststhe number of Australian and world species in thefamily and describes the general appearance, life his-tory, and behaviour of one or more exemplar species.Unfortunately, the families are organized in a confus-ing quasi-phylogenetic manner, the species statisticsare often erroneous, the descriptive information is large-ly useless for identification purposes, other informationis often misleading or erroneous, and the vast majorityof the unique and truly wonderful Oz spider fauna isignored.For instance, consider the author’s treatment of thefamily Pholcidae. Australian genera and species arelisted as 9 and “about 12” and the cosmopolitan Phol-cus phalangioides is the token exemplar. The authorreferences the most recent taxonomic work summa-rizing the Oz pholcid fauna (Huber 2001) but missedthe fact that this work records 14 genera and nearly80 species (and still counting). Well, okay, I some-times have trouble with math, too. But in such a bookI expect to be introduced to truly Australian pholcidsinstead of to an already well-known species foundthroughout the world. The section is further marredwith factual and typographical errors. Similar prob-lems surface in the treatment of other families. As well,erroneous medical “information” is regularly trun-dled forward – e.g. under Lamponidae, almost entirelyan Australian family, discussion of the life and timesof Queenvic piccadilly would be vastly preferable toreiteration of the discredited medical mythology sur-rounding Lampona cylindrata.A short glossary of slightly less that 100 entriesfollows the “Species described …” chapter. Explana-tions are generally clear but one wonders why suchterms as anus, bark, and solitary warrant entries butmygalomorph does not. Nearly 30 pages of refer-ences conclude the text. There is an annotated sectionon general texts on Australian spiders and fairly com-plete and up-to-date scientific references are present-ed for each family. In spite of considerable repetition[e.g. Rainbow (1911) appears no less than 29 times]the references are easily the most useful part of theentire book.The book finishes with a set of 139 photographicplates and 27 paintings of the main species discussedin the text, arranged 3 to a page. Some of the photo-graphs are quite nice illustrations (e.g., plate 5 Deinopissubrufa, the cover boy mentioned earlier, and plate 16Lycosa bicolor, also featured on the cover as one ofthe border images). The paintings are without excep-tion unexceptional – two-dimensional, flatly coloured,and crudely rendered.In summary, if you are looking for an interestingdecorative wall piece, frame the cover and recyclethe rest (maybe keep the references section). If seri-ously curious about general spider biology and clas-sification, spend your money on Levi and Levi (1968)or Foelix (1996). For specific information on the spidersof Oz, buy Murphy and Murphy’s (2000) treatise onsoutheast Asian spiders – it does a much better job ofintroducing the fauna than does Spiders of AustraliaReferences:Dippenaar-Schoeman, A. S., and R. Jocqué. 1997. African Spi-ders: an Identification Manual. Agricultural Research Council,Pretoria. 392 pages.Eberhard, W. G. 1985. Sexual Selection and Animal Genitalia. Har-vard University Press, Cambridge, 244 pages.Foelix, R. F. 1996. The Biology of Spiders, 2nd ed. Oxford UniversityPress. 330 pages.304 THE CANADIAN FIELD-NATURALIST Vol. 119Huber, B. A. 2001. The pholcids of Australia (Araneae; Pholcidae):taxonomy, biogeography, and relationships. Bulletin of the Ameri-can Museum of Natural History 260: 1-144.Isbister, G. K. 2004. Necrotic arachnidism: The mythology of a mod-ern plague. The Lancet 364: 549-553.Isbister, G. K., and M. R. Gray. 2002. A prospective study of 750 def-inite spider bites, with expert spider identification. QueenslandJournal of Medicine 95: 723-731.Levi, H. W., and L. R. Levi. 1968. A guide to spiders and their kin.Golden Press, New York. 160 pages.Murphy, F., and J. Murphy. 2000. An introduction to the spiders ofSouth East Asia with notes on all the genera. Malaysian NatureSociety, Kuala Lumpur. 689 pages. Platnick, N. I. 2006. The world spider catalog. Version 6.5. TheAmerican Museum of Natural History. http://research.amnh.org/entomology/spiders/catalog/index.htmlRainbow, W. J. 1911. A census of Australian Araneidae. Records ofthe Australian Museum 9: 107-391.Song Daxiang, Zhu Mingsheng, and Chen Jun. 1999. The spidersof China. Hebei Science and Technology, Shijiazhuang. 640 pages.Ubick, D., P. Paquin, P. E. Cushing, and V. D. Roth (Editors). 2005.Spiders of North America: an Identification Manual. AmericanArachnological Society. 377 pages.ROBB BENNETTSeed Pest Management Officer, BC Ministry of Forests, 7380Puckle Road, Saanichton British Columbia V8M 1W4Canada2005 BOOK REVIEWS 305Annotated Bibliography of Quaternary Vertebrates of Northern North America With Radiocarbon DatesEdited by C. R. Harington. 2005. University of Toronto Press,10 St. Mary Street Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M5T 1R5Canada. 539 pages. $150.00 CDN.Bibliographies have proven an essential tool in anyhistorical based research, yet are often underrated. Inpaleontology, specifically vertebrate paleontology, manyhave relied upon Bibliography of Fossil VertebratesExclusive of North America 1509-1927 (Romer et al.,1962), and Bibliography of Fossil Vertebrates (BFV)(produced by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontol-ogy), and their earlier versions. The BFV, however, isno longer updated. Taxon-oriented bibliographies arealso produced, like Crossman and Casselman’s (1987)annotated bibliography of Esox lucius; and theme ori-ented bibliographies like Tokaryk et al. (1992) anno-tated bibliography of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinctionevent. Without continued maintenance, these, however,are quickly dated.Harington’s Annotated Bibliography of QuaternaryVertebrates of Northern North America – with Radio-carbon Dates is a recent contribution to the stacks ofpaleontological resources. This volume contains 1347citations (in 328 pages) from 1748 to 2000, containingdescriptions or notices of fauna from 2 million to 5000years ago. The region is inclusive of Alaska, Greenland,and Canada.The annotation is of sufficient depth when warrant-ed and the reader will note the brevity given to manyof the pre-20th century articles as these themselves lacksufficient depth. The indexing, always a vital tool inbibliographic construction, is subdivided into five sec-tions: scientific names; common names; localities andstratigraphic terms; personal names and institutions;and of a general index. This latter section, always con-strained by the subjective nature of its composer, canbe relied upon for consistency simply for the fact ofHarington’s long time standing in Quaternary pale-ontological research, which is beyond reproach.The facet that will make Harington’s work not onlystand out but retain a longer shelf life is the 138 addi-tional pages devoted to radiocarbon dates associatedwith taxa. This extended table, all the more importantin Quaternary paleontology than in any other paleon-tological subdivision, includes institutions responsiblefor the results, and published references. Collectively,this volume will provide a long lasting reference forstudents and professionals of Quaternary life in NorthAmerica.References:Crossman, E. J., and J. M. Casselman. 1987. An Annotated Bibli-ography of the Pike, Esox lucius (Osteichthyes: Salmoniformes).Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 386 pages.Romer, A. S., Nelda E. Wright, Tilly Edinger, and Richard VanFrank. 1962. Bibliography of Fossil Vertebrates Exclusive of NorthAmerica, 1509-1927. The Geological Society of America, Memoir87, 1544 pages.Tokaryk, T. T., J. E. Storer, and E. M. V. Nambudiri. 1992. SelectedBibliography of the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary Event, Through1989. Natural History Contributions, Number 11. SaskatchewanMuseum of Natural History, Regina, 140 pages.TIM TOKARYKBox 163, Eastend, Saskatchewan S0N 0T0 CanadaWhite as a Ghost: Winter Ticks and MooseBy Bill Samuel. 2004. Federation of Alberta Naturalists,11759 – Groat Road, Edmonton, Alberta, T5M 3K6 Canada.100 pages. $ 24.95.Parasites are a fascinating study. They are able toadapt and evolve in order to survive in or on their hosts,but usually will not kill their hosts. Books about par-asites are not often found in a public library, but Whiteas a Ghost would be a good addition. It has a large for-mat, 28 cm × 23 cm, with excellent photographs illus-trating the text, but is not a coffee table book. It isintended to give trappers, Fish and Wildlife officers,hunters, farmers and biologists the knowledge they needto understand and recognize the life cycle of the tickwhich causes Ghost Moose: Dermacentor albipictus.Wilderness campers, more than the general public, aremost likely to come across Ghost Moose. Dr. Samuel is a parasitologist who studies para-sites of deer, Elk and Moose and in particular the tickwhich causes Ghost Moose. The tick is widespread

"Spiders of Australia: An Introduction to their Classification, Biology and Distribution" by T. J. Hawkeswood [book review]

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"Spiders of Australia: An Introduction to their Classification, Biology and Distribution" by T. J. Hawkeswood [book review]

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