Books
a laboratory for exploring transitions
to sustainability in a setting heavily
affected by climate change.
ROLF A. IMS
Rolf A. Ims is affiliated with the
Department of Arctic and Marine
Biology at the Arctic University of
Norway, in Tromsø.
doi:10.1093/biosci/biv085
OCEANS OF CULTURE? MAKES
YOU THINK . . .
The Cultural Lives of Whales and
Dolphins. Hal Whitehead and Luke
Rendell. University of Chicago Press,
2014. 417 pp., illus. $35.00 (ISBN
9780226895314 cloth).
T
his book considers the case for
whales and dolphins having culture. However, it is not a simple work
of advocacy; the authors also aim to
engage readers in an ongoing debate
grounded in the evidence. Perhaps recognizing that this asks a lot of those
readers, the authors have the less ambitious aim of introducing to a wide
readership the evidence relating to
whale and dolphin culture. This is still
a challenge, because such a readership is acknowledged to include both
nonscientists and those who have been
suspicious of the misguided mysticism
that cetacean behavior seems to attract
(the authors’ words—not mine). The
book also considers wider implications,
including contributions to the field of
gene–culture coevolution, applications
to conservation, and how humans perceive and treat whales and dolphins. To
attempt any of these aims would make
a book noteworthy in the field; to do all
of them makes it a must read.
Hal Whitehead is university
research professor in the Department
of Biology at Dalhousie University,
in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Luke
Rendell is a lecturer in biology at
the Sea Mammal Research Unit and
the Centre for Social Learning and
Cognitive Evolution at the University
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org
of St. Andrews, in Scotland. Both
have spent long periods at sea studying cetaceans—­
predominantly large
whales and usually from Whitehead’s
research sailboat Balaena (Rendell was
a PhD student in Whitehead’s lab).
Their oceanic experiences set the tone
for the book: it is abundantly clear that
they would both far rather be at sea
with cetaceans than shore bound, and
they conclude the book by declaring
their intention to set sail again.
The heart of this book is three chapters that look in detail at a variety of
behaviors, social structures, and contexts that are the evidence base for
the considerations of whale and dolphin culture that are developed in the
rest of the book. One chapter focuses
on baleen whales, mostly their song
and specializations for lunge feeding.
(Incidentally, plate 4 is an atmospheric
photo, but it cannot adequately represent the sheer shock and awe of a
group of humpbacks erupting from the
surface and engulfing water equivalent to their body volume. Fortunately,
YouTube obliges [search for “humpback
whales bubble net feeding”] and gives
an idea of the plight of herring caught
within the bubble curtain created by
the whales.) The next chapter deals
with dolphins, particularly sponge carrying by bottlenose dolphins and their
interactions with fishermen. This is
followed by a chapter that is given over
to the larger-toothed whales (especially
killer, sperm, and pilot whales) for the
reason that they are matrilineal societies, with most females staying in the
same group as their mother—a good
context for social learning.
The authors begin by introducing
the two key components of the title
(culture and then whales as ocean denizens) before delving into the detail
of the evidence (the three chapters
discussed above) and social learning.
If these evidence chapters are the heart
of the book, then the head lies in the
book’s evaluation of the evidence for
culture in the chapter that asks, “Is
this evidence for culture?” The evaluation extends to more general considerations of what could be viewed as
evidence for the existence of culture.
This chapter exemplifies one aspect of
the readability of the book as a whole,
with clear, eminently reasonable explanations of both the specific evaluations
and the criteria for accepting evidence.
This reasonableness even extends to
the discussion-terminating stance of
extreme anthropocentricity—that is,
that we have culture but nonhuman
animals do not, by definition. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, the authors conclude
that there is some good evidence for
culture in whales and dolphins, and
the following three chapters deal with
the implications of this conclusion. In
addition to the reasonableness of the
prose throughout the book, its readability will be enhanced for most readers by the obvious relish with which
the story is told. Despite the authors’
assertion (p. 8) that the book is not
an ode to whales (and it is not, in the
pejorative, unscientific sense that the
authors had in mind), the text communicates more than a distillation of
their experience and expertise—their
fascination with the glimpses into the
way these species live their lives makes
this anything but a dry read.
There are pros and cons of focusing on one taxon when wide-ranging
issues such as culture are being discussed, and this book makes limited
use of relevant information from primates and birds. But, on balance, the
insights the authors give into whales
and dolphins more than offset this
taxonomic limitation.
Was I convinced by the evidence?
In a way, that question misses the
point of this book. Certainly, I became
engaged in the ongoing discussion, so
August 2015 / Vol. 65 No. 8 • BioScience 831
Books
much so that I found it hard to write
this review (and you would be correct in thinking that this sounds like
an excuse for missed deadlines, but
it also happens to be true). This book
raises the broader issue of how we
treat whales, dolphins, and the ocean
environment. It is unlikely to have the
impact of the best-selling album The
Song of the Humpback Whale (credited
with changing public perception of
the acceptability of whaling in 1970s),
partly because a good song always has
more impact than a good poem and
partly because our current impacts
on cetaceans are more subtle than
exploding harpoons in their heads.
However, whales and dolphins could
not wish for better advocates than the
authors—this book will make readers
think, and that might just be enough
to move human culture from treating our oceans and their inhabitants
slightly less badly to actively treating
them better.
PETER McGREGOR
Peter McGregor (peter.mcgregor@
cornwall.ac.uk) is at the Centre for
Applied Zoology at Cornwall College,
in Newquay, United Kingdom. He is
editor of the journals Bioacoustics and
acta ethologica and coedits the Springer
Animal Signals and Communication
series with Vincent Janik.
doi:10.1093/biosci/biv090
NATURE’S MAGIC ALGEBRA;
OR, HOW ONE PLUS ONE STILL
EQUALED ONE
One Plus One Equals One: Symbiosis
and the Evolution of Complex Life.
John Archibald. Oxford University
Press, 2014. 205 pp., illus. $27.95
(ISBN 9780199660599 cloth).
O
ne who has never wondered
about our origins has never truly
lived. The origin of life is at the base
of many religions, and the same topic
has vexed scientists for centuries. It is
also the basis of many heated debates
832 BioScience • August 2015 / Vol. 65 No. 8
regarding evolution. In One Plus One
Equals One, John Archibald takes the
reader along the scientific path of the
origin and evolution of complex life.
By taking a careful, stepwise scientific
approach interspersed with anecdotes,
Archibald shows that unweaving the
rainbow does not make it less beautiful. We can still be in awe of the beauty
of complex life despite knowing the
molecular basis of many steps that
led to its origin. The title of the book
refers to one of the most sensational
events in life: the transition from
simple life (prokaryotes) to complex
life (eukaryotes). This unique event
in the history of life on our planet—
in which one organism managed to
establish itself (or was forced) inside
another organism and then continued
to live as a wholly new organism—­
dramatically changed the fate of our
planet. Endosymbiosis has had longreaching consequences for life on
our planet, including our own lives.
Archibald provides a journey through
time, both on an evolutionary timescale and a more human one, describing key ­
scientists’ insights that led
to our current understanding of the
eukaryotic cell. This provides a good
introduction to modern cell biology,
with a special emphasis on the two
organelles of endosymbiotic origin,
the mitochondrion and the chloroplast. Although perhaps ideally suited
to biologists with an interest in (cellular) evolution, the book does contain
good introductions to cell biology and
molecular biology that will aid interested readers from diverse fields.
John Archibald is a professor of
biochemistry and molecular biology
at Dalhousie University, in Canada,
and is an internationally recognized
expert on secondary endosymbiosis—
in particular, nucleomorph evolution.
In his book, he shares lively anecdotes
of those who played key roles in this
field, many of these from firsthand
information. Throughout the book,
Archibald leaves no doubt that plain
curiosity and determination drove
these scientists to their seminal discoveries. The description of Mike Gray
getting giant sacks of wheat germ from
a local mill to isolate enough starting
material for his experiments or of Ford
Doolittle dictating the 16S ribosomal
RNA sequence from Escherichia coli
over the phone to Carl Woese, who
couldn’t wait until the journal arrived
at his own desk, are very entertaining.
Such information enlivens the information that someone would get from
merely reading the influential papers
from Gray and Woese in Nucleic
Acids Research and the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences,
respectively. This is also one of the
strengths of the book: It demonstrates
that science is an endeavor like no
other human enterprise, lived and
conducted by real human beings of
flesh and blood who have a lifelong
passion for their field. That this passion sometimes turns into very heated
debate is hardly surprising. Archibald
describes the tensions that arise from
new theories that challenge dogma—
or established careers. What Archibald
makes pretty clear, however, is that the
advance of molecular biology turned a
lot of speculative “chatter” into testable
predictions and, boy, how unequivocal
the outcomes of these experiments
have been. Archibald describes the
early struggles of visionaries such as
Mereschkowsky over a century ago
(whose observations and theories on
the nature of chloroplasts were spot
on), and he narrates the discovery of
extranuclear DNA in this organelle in
the 1960s and how it made for uncomfortable reading for those opposing an
endosymbiotic origin of chloroplasts.
Advances in molecular biology—from
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org