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This is an erudite and in some ways an important book, but it is not, as the back cover claims, 'essential reading for philosophers of biology, environmental philosophers, conservation biologists, and indeed anyone interested in one of the most pressing issues of our time: the conservation of biodiversity'. For a number of philosophers of biology and conservation biologists, perhaps; others, however, will drown in often unexplained technical jargon, and sentences such as 'Compare this allopatric case with sympatric speciation in plants due to polyploidy' (36). This is a pity, for the nature and goals of biodiversity and its conservation really are among the pressing issues of our time, and this book often clears a path through much of the related theoretical undergrowth, fearlessly criticising the theories of all-comers, Dawkins, Gould and Lewontin among them.
Biological diversity, as the authors argue, has more than one dimension, and consists in more than just species richness. This kind of diversity needs to be distinguished from morphological or phenotypic disparity; for communities with equal species richness could be more diverse (and have a stronger prospect of survival too) if their species embodied more internal variety and (more importantly) occupied a greater range of morphological possibilities (morphospace). Species richness sometimes serves in practice as a surrogate for morphological disparity, and the two variables are not entirely independent of one another, but their capacity for co-variance can only be tested if, as the authors maintain, they can be conceived and measured separately.
This stance requires clarification of the concept of species. Species are "something like" natural kinds (40), unlike higher taxa such as genera and families, and are to be identified with 'metapopulations in partial stasis', although this identification holds good for only 'some chunks of the tree of life' (40). Earlier, no less than seven kinds of species concepts have been reviewed, but this evolutionary concept of species emerges as the preferred one. 'Stasis' seems to mean 'stability' (a large mutation from its ancient meaning and derivation), while a metapopulation seems to add to a population (a more-or-less contiguous cluster of individuals capable of inter-breeding) neighbouring populations with which the given population interacts. ('Seems' because no definition is offered where the term first...