Hawaiian Natural History, Ecology, and Evolution

Having a basic high-school level knowledge of the subject I was worried that I wouldn't be able to preserver through this book. However I can only say the contrary! The author did a great job articulating somewhat difficult concepts, and laying out this broad scope into clear distinct chapters. I was very pleased with the diagrams and images provided, as I am more of a visual person, and couldn't have been more fascinated by the material. Highly would recommend this book to any adult interested in the subject.

This is a great book for anyone interested in the natural history of Hawaii.

Informative scientific book. Recommend to all ecologist, biogeographists, etc.

A lot of outdated facts. The writing is deathly dry. There are a lot of charts and diagrams, but they need a heckuva a lot more (simpler) explaining.

It's been three decades since anyone has published a general survey of Hawaii's natural history.A lot has happened since. Just on Maui, researchers have discovered po`ouli birds, happyface spiders and the fossils of extinct, flightless giant "geese."And we now know more about what was already known here 30 years ago, like the fibropapilloma tumor disease of green sea turtles, which was present at least by the mid-'50s, though unrecognized. Today it is epidemic.These islands are unique and so strange, biologically and geologically, that even a survey requires a thick book. Alan Ziegler says his "Hawaiian Natural History, Ecology, and Evolution" is "relatively condensed" and intended for the general reader or possibly as a college textbook.For a condensed product, "Hawaiian Natural History" is pretty chewy. The book is filled with tables and charts. So if you want to know how many species of geckos live in Hawaii and when each was introduced, the answer is on page 238 -- seven species, four brought by ancient Polynesians and the most recent migrant, the orange-spotted day gecko, sometime in the 1980s.Anyone in Hawaii with an interest in environmental issues needs to be familiar with what's in this book, which covers even more subjects than Sherwin Carlquist's standard text "Hawaii: A Natural History," which hasn't been updated since 1980.For one thing, there are four myths about Hawaii that are found in almost every popular book and article, and even in some professional papers, and Ziegler explodes three of them.It is not true that Hawaii enjoys "rich volcanic soil." That's Sicily. Hawaii's volcanos are different, and Ziegler explains why.It is not true that Hawaii harbors an incredibly diverse biota. Like other isolated archipelagoes, it is missing a lot -- reptiles, amphibians, pines, oaks etc. Ziegler dislikes such terms as "depauperate," "impoverished" or "truncated," settling somewhat reluctantly for "disharmonic." Anyhow, Hawaii's flora and fauna demonstrate very high endemism but very low diversity.It is not true that the ancient Hawaiians had some sort of mystical understanding that allowed (or required) them to live in harmony with nature in a way Westerners cannot.It takes some courage for Ziegler to say it, but we know now that every human society -- Polynesians no less than any other -- altered its territory to suit its desires, to the limit of its technology.Batting .750 is pretty good, but unfortunately Ziegler whiffs the fourth myth. It is not true that after Contact the Hawaiian population succumbed to exotic diseases for which they "had no natural immunity."Neither did anybody else. Diseases such as smallpox were as deadly to Europeans as to Hawaiians.The etiology of the disease played out differently, and more disastrously both individually and socially, for the Hawaiians. But it should have been clear from news reports current at the time this book was published (concerning the possibility that terrorists had somehow gotten hold of live smallpx virus) that Europeans and European Americans do not believe they enjoy natural immunity from smallpox.That episode ought to have been enough to demolish the fantasy of haole (white) immunity, but the notion is so entrenched, it probably won't."Hawaiian Natural History" is not as graceful reading as some flossy "environmental" books about Hawaii, but it is much more reliable than most, and it lopes across more territory than any other.Should a reader want to explore more deeply, Ziegler provides an extensive annotated bibliography."Hawaiian Natural History" will be indispensable.

Hawaiian Natural History, Ecology, and Evolution by Alan C. Ziegler is the “go to” text for the study of Hawaii’s ecology. You need some degree of natural science knowledge to read this book and get something out of it. This book is a textbook, and the bone-dry prose leaves no doubt as to its status. The writing here is inspirational.

I hold this book to a somewhat higher level, being published by a University Press. It is quite good, but tends to be somewhat wordy in some parts of the text. I also note episodes of over-simplification in some areas (e.g. use of 'Basalt'). I would rather the author use Basalt where it is intended and Basalt-like or some similar term to distinguish the difference between the two in a text-like book. Some benefit could also be made of some larger degree of color plates.All this aside, the text is quite balanced and has a variety of authorized illustrations that are pertinent, even when not of a higher quality. Some elements of less particular relevance to Hawai'i in particular might have been dispensed with. An example would be the chapter explaining Ecology concepts. A perfunctory paragraph or two might do with reference to standard texts or even an expanded discussion of the concepts, but using Hawai'in examples rather than more generic ones. Much of this is a criticism, and not overwhelming on the whole, inasmuch as no similar work of such broad breadth is known to me. A book trying to do this much has a tendency to turn 'off the path' at times.In summation, this is a worthy book that might benefit from mild textual revisions and improved illustrations, but is a bargain anyway. I would clearly recommend it as an option to 6 or 7 books in the subspecialties it replaces: Geology, Ecology, Meteorology, Evolution, Botany, Marine Biology and Terestrial Vertebrate Biology.