Customer Reviews

Migration: The Biology of Life on the Move

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

... I'm a researcher whose field of study includes animal movement and migration -- Hugh Dingle is one of the premier scientists in this field of study, and this book is THE seminal work on the topic. I reference it regularly.

Rather than just describing all the different examples of migration, Hugh attempts to unify the field under one comprehensive theoretical framework. He succeeds magnificently, starting with an explicit working defininiton of what migration is, then using this to discuss the physiology, mechanisms, and evolution of this behavior. The book is filled with fascinating examples from the scientific literature that clearly illustrate the points he is trying to make. If there are gaps in the story, it is no fault of the author -- there are many gaps in our knowledge. ...Hugh is obsessed with insects, there is a good reason for that. Insects make excellent test subjects for these studies -- they perform impressive migrations, they are easy to deal with, and easy to manipulate experimentally. Consequently, a great deal of migration research has involved one kind of insect or another.

The book is articulate and highly readable, though I agree that a good background in the biological sciences will help. It is not intended for the casual reader. I highly recommend it (five stars isn't enough), though, for anyone who wants to really delve into the subject.

Dingle has tried to encompass all the different modes of migration of so many species into one book, and this is just impossible, since you can't make such broad categorizations. He sets up definitions of what migration is in the beginning of the book, contrasting migration and foraging or dispersing, but ends up not following his own rules when he, for instance, goes into detail about insect dispersal (according to his definition of dispersal!) (He is obviously pretty obsessed with insects, since most of his examples deal with them.) It just seemed like he crammed as many examples as possible into this book, and you don't end up learning the grand scheme, which was his goal--to link all these modes of migration. The main problem I had with this book is that it is just not very well organized, and you have to work hard to pick out the relevant ideas, or figure out what his main point is. He tends to use many very scientific words, for which he initially gives very sketchy definitions, and then uses throughout the text. This leaves the reader pretty bewildered, if not already familiar with these terms. Don't get me wrong, there are loads of very interesting facts in this book... the hard part is being able to extract them from his book! If you are well-educated in biology/zoology, etc., you'll probably get a lot more out of this book, since you'll be able to read with more ease. As I said before, there are a LOT of interesting facts about migration, if you can make it through all the boring stuff.