Cheats and Deceits
Martin Stevens (OUP) £22.99
Throughout the 3.5-billion-year history of life on Earth, plants and animals have evolved increasingly complex and sometimes bewildering adaptations for cheating, deceiving, and conning members of their own, or other, species. Martin Stevens, Associate Professor in Sensory and Evolutionary Ecology at Exeter University, walks us elegantly through this rich natural history in his fascinating book, Cheats and Deceits. This is probably the most comprehensive book on the subject in existence, which picks up ideas first considered
by Darwin, Wallace and other famous naturalists of the past, cleverly woven together with findings from modern science. Some of the main forms of deception in nature covered by the text are finding food, predation and reproductive survival. For example, you may learn how the drongo bird fools meerkats in Africa into dropping juicy food by faking an alarm call; you may also read about how spiders, plants like flytraps, and angler fish lure their prey, and how cuckoos trick other bird species into fostering their sometimes gigantic chicks. Each example is illustrated with glorious storytelling and imagery. Rather fittingly, given the subject matter, this can
be thought of both as an academic text pretending to be a popular science book and a popular science book masquerading as an academic text. In reality it’s probably a bit of both and will ultimately appeal to all those curious about the natural world, and particularly those enraptured by the seemingly infinite creative processes of evolution. Dan Ryan
I contain multitudes − the microbes within us and a grander view of life
Ed Yong (Bodley Head) £20.00
In a recent interview, Ed Yong offered an unusual perspective on life. 'It's a microbial world — we're just living in it.' It's no overstatement. The microbial world shapes our
world – driving planetary cycles of carbon, nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorous that enable life as we know it to exist. But as the title suggests (and as our own Invisible You
exhibit demonstrates), the relationship is more intimate; we're not just living in their world, they're living in us. There are more microbes in our guts than there are stars in the Milky Way. Microbes perform vital services like training our immune systems, helping us digest and perhaps even directing our desires.
Tales of warriors are told more often than those of farmers
and the same is true of the history of microbes. The little we know is coloured by a vision of our bodies as a battleground in which germs are fought off (or not) by our immune systems. The counter-narrative, that there are beneficial microbes, has been eclipsed by tales of disease and death. It’s not that simple – good and bad have no meaning in a world in which the same bacteria can cause cancer if found in your gut or prevent it if found in your oesophagus. Yong has a talent for drawing simple yet elegant
analogies; the immune system is not an army, it's more like a team of rangers managing a park and the creatures in it; bacteria aren't static nouns, they're adjectives and verbs, capable of modification or action. Inevitably much of the action is laboratory-based, but the world it opens the door upon is awe inspiring. We’re still in what Yong calls the stamp-collecting phase of the science – the equivalent of Darwin’s voyages – but already new vistas are opening up that were undreamt of when an 18th- century Dutch haberdasher first trained his home-made lens on a raindrop. Rob Lowe
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