Title: The Monkey's Voyage: How Improbable Journeys Shaped the History of Life. Alan de Queiroz. 2014. New York: Basic Books, 370p.
Abstract:The main theme of de Queiroz’s (2014) book is that an irrational school of thought, vicariance theory, dominated biogeography from the 1970s to the 1990s, but that a new theory, chance dispersal, subs...The main theme of de Queiroz’s (2014) book is that an irrational school of thought, vicariance theory, dominated biogeography from the 1970s to the 1990s, but that a new theory, chance dispersal, subsequently reclaimed the field. The reality is somewhat different. From the rise of the neodarwinian Modern Synthesis in the early 1940s until now, chance dispersal has been the dominant paradigm in biogeography, and its supporters have occupied all the senior positions in the field. Nevertheless, vicariance began to be taken seriously in the 1970s, and since then it has become widely accepted despite its radical undermining of the traditional theory (Fig. 1). In this review, ‘DeQ’ refers to de Queiroz (2014); numbers cited in brackets refer to page numbers in the book. An earlier review of DeQ’s book concluded: ‘as a history it is sadly incomplete...’, the author ‘takes most second-hand stories at face value...’, and ‘the book takes a sometimes uncritical look at its subject’ (Morrison 2014). This uncritical attitude also characterizes much modern biogeography; authors adopt a ‘plug-and -play’ approach, running their data through popular programs and accepting the results without question.Read More
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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