Edward O. Wilson, one of the authors of The Ants reviewed earlier, was an accomplished author as well as researcher. I started this book many years ago and had to put it down for other research, but finally got back to it. The book is, as clearly titled, about the diversity of life–how it appears, how it disappears, and what we can do about it.

In the past, I have mentioned that I don’t care much for poetic description, but this book changed my opinion on that. The opening chapter is so well-written, I was quite surprised it came from this author. After my experience reading The Ants, which I described as, “does not read well,” I expected something dryer than what I found. I thoroughly enjoyed this writing. Unfortunately it does not stay that way. Some chapters are still so technical in how they are written that the style could be jarring. The notes in the back state that some of the book came from different things he had already written, so he could have been in very different states of mind when they were written, not combining them as seemlessly in this book as he would have if they had been written all together.

One thing that I enjoyed learning was thinking about how niches are filled up. That, generally-speaking, the same ecological niches are filled in every habitat wherever they are (except for a few exceptions, especially on islands). One way the author described it was imagining South America before its connection to North America. He said that it would look much like wild areas of Africa look today, just that everything will look slightly off. Similar creatures filling the same niches would be in both places, but similar is not the same. While many would look very similar (imagine four-legged animals browsing grasslands), considering giant sloths as filling the same niche as African elephants is a really neat and eye-opening way to think about ecosystems. Different animals, similar results. Radical exceptions do exist, such as vampire finches found only in the Galapagos. But generally, with enough space and time time, species in novel habitats will specialize to consume food resources in a similar way as extant species elsewhere.

Much of the first half of this book was about evolution, and although I am fairly well-versed, there was still much to learn, even when at the margins. Learning from experts at the level of the two-time Pulitzer prize-winner and Harvard entomologist allows you to learn more thoroughly, because they know so many more topics and sub-topics that most would not realize to consider.

However, while the first half of the book is about, evolution, speciation, and ecological diversity, the second half is about extinction, warnings about the future, protective measures, and ethics. While I don’t really enjoy the preachyness (not that I blame anyone being preachy when talking about human-caused extinction) or find it helpful, I did still learn a lot, especially in the section on extinction, both natural and human-caused. First off, I appreciated that the author didn’t hold back for any group of people. We know the problems with industrialized civilization, but there were no noble savages here, just humans looking for resources. So when humans arrived to the south pacific and half the species of birds went extinct, he knew who to blame. There were birds over 6 feet tall in New Zealand, and even taller ones in Madagascar, that native peoples ate into oblivion. They must have been amazing to see. To quote the author, “as the mexican truck driver said who shot one of the last two imperial woodpeckers, largest of all the world’s woodpeckers, ‘It was a great piece of meat.'” A late poetic line I appreciated, “Every species makes its own farewell to the human partners who have served it so ill.”

The next section of the book was dire warnings of extinctions, which is simply out-of-date. And unfortunately, the conditions today are far worse than the time of the book’s publication. The author often refers to predictions for 2022, which has already come and past. If you want more up-to-date figures, the IUCN has reports on biological diversity. Personally I find it too depressing. I still do what I can regardless of reading the reports. Similarly, the many programs the author lists to create reserves or restore habitat are also often out-of-date. So much of the last third of the book was not particularly useful.

I will finish with a humorous moment I found. Edward O. Wilson, writing about a species, perhaps intending to be humorous, but not written so, “…dwarf members of a genus of giant salamanders.” So… regular-sized? It is good information he included, but the almost oxymoronic language gave me a chuckle. So read the book. It’s still a worthwhile read–even if you skip the end–by one of the premier naturalists of the last century.