Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 104 (2000) 329
Book review
FloraMap: A computer tool for predicting the dis-tribution of plants and other organisms in the Wild P.G. Jones and A. Gladkov, edited by Annie L. Jones; CD-ROM Series, Version 1, Centro Internacional de Agricultura, Tropical (CIAT), Cali, Columbia, 1999, 99 pp
With escalating public concerns over the number of species of plants and animals on the verge of ex-tinction and/or on the endangered list, biodiversity has become a buzzword among scientists, and politicians and laymen alike. Tropical rainforests in particular, are disappearing at an alarming rate all over the world mainly from their economic overexploitations. Thus, despite the fact that these rainforests contain unex-plored species of plants which are highly valuable to humans as potential resource for food, nutrition and which hold the promise for potential untapped cures of a variety of ailments in the future. In their recent book, P.G. Jones and A. Gladkov introduce a computer tool to predict the distribution or possible adaptation of species on the basis of germplasm collection ac-cessions and the climate at the collection points. The book will be extremely useful to taxonomists in their search and in the collection of herbarium specimens based on their habitat climate. For researchers on bio-diversity, the model put forward in the book would be highly useful. Agricultural scientists could get im-portant information from FloraMap as to the climatic suitability to grow a particular crop in a region. The book could also serve as a teaching tool for graduate and undergraduate students enrolling in botany and similar courses.
Although, only rainfall and temperature were used as the climatic parameters in the model, the book will make contribution towards biodiversity research and teaching. The value of the book will be enhanced
many-fold by adding soil types and day-length in sub-sequent versions. The result would be made a more complex model but the effort would add to the value of the book.
The first three chapters introduce the user to a tuto-rial on the computer tool, and aims to familiarize the user with problems encountered when using FloraMap in real world data. The tutorial is helpful despite the many glitches of this first version. The set up of the FloraMap is cumbersome, something the authors seem to be aware of. It is hoped that the authors will intro-duce improvements in the next version to make this product more user-friendly. This book also contains sections on the principal component (PCA), clusters, and the probability analyses and mapping. Various windows and icons are used in the FloraMap and de-scribed in Chapter 3. Unfortunately, the final chapter only briefly describes the theory including the climate surface, the mathematical model, and the probability calculations which are the most interesting elements in the book.
Overall, I consider this book to be an important con-tribution to knowledge and recommend it specifically to researchers in taxonomy and related fields, and to students who would like to specialize in fields where biology and climate interact.
Nayana N. Barthakur∗
Department of Natural Resource Sciences McGill University 21,111 Lakeshore Road Ste Anne de Bellevue Que., Canada H9X 3VC
∗
Tel.:+1-514-398-7938; fax:+1-514-398-7990.
E-mail address:barthn@nrs.mcgill.ca (N.N. Barthakur).
