The call of the honeyguide What science tells us about how to live well with the rest of life

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Biologist Dunn (A Natural History of the Future) comprehensively explores mutualism, or mutually beneficial relationships between different species, in this stunning survey. Offering a corrective to the view that nature is dominated by competition and predation, Dunn's vivid descriptions of interspecies interactions make clear that mutualism is everywhere. Examples include the single-celled Mixotricha paradoxa, which can only be found inside the guts of an Australian termite. The organism is hosted and fed by the insect, and helps the termite metabolize wood. Elsewhere, mutualism is found between the honeyguide bird and humans. Dunn explains that the honeyguide eats wax found in beehives, but cannot access it, so it developed a unique call to signal to humans living in its sub-Saharan African habitat that it has located a beehive. The humans break into the hive for the honey, thus providing the birds access to the wax. Dunn's case studies are often mind-blowing (one type of Amazonian ant "kill their host's competitors by spraying venom into the leaves of the seedlings of any other trees that attempt to grow up around them") and his moving argument that humanity is reliant on thousands of mutualisms is well-made. This is a triumph of popular science. (Aug.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Ecologist and evolutionary biologist Dunn (A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us About the Destiny of the Human Species) discusses the mutually beneficial relationships humans and other living beings have with other species. Scientists call these mutualisms. The honeyguide referenced in the book's title is an African bird that alerts people to the location of a hive full of honey. The bird needs humans to break into the hive, not to share the honey, but so it can eat the wax. The book is full of such examples. Lemon-flavored ants live inside hollow-stemmed shrubs in the Amazon, making the plants taste bad to herbivores. Dunn also discusses more familiar relationships: How do house cats benefit humans? Does the dog walk his human or vice versa? The relationship people have cultivated between yeasts and grains has brought gustatory delights like beer and sourdough bread, while the human body contains microbes that give each person their own odor. VERDICT This highly recommended book is filled with fascinating discussions and philosophical musings about our place in this world with other living beings, all shared with wit and humor.--Caren Nichter

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Humans and nature, working together. Mutualisms are beneficial relationships between two or more species. Humans depend on countless numbers of these--and discover more of them--every day, says Dunn, author of several books. Once, we did not "see" mutualisms, perhaps guided too much by competitive aspects of Darwinism. But Darwin saw cooperation, or "mutualistic symbioses," in evolution, too. And so did other scientists after researcher Lynn Margulis, in the 1960s, discovered that the mitochondria in all our cells were born when one single-celled bacterium "ate" another billions of years ago and began using it as its energy source: the first complex life. We now know that we are a compilation of endless life forms that live in and around us, that sustain us as we sustain them. Margulis "reimagine[d] symbiotic partnerships as the default story of life." This book is teeming with such partnerships. One of the most compelling: the partnership between ancient trees and savanna-hopping ancient humans. The trees used the humans to spread their seeds ("fruits evolved to attract animals to eat them") even as humans used the fruit to survive. (Trees are, in fact, among "nature's chefs," the author has unearthed in his research.) Then there is human-beaver mutualism. Near the author's home in North Carolina, engineers looking to revive a stream removed concrete over it. But because they also straightened it, the waters couldn't slow, as they do when bending, to pool and form ecosystems. For 17 years the author saw little wildlife. Then two beavers--as they have for 12 million years--built a lodge for themselves, damming and pooling the stream. Soon, life was everywhere: fish, birds, mammals, turtles. A once-stagnant urban trickle had become a "new and righteous, riotous place." A gorgeous, authoritative, and philosophical directive to stop destroying the mutualisms of life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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