tanghappy
07-10-2004, 10:58 PM
I'll start off with my disclaimer. After having read "The Cichlid Fishes" by George Barlow, I had high expectations for this book. Unfortunately, it didn't quite live up to them.
That said, this was an enjoyable book. Tijs Goldschmit spent most of the 80's studying the cichlids of Lake Victoria. In "Darwin's Dreampond" he writes about his experiences there; alternating between narative passages and scientific passages. Somehow he manages to pull this mixture of narative and scientific explenation off, and wrote an easily read and enjoyable book. At Lake Victoria, he started his research studying the species flock of cichlids in the lake, and trying to determine how they evelolved and specialized to the hundreds of species that have been cataloged. However, over time, he realized that the Nile Perch that had been introduced to the lake were stressing the ecosystem in extreme ways and that mass extinction of cichlid species was possibly occuring before his eyes.
The scientific portion of this book is very well written, and taught me a fair bit about evolution. My one complaint is that T. Goldschmidt often went to classic examples of evolutionary concepts and spent time discussing them instead of discussing the cichlids he was studying.
As for the narative portions of the book; this proved to be an unexpected surprise. He managed to provide a vivid glimpse of the people living around the lake - their daily lives, and that of the "wanderers" there studying the lake.
All in all an enjoyable read. However, this book does not discuss fish behavior nearly as much as "The Cichlid Fishes" does.
That said, this was an enjoyable book. Tijs Goldschmit spent most of the 80's studying the cichlids of Lake Victoria. In "Darwin's Dreampond" he writes about his experiences there; alternating between narative passages and scientific passages. Somehow he manages to pull this mixture of narative and scientific explenation off, and wrote an easily read and enjoyable book. At Lake Victoria, he started his research studying the species flock of cichlids in the lake, and trying to determine how they evelolved and specialized to the hundreds of species that have been cataloged. However, over time, he realized that the Nile Perch that had been introduced to the lake were stressing the ecosystem in extreme ways and that mass extinction of cichlid species was possibly occuring before his eyes.
The scientific portion of this book is very well written, and taught me a fair bit about evolution. My one complaint is that T. Goldschmidt often went to classic examples of evolutionary concepts and spent time discussing them instead of discussing the cichlids he was studying.
As for the narative portions of the book; this proved to be an unexpected surprise. He managed to provide a vivid glimpse of the people living around the lake - their daily lives, and that of the "wanderers" there studying the lake.
All in all an enjoyable read. However, this book does not discuss fish behavior nearly as much as "The Cichlid Fishes" does.