Book Review Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.
Systema Porifera: the sponge entanglement straightened out Hooper, J.A. & Van Soest, R.W.M. Systema Porifera. A Guide to the Classification of Sponges, 2002 — Kluwer Academic/Plenum, Dordrecht (ISBN 0-306-47260-0). Systema Porifera provides a necessary and long-needed revised and modern taxonomic survey of the Porifera from genus to phylum. Diagnoses and type species descriptions have been standardized, and terminology made consistent. As far as possible, type material for each genus has been redescribed. Keys have been constructed at each level from class to genus. For obvious reasons only the type species of each genus is described in detail, but entries such as synonymy, remarks, scope, history and biology, and previous reviews easily lead to much of the relevant literature. For some groups of potential users, namely those who are not sponge taxonomists nor spongiologists at all, but just need a practical guide to allocate some sponge to its proper taxonomic position, Systema Porifera may seem overwhelming. How could it be otherwise? These two weighty volumes — in any meaning of the word — treat the three classes of the living sponges, 25 orders, 127 families and 680 genera. Moreover, fossil sponges of six classes, 30 orders, 245 families and 1000 genera have been dealt with more briefly in order to begin to align the two classifications. The editors and authors have been involved in an enormous task, and success is fully deserved! They have had to handle large amounts of text and figures and also keep in regular contact with 45 contemporary researchers from 17 countries, not a small task in a scientific world where duties, deadlines and burdens of many kinds are continuously disturbing everyone’s daily life at their home institutions. The authors had to locate and borrow type specimens from museum collections all over the world, and in numerous cases work together and unite points of view which were sometimes conflicting. The result is a contemporary practical tool that will stand. Those sponge taxonomists who were not included or have stepped out sometime along the road will feel the lack of a substantial brick in their professional phenotype for years to come. Reading the brief historical survey of the first chapter puts the teamwork into some perspectives. The unbroken succession of authors since the days of Linnaeus provided the
© The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters • Zoologica Scripta, 33, 4, July 2004, pp387–388
descriptions of the currently known 7000 species and the framework of the existing classification, with Systema Porifera as the culmination for the time being. Had there been space for it, an account of the history of discovery of faunas and the development and role of different ‘schools’ within spongiology would have been appropriate here. The importance of the older literature could not be better emphasized than through the citation ‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’. Our contemporary problems are still the same, and new ones have come up. Younger people tend not to ‘waste’ time on old literature, not realizing (or maybe not wanting to) that most thoughts have been thought before. Libraries in institutions in newly developing countries, from where many of the new spongiologists come, are often not able to provide the literature. Good help is offered by the extensive bibliographic chapters and the web pages referred to. A future aim for the team of established spongiologists could be to organize a common ‘web library’ where older publications much in demand are made available in electronic form. Criticizing a work like this may be somewhat out of place considering the size, the amount of work from all quarters, the number of personal decisions and points of view expressed, and not least that it is a tool which should be put to the test through practical use. A few details may, however, be mentioned. Keys are always complicated to construct, especially those which, as is the case here, aim to reflect the taxonomy. In sponges, spicules deliver most key characters, but spicule categories may be lacking or strongly modified in certain members of a group. This is probably the reason why, for example, species of the large and widely distributed genus Isodictya can be identified to order but not to suborder. It would have been more user-friendly if the keys had a cross-reference (page number) after the name one ends up with; instead one has to consult the index at the back of the book for each taxonomic level. Moreover, those keys that could fit on one page should not be divided between two. The maps are reproduced in different sizes, and in the smaller of them it is often difficult to make out the dots, the one on page 1359 apparently showing nothing. The map on page 1467 is larger and clearly shows the distribution intended, but it was not necessary to show it twice. The price is exorbitant, even for a book of that size. Only large libraries, institutions and well-to-do projects can be expected to afford the initial expenditure. 387
Book Review
Systema Porifera has only one real predecessor, namely De Laubenfels’ (1936) A Discussion of the Sponge Fauna of the Dry Tortugas in Particular and the West Indies in General, with Material for a Revision of the Families and Orders of the Porifera. It was an attempt to establish a full survey of all genera in a comprehensive reorganized system of partly new families and orders. That book is probably the most frequently cited work in Poriferan literature and also the most heavily criticized. It is to be foreseen that Systema Porifera will soon take over the first position, but certainly not the second.
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References Bidder, G. P. (1928). Editor’s preface. In G. J. C. Vosmaer (Ed.) pp. vii–xii, Bibliography of sponges 1551–1913 (p. 234). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Laubenfels, H. W. (1936). A Discussion of the Sponge Fauna of the Dry Tortugas in Particular and the West Indies in General, with Material for a Revision of the Families and Orders of the Porifera — Papers from Tortugas Laboratory, 30: 225.
Ole S. Tendal Zoological Museum, Invertebrate Department, Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark. E-mail:
[email protected]
Zoologica Scripta, 33, 4, July 2004, pp387– 388 • © The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
