The Serengeti Rules

January 18, 2016
In this thoroughly engaging book, Carroll (Remarkable Creatures), a professor of molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, persuasively argues that life at all levels of complexity is self-regulated, from the inner workings of cells to the larger relationships governing the Serengeti ecosystem. This means that when disease occurs at any level, something is likely to have gone amiss with that natural regulation. Carroll brings this relatively simple point to life by briefly relating the stories of a handful of scientists who were responsible for discovering the underlying rules of self-regulation. He introduces readers to Walter Cannon, the physiologist who introduced the concept of homeostasis; Robert Paine, the ecologist who promoted the idea of a keystone species; Jacques Monod, the biologist who began to unravel how genes are turned on and off; and Tony Sinclair, the zoologist who shed light on complex trophic relationships controlling animal numbers on the Serengeti. Investigating how basic principles have been harnessed to solve some of Earth’s most pressing ecological problems, Carroll remains unabashedly optimistic about possibilities for the future, citing the amazing efforts that have restored a wealth of wildlife to Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park. Carroll superbly animates biological principles while providing important insights. Photos & illus.

December 15, 2015
An exploration of how "just as there are molecular rules that regulate the numbers of different kinds of molecules and cells in the body, there are ecological rules that regulate the numbers and kinds of animals and plants in a given place." Carroll (Molecular Biology and Genetics/Univ. of Wisconsin; Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize, 2013, etc.) describes Tanzania's Serengeti National Park as "an unending canvas containing mammals of many sizes, shapes, and colors," each with its own place in the food chain. In the 1920s, Charles Elton discovered the role of the food chain in regulating the numbers of animals that can be supported in a given region, a discovery that Carroll compares to the contributions of Darwin. While he was still a student at Oxford, Elton joined an expedition to the Arctic, where he observed a pyramid of life, beginning at the bottom with plankton and fish. These were eaten by seabirds, which, in turn, provided food for the arctic foxes and seals that, in turn, became sustenance for the polar bears. Elton recognized that the different species functioned as a community of predators and prey, with their populations regulated by their relative positions in the food chain. Predators play important roles in ecological sustainability by limiting the numbers of the species on which they prey. This is exemplified by the recent necessity of reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone Park because the unchecked population of deer and elk were overgrazing the vegetation. Another analogy is the way in which water pollution creates massive growth in algae. Carroll compares this to a failure in the body's regulatory system, which causes excessive cell multiplication and leads to the development of metastatic cancers. He warns that by failing to protect the environment with appropriate regulations, we face "an ecological cancer." A thought-provoking challenge to complacency.

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