Book reviews 299

cal development much more difficult to follow. Modeldevelopment is best presented when following a fewbasic steps: conceptualisation (very well presentedhere), mathematical formulation with standard math-ematical notation, and then coding. The last two stepsshould be clearly differentiated. In this book, the con-ventions of the coding are used in the mathematicalformulation, and it makes for difficult reading, whichis unfortunate given that the book is aimed at peoplewithout a strong mathematical background.

In conclusion, this book introduces ModelMaker tosoil and environmental scientists who have receivedbasic mathematical training (first year university) butdo not necessarily have strong mathematical and pro-gramming skills. The package proves to be extremelyuseful because the time spent on coding is so much lessthan with standard programming languages. The bookwill be valuable in a consulting environment wheremodels need to be developed to help answer a specificneed, but are not likely to be used again (i.e. there isno need to have a numerically efficient model). It willalso be valuable in research, to facilitate understand-ing of a range of soil-biosphere processes. The bookis an excellent introduction to ModelMaker, as longas the reader can cope with the way the mathematicalequations are presented.

Reference

Ross, P.J., 1990. Efficient numerical methods for infiltration usingRichards’ equation. Water Resour. Res. 26, 279–290.

C. CoteCSIRO Land and Water, University Road, P.M.B.P.O. Aitkenvale, Townsville, QLD 4814, Australia

Tel.: +61-7-47538659; fax:+61-7-4753-8650.

Accepted 13 July 2000PII: S 0 1 6 7 - 8 8 0 9 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 2 0 9 - 7

Statistics in ecotoxicologyTim Sparks (Ed.), John Wiley and Sons, Chichester,UK, 2000, 320 pp., ISBN 0-471-96851-X, Price£60.00 (Hardback), ISBN 0-471-97299-1, Price£22.50 (Paperback)

The editor describes ecotoxicology as “that strangehybrid between ecology and toxicology”. This book

aims to provide concepts basic to this hybrid, witha minimum of mathematical jargon and motivation,through the use of real data. The book has 10 chapters,with the first seven chapters covering basic statisti-cal ideas including exploratory data analysis, field andlaboratory experimentation, regression and multivari-ate analysis, and environmental monitoring. The lastthree chapters are case studies. Data are presented infour appendices, inviting readers to attempt to repro-duce analyses presented, and also their own analyses.

Chapter 1 focuses on basic concepts, with a discus-sion of variability in biological populations, sampling,measurement scales and summary measures. Proba-bility and probability distributions are introduced to-gether with elementary estimation and significancetests. This is a useful introduction, but brief by neces-sity, with reference to analysis using MINITAB (a fea-ture continued in other chapters). Summary measures,transformations and tabular and graphical summariesof data are covered in Chapter 2. Here non-parametrictests, correlation and the chi-square test for two-waycontingency tables are also presented. Consistent withtheme of ecotoxicology, the chapter concludes withmeasures of species richness and diversity. Chapter3 covers the basic ideas in field experimentation andpresents basic designs, multiple comparisons and con-trasts. Chapter 4 moves on to toxicity experiments,and raises interesting issues concerning modelling ofquantal and quantitative-response data. The examplesin this chapter require further consideration, for ex-ample, modelling processes with obvious thresholdconcentrations. Chapter 5 is a long chapter on regres-sion analysis, from simple to multiple and nonlinearregression. Variable selection is rightly considered insome detail, but the difficult question of selection biasis not discussed. For this a good reference is Miller(1990). This chapter also introduces generalized lin-ear models through logistic regression, and empha-sises the good practice of using diagnostics to ex-amine the assumptions underlying the analyses. Theuse of multivariate techniques has a long history inecology, and Chapter 6 provides a very useful sum-mary of many of the methods. Chapter 7 gives anaccount of the analysis of temporal data that arisefrom environmental monitoring, using non-parametricmethods.

The final three chapters provide nice examples ofthe use of techniques to solve specific problems, and

300 Book reviews

these are associated with case studies comprising ter-restrial, freshwater and marine examples. These chap-ters use some of the techniques discussed earlier in thebook, but, in addition, introduce some new ideas asrequired (for example, geostatistics). These chaptersfinish the book with a nice flavour of the possibilitiesin a data analytic setting.

This book attempts to cover many topics, and eachchapter is necessarily brief. However, at the end ofeach chapter, references are presented for expandedand extended reading. Any gaps can, therefore, befilled with some additional work. Overall the cover-age is good, and each chapter contains valuable andimportant advice. This book is a useful reference toolfor workers in the ecotoxicology area, both from the

point of view of finding discipline empathy, suitablestatistical techniques and statistical literacy. In the lat-ter case, this will be a good introduction for discus-sions with professional statisticians.

Reference

Miller, A.J., 1990. Subset Selection in Regression. Chapman &Hall, London.

Ari Verbyla

BiometricsSA, Adelaide University Waite Campus,SA 5064 Australia

Accepted 10 August 2000PII: S 0 1 6 7 - 8 8 0 9 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 2 4 0- 1