LIAISONS of LIFE

"Tom Wakeford has a good eye for striking facts...highly readable.... The examples of symbiosis are all excellent pieces of research." --"The New York Times"

"One of the ten must-reads of 2001." --"New Scientist"

"Biologist Wakeford charmingly chronicles the once-heretical notion that symbiosis among plants, animals, and microbes is a major evolutionary force. Big surprise: Beatrix Potter was hounded out of a career in biology for espousing the idea." --"Discover"

"A crisp, highly readable book by Tom Wakeford traces the history of the scientific idea of symbiosis, coined in 1878 to describe species living together. Wakeford says communities of plants in effect 'farm' the microbial life that grows around their roots and enables them to resist pests and use minerals in the soil; orchids die without the right fungi. He blames Louis Pasteur for demonizing all microbes as germs and initiating a 'war' whose metaphors then infected the body politic aa during World War I, British journalists be-gan referring to the enemy as 'Germ-huns.' In fact, most microbes do not make humans ill. The book reveals that Beatrix Potter, the childrens author, was originally a 'symbiologist' who believed (correctly) that lichen was essentially not one but two organisms. When her views were scorned by the Director of Kew Gardensaa'it is odious to a shy person to be snubbed...especially when the shy person happened to be right, ' she wroteaashe withdrew from science, a step we have to thank for Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddleduck." --"Daily Telegraph," Best of the Years Science

A fascinating exploration of symbiosis at the microscopic level and its radical extension of Darwinism
Microbes have long been considered dangerous and disgusting-in short, "scum." But by forming mutually beneficial relationships with nearly every creature, be it alga with animals or zooplankton with zebrafish, microbes have in fact been innovative players in the evolutionary process. Now biologist and award-winning science writer Tom Wakeford shows us this extraordinary process at work. He takes us to such far-flung locales as underwater volcanoes, African termite mounds, the belly of a cow and even the gaps between our teeth, and there introduces us to a microscopic world at turns bizarre, seductive, and frightening, but ever responsible for advancing life in our macroscopic world. In doing so he also justifies the courage and vision of a series of scientists-from a young Beatrix Potter to Lynn Margulis-who were persecuted for believing evolution is as much a matter of interdependence and cooperation as it is great too-little-told tales of evolutionary science.