{PDF} Biology of Turtles: From Structures to Strategies of Life Jeanette Wyneken, Matthew H. Godfrey, Vincent Bels

“Biology of Turtles” is VERY inappropriately titled. A more suitable title would have been “Anatomy of Turtles, with Notes on Biomechanics and Physiology.” The content of this book revolves around turtle anatomy (little surprise since this book is the brainchild of a previous vertebrate anatomy conference), and mostly bony anatomy at that. There are also chapters on pulmonary and brain topics and the biomechanics of limb motion and feeding action.

The writing is very scientific in style. This book will be a good reference (the chapter on reproductive strategies has a tremendous bibliography) for future work on turtles in the disciplines covered. This book will not likely be too appealing to persons with casual interest in turtles, an interest in ecology and conservation biology only, or an interest in turtles as captive hobby animals only.

Some conclusions are not kept empirical in the slightest. The chapter on feeding biomechanics uses very slight data to stress an opinion about introduced red-eared slider turtles, which turns an otherwise intriguing chapter into a joint French/Irish author bash-fest against Trachemys. Perhaps this is the book’s hint of conservation biology?

The book’s construct is good. I like the binding, the pictorial boards are nice and the paper is a thin, glossy textbook type. The print is a nice font, sized well and conducive to easy reading (for me). Photographs are lacking in number and quality for the price of this book. The microscopy photographs and staining photographs relating to osteology and development are good, but these fall out early in the book. The many photographs in Pritchard’s chapter on shells may originally have been of good quality, but are terribly reproduced. All are black and white and are improperly exposed such that sutures are often not discernable. The carapace of Notochelys is shown to demonstrate the extra vertebral scute (middle plate on the top shell), yet for those who do not already know what to look for, this will not be obvious. Figure 8.2, which illustrates a photo sequence of a diamondback terrapin attacking a crab underwater, is so small, grainy and dark that one cannot tell what’s going on (indeed, I had no idea what the turtle was feeding on until reading the caption’s claim).

Good reference, not a joy-read, largely exclusive of most aspects of behavior and entirely exclusive of ecology and conservation biology. How did the many accomplished and well-respected authors determine “Biology of Turtles” to be an appropriate title? I can only imagine it was a tactic to encourage this tome’s circulation. For now, enjoy the book if you have a dedicated interest in all facets of turtle biology, such that the handful of those facets incorporated here will appeal to you despite the wildly overinflated purchase price. However, the world is still waiting for a book holistic enough in content to support the title “Biology of Turtles.”