The Call of the Honeyguide: What Science Tells Us About How to Live Well with the Rest of Life

Biologist Dunn (A Natural History of the Future) comprehensively explores mutualism, or mutually beneficial relationships between different species, in this stunning survey. Offering a corrective to the view that nature is dominated by competition and predation, Dunn’s vivid descriptions of interspecies interactions make clear that mutualism is everywhere. Examples include the single-celled Mixotricha paradoxa, which can only be found inside the guts of an Australian termite. The organism is hosted and fed by the insect, and helps the termite metabolize wood. Elsewhere, mutualism is found between the honeyguide bird and humans. Dunn explains that the honeyguide eats wax found in beehives, but cannot access it, so it developed a unique call to signal to humans living in its sub-Saharan African habitat that it has located a beehive. The humans break into the hive for the honey, thus providing the birds access to the wax. Dunn’s case studies are often mind-blowing (one type of Amazonian ant “kill[s] their host’s competitors by spraying venom into the leaves of the seedlings of any other trees that attempt to grow up around them”) and his moving argument that humanity is reliant on thousands of mutualisms is well-made. This is a triumph of popular science. (Aug.)