Hanna Kokko
Cambridge University Press; Cambridge, UK
2008, 230 pgs
ISBN: 978-0-521-53856-5
Price $59 (soft)

Hanna Kokko’s book on mathematical modeling is easy and entertaining reading. That’s not something I would normally write about a book on mathematical modeling. The only disappointment for me was the title; it gives the impression that the book covers ecological modeling generally, when it is in fact devoted to mathematical modeling in behavioral and evolutionary biology. Other than this initial disappointment, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. The book describes mathematical models for some interesting evolutionary phenomena; for example, the evolution of a trait that aids male reproduction but reduces female fecundity, which is known as sexual conflict. For simplicity, the model is developed for such a trait governed by a single gene with two alleles to describe sexual conflict in the beetle Callosobruchus maculates. I knew nothing about the phenomenon of sexual conflict prior to reading the book and the discussion was both educational and entertaining. A model for evolution of a quantitative genetics trait is also developed, again with reference to a real-world example. Topics are presented in a way that painlessly informs the reader on the basic biology underlying the mathematical model being developed, and not too painfully describes how to construct and evaluate the model. Chapters cover mathematical methods such as optimization, game theory, and simulation at an unintimidating level. Interesting examples from the realm of evolutionary biology are used to introduce the modeling techniques. The writing style is informal and actually quite entertaining, thus rendering the mathematics much more palatable than they might otherwise be. The book should be of interest to biologists wanting to learn some basics of mathematical modeling, to mathematicians wanting a dose of biology to go along with their models, and to a general audience that just wants to expand their knowledge of biology and modeling.

The book would make a good text for an undergraduate modeling course, with the caveat that the course content will be restricted mainly to aspects of behavioral and evolutionary biology. From the standpoint of a text, the book has some very desirable characteristics; it gives a good overview of the biological phenomenon to be modeled and then a very clear and complete description of the model being developed to describe it. Text boxes are embedded in each chapter that contain MatLab code for each model. The boxes include a written description of the code to help readers understand it. The written description should help readers translate a model into another format if the instructor or reader is unfamiliar with MatLab. However, for a course based on MatLab as a programming language, the book would serve as a comprehensive text because the computer exercises to be used in the course are included in the text. Each chapter ends with a section containing additional information on the topics covered in the chapter, which also provides numerous references to literature. The informal but concise writing style kept me interested, which is not necessarily easy to do for a book on mathematical modeling. Overall, I enjoyed the book very much and recommend that others take a look. 

Norman Elliott
Plant Science Research Laboratory
USDA-ARS
Stillwater, OK
E-mail: norman.elliott@ars.usda.gov
American Entomologist
 Vol. 55, No. 4, Winter 2009