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Reviewed by:
  • Field Guide to Wisconsin Streams: Plants, Fishes, Invertebrates, Amphibians, and Reptiles by Michael A. Miller, Katie Songer and Ron Dolen
  • Kirk Larsen (bio)
Field Guide to Wisconsin Streams: Plants, Fishes, Invertebrates, Amphibians, and Reptiles Michael A. Miller, Katie Songer and Ron Dolen. 2014. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. $29.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-299-29454-0. 336 pages.

In his classic A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold (1949) proclaimed “to keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering”. As restoration ecologists, it is imperative that we know what those “cogs and wheels” are that comprise the ecosystems we are trying to restore and care for. For those of us in the Upper Midwest involved in stream restoration, this Field Guide to Wisconsin Streams by Michael Miller, Katie Songer, and Ron Dolen is a valuable new tool to help identify the diversity of plants and animals found in streams.

All three authors work for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in stream or fisheries management and education, and they make the book accessible for the professional DNR biologist, as well as school teachers wanting to have students identify stream life or the general public interested in stream ecology. Although this guide is focused specifically on Wisconsin streams, it is useful throughout the region as ranges of many of the species and taxonomic groups covered in this guide cross state lines into neighboring states of Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, or Iowa.

The book begins with an introduction to Wisconsin stream ecology and water quality, which provides useful background information. The bulk of the book is a presentation of each major taxonomic group, beginning with plants, then invertebrates, and ending with the vertebrates. For each species or taxon presented, there are one or more color images of that organism, a very helpful range map (limited to Wisconsin), indications if the species is endangered, threatened, or invasive, a comprehensive description that includes key characteristics used for identification, similar species that the species might be confused with, and some additional notes about the taxon.

Most of the plants, crayfishes, mussels and clams, fishes, amphibians, and reptiles are identified down to species. However, the insects and most of the non-insect invertebrates are identified only to family. Admittedly, both world-wide and in Wisconsin, there are far more species of invertebrates (well over 831 species alone in this guide) than all other species of plants (107 species in this guide) and vertebrates (147 species in this guide) combined, and a field guide including all the invertebrates identified to species could simply not be considered a “field guide” due to its size. However, relative to the length of the book, the invertebrates section is clearly the shortest in relation to the number of taxa covered. Although clearly not as useful for those scientists requiring more taxonomic detail for these invertebrates, the information on invertebrates is useful and accurate, and helps one identify invertebrates down to the ecologically-useful family level. For plants, there were 81 species of aquatic plants, and 26 species of terrestrial plants (16 woody and 10 herbaceous) often found in riparian areas included in this guide. However, the ten species of herbaceous terrestrial plants presented seemed quite random and does not adequately cover the wide diversity of herbaceous plants commonly found along Wisconsin streams.

In general, the book is colorful, pleasant to look at, and seems durable with strong semi-glossy pages. Although I have not yet had the opportunity to use this book in the field, it appears tough enough for field use. Its size is comparable with other field guides to trees, prairie plants, mammals, and birds sitting (for the winter) on my bookshelf.

Overall 1,200 images, many in color, illustrate this field guide. Although many if not most of the images are clear and colorful, the one issue that seriously distracts from the usefulness of this book once you start actually using it is the small size of a significant number of images and the even smaller font sizes used to label those images. For example, the river continuum concept figure (page 9) in the introduction is impossible to read without...

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