It was a pleasure to read Deep-Sea Biodiversity: Pattern and Scale. The book provides a detailed synthesis of patterns in bathyl and abyssal diversity, accounting for the vagaries of sampling, analysis, and the existing history of hypothesis definition and testing. Of course, the authors’ detailed review of the literature—more than 800 references occupy 60 pages—comes at a price. The wealth of material in the book makes it a challenging read, but fortunately the authors provide good concluding sections for each chapter and a summary chapter that pulls together the major points and suggests future research. The book will remain an excellent reference for deep-sea biodiversity researchers for many years. The illuminating juxtaposition of quotations going back over 150 years is an indication of how our understanding of the creatures that inhabit the deep sea has changed over that period.

Bax, N.J. 2011. Review of Deep-Sea Biodiversity: Pattern and Scale, by M.A. Rex and R.J. Etter. Oceanography 24(1):183–185, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2011.19.

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.