Practitioners and proponents of different methods in biogeography--the study of plant and animal distributions--discuss those methods in terms of the status and future of the discipline. Their topics include trees that bite and their geographical dimensions, biotic element analysis and vicariance biogeography, the evolution of specific and genetic diversity during the ontogeny of island floras, and whether plate tectonic explanations for trans-Pacific disjunctions are plausible. Most of the eight studies are from an August 2005 conference in Cardiff, Wales. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)