In July and August 1988 I spent time in Australia, partly on a study visit to the Australian National University, and partly attending a conference in Brisbane. After a conference field trip in northern Queensland, I had some time to spare in Cairns, and, as one does, took a day-trip snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. As the catamaran returned into Cairns, I noticed an osprey idly flying over. I had just spent much of the day watching fishes on the reef, and I had previously seen ospreys in northern Scotland, coastal Maine, and in the North American Great Lakes area (including, memorably, one flying over Exhibition Stadium, Toronto, during a ball game). I had long known that ospreys were cosmopolitan. The Cairns osprey reminded me of all of this. Whatever that bird was feeding on, whatever other organisms it interacted with, it had a different biotic environment, at least, from the Scottish or Canadian birds. I, like the rest of my generation, was brought up scientifically on the Neo-Darwinian paradigm, and had not thought too much about it in my day-to-day activities. But what, if anything, are ospreys ‘adapted’ to? This book is not about ospreys or their evolutionary history, but the Cairns bird has remained in my mind as a symbol for the relationships between organisms and their environments on ecological through evolutionary time-scales, including the crucial intermediate time-scales (104–105 years) typified by the Quaternary (the last 1.6 Myr).

The relationship between palaeoecology and ecology has been a topic of concern to many Quaternary workers for some time.