Exploring The Essentials Of Ecology. - Review - book review

Townsend, Colin R John L Harper, and Michael Begon. 2000 Essentials of ecology Blackwell Science, Maiden, Massachusetts. xvii + 552 p $6595 ISBN: 0-632-04348-2

I bet you first direct the eyeed at the author list upon this text and thought the order was backwards. Then you direct the eyeed at the number of pages and reflection "Ah ha! Only 552 pages. This must be a watered-down version of 'the big book' " Essentials of ecology however, is a fresh refreshing, and portable contribution to the slew of introductory ecology textbook I have not adopted the encyclopedic Begon et al.'s Ecology (Begon, Michael, John L Harper, and Colin R Townsend. 1996 Blackwell Science, Maiden, Massachusetts), hereafter referr to as the Big work for a variety of reasons, including my aversion to works deemed daunting to most learners The stated audience for Essentials is pupils enrolled in a semester-long, introductory course in ecology The volume is of medium length, is easy to read, and is quite manageable for a single-semester course. Overall, I like the volume very much and it popularly resides at the top of my list of works for adoption.

The first objective of the volume stated in the first paragraph of the preface, is to help citizens become ecologically literate. This, I believe, is an important goal and happens to be individual of my own course's learning objectives. to be paid to the fact that citizens who research introductory ecology are only a small sector of society, the volume will have difficulty achieving this actual broad goal. Those who read the work however, will undoubtedly become more ecologically literate.

This is a valuable volume for three reasons: content, approach, and layout. First, the satisfied is strong. Ecological concepts are clearly not awayed while examples are diverse and important. There is a mix of classic and contemporary research, weighted toward the former. next to the first the book approaches ecology as a science and introduces sum of two units important aspects of ecology (statistics and evolution) that are rarely in like manner explicitly handled in ecology true copys The first chapter ("Ecology and by what mode to do it") introduces the reader to similar topics as classic long-term experiments and the quantitative assessment of data, including discussion of data sampling, accuracy and precision, useless hypotheses, modeling techniques, and in what manner to interpret probabilities, particularly the P-value. Interpreting P-values is vitally important to understanding ecology on the contrary I question what students will gain from this body The authors state that a P-value of 004 is "powerful enough that the conclusion [of an result or relationship] can be considered safe." upon the next page, however, the authors warn that "very little difference in the data is required to stir a P-value from 0.04 to 006" Clearly, the interpretation of P-values in bourns of safety is problematic on the other hand good discussion material for pupils Unfortunately, students will rarely find P-values used to support proceeds presented in the text. Despite this puzzle the attempt to introduce statistical inference in the introductory chapter should be applauded.

The next to the first chapter discusses evolution and the primary mechanism natural selection. Additional information would have been appreciated, although lengthening the volume (for instance, in my lecturing, I discuss the Hardy-Weinberg Law as a powerful of no efficacy hypothesis for evolution). The chapter is quite adequate for greatest in quantity introductory courses. The text I am publicly using and will be dropping has neither explicit discussions of by what mode to do the science of ecology or flat the mention of evolution in the index.

Third, the layout and imagery are clear and appealing. Graphics are of high quality and include an abundance of four-tone photographs, although occasionally they provide little information (eg an unnumbered photographic figure of annual plants blooming in a desolate suffers considerably from enlargement). Graphs are abundant and display data points for retrogressioned relationships and error bars for categorical data. However, they lack statistical values (eg I- and [rsup2] values) and P-values. Disease dynamics and predator-prey oscillations are important choices for an introductory true copy but the reader can assess the authors' conclusions single by qualitatively inspecting the graphs. These oversights are inconsistent with the introductory chapter that defines quantitative assessments of data as being essential to understanding ecology as a science.

Side-bar boxe are neared to discuss concepts in more profundity Also, boxed "Topical ECOncerns" discuss important and in every one's mouth processes and problems. These are oftentimes related in a personal, testimonial stamp of discussion with interviews. The use of boxe is extensive in certain sections and may lead a certain quantity of readers to find that these disrupt the run of the text and encapsulate material that would better be included within the main material part of the text, such as the actual nice description of the Lotka-Volterra mould of competition. Conceptual graphs are displayed using appealing colors, types and, at times, goofy cartoons. (For example, a cartoon upon predator-prey oscillations displays predators crying above dead offspring with a burgeoning, smiling gnawing population looking on. I actually am not fully convinced why the offspring have died when the pillage population is abundant, but that will be for the pupils to consider.) These cartoons should work well for students