Essentials of Ecology

by Colin R. Townsend, Michael Begon, John L. Harper

Essentials of Ecology presents introductory ecology in an accessible, state-of-the-art format designed to cultivate the novice student's understanding of, and fascination with, the natural world. In a concise, engaging style, this text outlines the essential principles of ecology from the theoretical fundamentals to their practical applications. Full color artwork, simple pedagogical features and a wide range of timely examples make this book an ideal introduction to ecology for students at all levels. The second edition of this successful text provides expanded coverage and over 400 references including 100 new examples reflecting the vibrancy of the field. More than a simple update, the new edition also features new artwork , an enhanced design, and additional integrated applications to make Essentials of Ecology up-to-date and relevant.
Outstanding features of the second edition of Essentials of Ecology * Dedicated website - study resources and web research questions provide students and instructors with an enhanced, interactive experience of the book www.blackwellpublishing.com/townsend
* Key Concepts - summarized at the beginning of each chapter
* Unanswered questions - highlighted throughout, emphasizing that in ecology, as in any science, we have much left to learn
* History boxes - outlining key landmarks in the development of ecology
* Quantitative boxes - allowing mathematical aspects of ecology to be explained thoroughly without interrupting the flow of the text
* Topical ECOncerns boxes - highlighting ethical, social and political questions in ecology
* Review questions - included at the end of each chapter

Genres: Science, Ecology, Nonfiction, Nature, Academic, Textbooks

544 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1993

Reviews

[Leah Markum · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love ecology. It's a complex science that takes aspects of other sciences into consideration. As such, I have read a LOT of ecology-based books, including other textbooks. "Essentials of Ecology" is not a horrible text, but it is tired. Most examples are cliche but with the addition of statistics that our middle school audience sources left out. The language is bland, even for a textbook, and elaborations on examples are wordy and unclear. There is nothing unique to this book. However, if you don't have a strong interest in the topic and just need to get through a course, the book does touch on all basic concepts and supports those concepts with vague graphs (illustrates but would make a statistician gringe) and lists statistical values--this also means this book would have more meaning to someone who already took a college statistics course.

There are far more enlightening and readable ecology texts out there. If I didn't know that It'd give this book two stars.

[Hazel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice book for a beginner. But you need to have basic statistical knowledge to read graphs and interpretation. I am a beginner in that field as a statistician and I enjoyed reading.