Essentials of Ecology

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

This textbook 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 carefully-chosen examples make this book an ideal introduction to ecology for students at all levels.The third edition of this successful text is much more than a simple update, reflecting the vibrancy of the field. With hundreds of new examples, it contains for the first time a separate chapter on evolutionary ecology, with all other chapters, especially those on applied aspects, having been extensively revised and re-written. The new edition also features new artwork and an enhanced design, making this book as attractive as it is up-to-date and relevant.

Outstanding features of the third edition of "Essentials of Ecology" include: Dedicated website - available at www.blackwellpublishing.com/townsend, featuring study resources and web research questionsKey Concepts - summarized at the beginning of each chapterHistory boxes outlining key landmarks in the development of ecologyQuantitative boxes - allowing mathematical aspects of ecology to be explained clearly without interrupting the flow of the textTopical ECOncerns boxes - highlighting ethical, social and political questions in ecologyReview questions - included at the end of each chapter

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

532 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 1993

Reviews

[Leah Markum]

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]

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.