Customer Reviews

Essentials of Ecology

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With this book, the writers adapted there previous release ("Ecology : Individuals, Populations and Communities", third edition) for easily understanding of the matter. But they don't just adapted it, they rewrote it. They focused, for example, on problems that are still unresolved. It has been written for students in ecology but also for everyone who wants to learn more about populations, evolution and ecosystems. I hope it will lead to a better understanding of ecology...

The book shrouds various tatters of the subject matter in dense, poorly worded compound sentences, dressed with excessive full color graphs and charts. It was full of limitless qualifications, redundancies, and undefined terminology (there was no glossary).

If you are unfortunate enough to find yourself in a position of having to actually have to wade through this, (for a class, for example), expect to find flatly unexplained contradictions in fact. (EG, the chapter on population sates that the rate of human population increase is steadily increasing, but then go on to repeatedly quotes Joel Cohen who states that it had slowed down in the 1970's).

Trying to study from it was a big enough ordeal to put most people off the subject for life. This textbook's abdication of explanatory rigor is probably one of the reasons the environmental movement has not gotten the popular traction it deserves.

Truly this textbook is a case study in obfuscatory humbug.

The content of the book was usually clear. However, there is no glossary at all, and the index is horrible. As a textbook, this is unacceptable. Trying to study from it was a nightmare.