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Principles of Animal Ecology

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Allee Emerson Park Park and Schmidt. What can I say. These are the masters of ecology from the 1940s. If you want to know about the roots of ecology and what ecological scientists were thinking after the founding period (Gleason, Clements, Shelford) but before the modern era this is the book. Buy it, read it, cherish it. Put it on your shelf in a prominent location so that you can brag that you own it. One of my two copies sits on the same shelf as Shelford's Ecology of North America, DeVries Mutation theory, Fishers 1930 Genetical theory of natural selection. You get the picture.

Of course, it was published in 1949. Our understanding has come a long way. This is now a book that you own for its historical insights. Much of what is in there is now dogma for modern ecologists.

By the way, when I was a graduate students it was called "the great AEPPS" (i.e., the great "apes") because these authors were unquestionably THE authorities about ecology for their time.

From 1949 until the publication of Eugene P. Odum's Fundamentals of Ecology in 1958, the Principles of Animal Ecology, by W.C. Allee, A.E. Emerson, O. Park, T. Park, and K.P. Schmidt ("the great AEPPS") was the only US text book in ecology. Authoritative and ahead of its times, it served to establish ecology as a scientific discipline in the US. The final reprinting was in 1969. Today (2009) it is a science classic that can be read with profit but which will not be re-issued because of enormous advances made in ecology, many stimulated by this very book.