Customer Reviews

Research Techniques in Animal Ecology

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This edited volume is comprised of 11 chapters that deal with a variety of the methods used to obtain and analyze ecological data pertaining to animals. Because each chapter is written by a different author, the chapters vary in style and level of detail. The book starts with a very broad treatment of hypothesis testing and then proceeds to outline such techniques as marking vertebrates for mark-recapture studies, calculating home range size, measuring habitat selection and use, assessing vertebrate food habits and diet, measuring population sizes (a chapter I would have placed earlier in the book), detecting density dependent population change, modeling predator-prey dynamics, performing population viability analysis, measuring animal behaviors, and modeling species distributions using a Geographic Information System. The chapters on habitat selection and PVA were especially well-written. The book differs from Krebs' classic "Ecological Methodology" in that it spends far less time on statistical modeling and far more time reviewing the pros and cons of technqiues that are found in every ecologist's toolbox.

The book has a distinctly vertebrate bias, making it not as useful as one might hope for those biologists like myself who study the other 99% of Kingdom Animalia. Even so, however, some of the techniques are directly transferrable to studies on invertebrates (and plants as well).

The book is written at the level of advanced undergraduates or graduate students, but even seasoned professionals will appreciate the book when they are brushing up on familiar methods or trying to learn new ones.

I bought this book for a class on techniques in vertebrate ecology (graduate school course). This book gives an excellent overview of sampling techniques, marking methods, population viability analysis, population demography, predator/prey relationships, etc. Several of the chapters are rather technical - discussing in depth the calculus and/or statistical equations used for some analyses. If you plan to work in field biology, this is a great handbook and provides valuable information and will be helpful for setting up and conducting your own studies in the field.