Ecology - Softcover

This past fall, I taught a 200-level ecology course at Colby and used Cain et al. as the textbook. I found the test bank questions written by Norman Johnson to be extraordinarily useful. I tend to be skeptical about test bank questions in general, and almost never use them, so it was a very pleasant surprise for me to see how good they were. I didn't actually use them as a test-bank, but chose selected questions to use for in-class review and discussion prompts. The book overall was wonderful, too! (Judy Stone, Colby College (on the Third Edition))

Published by Sinauer Associates, an imprint of Oxford University Press.

The new fourth edition of Ecology maintains its focus on providing an easy-to-read and well-organized text for instructors and students to explore the basics of ecology. This edition also continues with an increasing emphasis on enhancing student quantitative and problem-solving skills.

A new Hone Your Problem-Solving Skills series has been added to the set of review questions at the end of each chapter. The questions expose students to hypothetical situations or existing data sets, and allow them to work through data analysis and interpretation to better understand ecological concepts.

New for this edition, additional Analyzing Data exercises have been added to the Companion Website. These exercises enable students to enhance their essential skills sets, such as performing calculations, making graphs, designing experiments, and interpreting results.

Recognizing the increasing evidence and effects of climate change on ecological systems, additional Climate Change Connections have been added. These vignettes help students appreciate the many consequences of global climate change on the distributions and functions of organisms as well as the ecosystems they depend on. Finally, the authors also revised and strengthened key pedagogical features of Ecology.