Evolutionary ecology

I have loved this book from it's first edition, which is still one of the best ecology textbooks ever written. Students can get a very solid, straightforward presentation of evolutionary ecology from that first edition. Unfortunately various political and disciplinary concerns have invaded this book over the years, and drown out the signal a bit. I can still present the basics students need in the subject area and ignore the rest. If they develop a greater interest, they will need the foundation of basics like Lotka-Volterra and Foraging Theory if they are to go on to more advanced applications. If students don't go on to advanced applications, a solid grounding in the essence of evolutionary ecology will serve them well when they face related issues in the future. Too many textbooks present too much of what the authors feel is cutting edge, which is often nothing more than current fancy (like particular methods of phylogenetic analysis), and fail to present basic concepts (like the comparative method) fully. This book really does a fine job with basic concepts, and provides a more than adequate list of classic references that can be used to develop a science based course (as opposed to a review course).

I used the earlier edition of this book twice for an ecology course that I teach, and my students appreciated the length, price, readability, and content. The rating that I give the book (four stars) is mostly based on their satisfaction. This updated version is very similar to the fifth edition, but has some nice additions, such as a chapter on Phylogeny that mentions Felsenstein's independent contrasts methods. If you are interested in reviewing this book as a possible book for your course, I would first read this brief chapter on phylogeny (16) to get a feel for the brevity of all the topics in ecology that are covered. Because many details are left out (as are many important references), this book cannot be used without supplemental literature. I usually require readings of at least 5 additional papers per chapter in this book. In fact, without supplemental readings and additional material presented in lecture, I would probably only grant two stars to this book. Strengths of the book include: very easy to read, excellent figures, adequate treatment of mathematical models, logical organization, and some nice examples from the literature.