Essentials of Ecology

Book is good if you want to learn about ecology or you need it for class

Nice textbook, but a bit wordy!

This 4th edition (2014) has been thoroughly revised, with clearer writing, more recent findings, and more attractive format than in the previous edition. Its 440 pages make it shorter than most other ecology texts. However, I could have done with fewer graphs, which often don't add much to the explanations, dry descriptions of experimental findings, and the mathematical models, all of which contradict the authors' stated intention that this is a book more for nonmajors and making it often a difficult read. More appropriate and useful for most readers would have been greater attention to field examples of how nature works. For example, the book fails to discuss the most biodiverse region in the world, the Amazon basin. The book is co-authored by professors from the UK, USA, and New Zealand, giving the ecological examples a more international mix than most texts exclusively authored by Americans.

There is one thing that was not mentioned by the previous reviewer. Since the new edition is explicitely addressed to students I have absolutely no idea who did the pricing. The previous editions did cost about as less as half of the new edition. If the publisher aims to address students I suggest rethinking the pricing.