Ecological Methodology

This text aims to translate the methods of statisticians into ecological English, so that students may readily apply these methods to the real world. The book offers a balance of material on animal and plant populations and teaches students of ecology how to design the most efficient tests in order to obtain maximum precision with minimal work. Rather than emphasizing the derivation of mathematical formulae, the text emphasizes the use of statistics, and focuses on how to measure ecological parameters such as population size and species diversity. Students learn effective ways to set up field experiments and observations and the different methods that work best for different situations.