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Contents:
1 - Planning and preliminary considerations; 2 - Estimating the reliability of estimates and testing for significance; 3- Sampling a unit of habitat - estimating absolute population number; 4 - Mark-recapture methods for population size estimation; 5 - Distance sampling methods for population estimation; 6 - Comparing the magnitude of populations - trapping and other relative abundance methods; 7 - Using signs and products as population indices; 8 - Estimating age and growth; 9 - Life-tables and population budgets; 10 - Alpha diversity, species richness and quality scores; 11 - Species along environmental gradients - beta diversity; 12 - Comparing and classifying communities.
Review:
Despite the problems facing practical work it remains the backbone of good initial ecology education. Educators all have stories about students whose interest has been brought alive during a piece of fieldwork. Clearly, there is no substitute for outdoors education. Having said that we must also be aware that it must be a quality experience these days - just leaving the classroom is not good enough. We need a good source book to give simple but effective ideas that both students and teachers can use.
The aim of this text is to provide just this sort of information. It is not aiming to be comprehensive but to give range of good, straightforward tests that we can use to illustrate our work and get students thinking about how we test our ideas. It's appropriate then that the opening chapter focusses on the basics. The object is to get people to start at the very beginning with planning and preparation. Safety, sampling and statistics are all part of the work. The aim is to get the student used to correct and thorough organisation. It's no good rushing out and testing something: even at school level the results should be meaningful and valid and demonstrate an awareness of the scientific method as applied to ecology. Once we have this, we can move onto chapter two which considers estimation and significance. Sampling won't be perfect so we must be able to find out how reliable our work is. Chapters three and four examine the idea of population size. Chapter three looks more at the absolute number and how to find it. Here, sampling removes a portion from which we extrapolate to get the whole. Mark-recapture methods (chapter four) rely on finding population estimates from marking animals. This has the advantage of returning species to their habitats with the minimum number involved but one must consider carefully issues of safety when handling animals. Chapter five examines distance sampling. Often we don't have a complete population or the organism is too large to sample conventionally. This is where census techniques come in. We can also use transects and electric fishing depending on circumstances. Finally, in terms of population estimates we can use a range of trapping techniques. What happens if we don't have an animal to capture or the animal is too small to sample (chapter 7)? Here its possible to use leaf damage, tracks, galls etc. which can often produce excellent work without the issues involved in handling animals. Although population numbers are crucial, population age structure is equally important. Given recent reports of fish size following overfishing it is clear that such studies have an importance over and above their educational value. Chapter eight looks at a range of biological, chemical and mathematical methods of estimating age. Chapter nine extends this area by focussing on life tables and population budgets. Survivorship is important if we are looking at biodiversity and population-level issues. This strand is taken into chapter 10 which details species richness using, for example, the Shannon Index. The final two chapters take a more advanced look at beta diversity and comparison using canonical variation.
This slim text is an excellent introduction to modern quantitative techniques. It is well illustrated and provides sufficient detail for the method to be used (although some extra backup might be useful - the author himself recommends Southwood's Ecological Methods). The attempt to bridge the school/higher education divide has created a hybrid in the way of tests offered: some are fairly basic whilst others clearly need quite sophisticated equipment (especially those involving marine sampling). Of course, this shouldn't be seen as a problem. Students trained in school would be better equipped to use the more advance techniques in higher education. Overall, this is a great introductory text