The Ecology of Plants provides comprehensive, contemporary coverage of plant ecology. Now in its third edition, the text incorporates current scientific developments and includes hundreds of stunning photographs, insightful illustrations, and references. It also features a clean, modern design that makes the material accessible and appealing. The book covers a range of current and historical ecological topics, presented in an evolutionary context, with the focus on the interactions between plants and their environments over a range of scales. Some of the subjects covered are unique to plants, such as photosynthesis and the ecology of plant-soil interactions; other topics, such as resource and mate acquisition, emphasize the distinctive ways plants (in contrast to animals) deal with their environments. The book uniquely emphasizes the importance of evolutionary and other historical ecological processes as well as human environmental influences. While the book is written for an undergraduate course in plant ecology, the engaging style, thorough coverage of the field, and contemporary perspective make it accessible and useful to others as well, including graduate students in conservation biology, evolutionary biologists and resource managers.
I used this textbook (2nd edition) asagrad student and now use it as a teaching professor. Overall it is excellent and sorely in need of a new edition. Chapters on competition, disturbance and succession, herbivory and landscape ecology were particularly use I for my course....I like the "stand alone chapter" approach (with link and cross references to other chapters if needed!) the authors articulate. In the 2nd edition I had to spread readings out across multiple chapters. Students didn't like this. Also, I really want to see more aspects of climate change more thoroughly and explicitly referred to in the text; it looks like the authors will do this for the 3rd edition. I'm also intrigued by the reference to updated pollination ecology material aswell as updates on measuring biodiversity. Nothing in the revision plan turns meoff... I have been wanting arevrsed edition for years now.
