Description
Book SynopsisProvides nuts-and-bolts advice on organizing and conducting a successful research program. This book explains how to choose a research question and answer it through manipulative experiments and systematic observations. It includes ideas to help you identify your goals, organize a season of fieldwork, and deal with negative results.
Trade ReviewPraise for the previous edition: "[A] refreshing, concise work aimed primarily at those contemplating or performing ecological research studies. The authors' approach will be equally beneficial to those in various other areas of study... Highly recommended."--Choice Praise for the previous edition: "This book is a wealth of information for beginning professionals."--Erika V. Iyengar, American Biology Teacher Praise for the previous edition: "How to Do Ecology contains much of the sage advice that good supervisors have been giving their postgraduate students for years... [I]t's absolutely correct and vital information."--Robyn K. Whipp, Austral Ecology Praise for the previous edition: "Reading this book feels like having a good talk during a long walk in the woods with a wise and experienced advisor who really has the time to distill and share years of thinking about how ecological research works. Get it, and keep it handy, and your work will be the richer and more successful for it."--Jessica Gurevitch, Stony Brook University "This book ... distills the core procedural lessons of a PhD program in ecology and presents them in an engagingly written, easily digestible packet... This is an enormously valuable publication, and anyone beginning or aspiring to a graduate degree in ecology really should read it."--Robert M. Pringle, Quarterly Review of Biology "Venturing into the world of ecology can be a fulfilling, yet challenging journey. Like any journey, those best prepared, through either direct experience or having gleaned advice from their elders, will have the greatest chance of success. How to Do Ecology collates years of good advice to deliver on the latter and would be a good investment for anyone finding, or readjusting, their feet in ecological research."--Dylan Korczynskj, Austral Ecology
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations vii List of Boxes ix Preface to the Second Edition xi Introduction: The Aims of This Book xiii Chapter 1 Picking a Question 1 Chapter 2 Posing Questions (or Picking an Approach) 19 Chapter 3 Using Experiments to Test Hypotheses 37 Chapter 4 Analyzing Experimental Data 58 Chapter 5 Using Surveys to Explore Patterns 77 Chapter 6 Building Your Indoor Skills 97 Chapter 7 Working with People and Getting a Job in Ecology 105 Chapter 8 Communicating What You Find 119 Chapter 9 Conclusions 164 Acknowledgments 167 References 169 Index 177
