Natural Systems - The Organisation Of Life

The book is based upon the contents of an undergraduate module which has been taught four

times by the author since 2009. Its aim is to provide a bridge between conventional ecological

teaching, which covers the behaviour of individuals and populations, and global patterns of

life. As such it begins where most ecology textbooks end, taking a broad perspective on the

organisation of natural systems.

The objectives of the book can be expressed in two ways. In purely academic terms, they are

to:

‧ Understand patterns of species richness

‧ Interpret the composition of species in any given area

‧ Explain how processes at local (bottom-up) and regional (top-down) scales interact

From the perspective of enticing student engagement (the intended readers), it is better to frame

the questions in other terms that express more practical aspects related to current concerns.

These might be phrased in the following questions:

‧ What is biodiversity, and how can we measure it?

‧ If we wanted to create a natural system, what would we need to do?

‧ Can we predict what might happen to nature in the future?

These themes make the book relevant to students of ecology, environmental science, geography

and conservation. I envisage it being used as a course text, since each chapter forms the core

of a standard lecture. Instructors should therefore be able to readily convert the text into a

teaching resource, and students will be able to use it to enhance their overall understanding

and support their learning. No current text contains the same breadth of material (see below

for brief reviews of existing books), therefore enabling it to fill a gap in the literature. The

relevance to topics of profound modern importance will allow it to meet the strong demand from

students for courses in this field. My own module attracts around 80 undergraduate students

per year.

In an effort to provide training in essential skills, an appendix will describe how to calculate

and interpret a range of diversity measures using a real dataset of dung beetles from a rain

forest in Borneo from Slade et al. (2011; used with permission of the author). These metrics

are used routinely in the academic literature and applied conservation.