Odum_Barrett生态学基础（摘录第一章第1-4节）.pdfVIP

Fundamentals of Ecology FIFTH EDITION Eugene P. Odum, Ph.D. Late of University of Georgia Institute of Ecology Gary W. Barrett, Ph.D. Odum Professor of Ecology, University of Georgia Institute of Ecology THOMSON* BROOKS/COLE Australia· Canada- Mexico· Singapore· Spain· United Kingdom· United States Foreword Fundamentals of Ecology is an icon among biology textbooks-the most influential such work as measured by the number of students recruited into the field as research- ers and teachers. The rebirth here of this classic, in a much modified fifth edition, but under the original title, is welcome. There has always been a sense of inevitability about ecology, even in the early twentieth century, when it ranked as little more than a pastiche of natural history and schools of thought. Ecology was and remains the discipline that addresses the high- est and most complex levels of biological organization. It was and remains a study of holism and emergence, of the properties of life taken from the top down. Even hard- nosed laboratory scientists, who were focused on the less complex (and more acces- sible) levels of molecules and cells, knew in their hearts that in time, biologists must eventually arrive at this discipline. To understand ecology thoroughly would be to understand all of biology, and to be a complete biologist is to be an ecologist. But ecology at the time of the first edition of Fundamentals of Ecology was still the most distant subject, enveloped in an intellectual haze, hard to picture except as scattered fragments. Odums book was a map by which we could take a bearing. We need him still to learn the boundaries and principal features of ecology. The effectiveness of early editions of Fundamentals of Ecology is il