A Primer of Ecological Statistics explains fundamental material in probability theory and experimental design for ecologists and environmental scientists. The book emphasizes a general introduction to probability theory and provides a detailed discussion of specific designs and analyses that are typically encountered in ecology and environmental science. Appropriate for use as either a stand-alone or supplementary text for upper-division undergraduate or graduate courses in ecological and environmental statistics, ecology, environmental science, environmental studies, or experimental design, the Primer also serves as a resource for environmental professionals who need to use and interpret statistics daily but have little or no formal training in the subject.

Table of Contents

PART I: FUNDAMENTALS OF PROBABILITY AND STATISTICAL THINKING Probability: An Introduction Random Variables and Probability Distributions Summary Statistics: Measures of Location and Spread Framing and Testing Hypotheses Three Frameworks for Statistical Inference PART II: DESIGNING EXPERIMENTS Designing Successful Field Studies A Bestiary of Experimental and Sampling Designs Managing and Coping with your Data PART III: DATA ANALYSIS Regression The Analysis of Variance The Analysis of Categorical Data The Analysis of Multivariate Data APPENDIX: A BRIEF SUMMARY OF MATRIX ALGEBRA

Author Biography

Nicholas J. Gotelli is Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Vermont. He graduated with a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980, and earned his Ph.D. at Florida State University in 1985. He is also the author of A Primer of Ecology, third edition (2001, Sinauer Associates, Inc.), Null Models in Ecology (with Gary R. Graves; 1996, Smithsonian Press), and EcoSim, an ecological software package. Dr. Gotelli currently serves on the Board of Editors of Ecology and Ecology Letters. His research interests include: the evolutionary ecology of carnivorous plants, biogeography, null model analysis of community structure, ant diversity, and demography. Aaron M. Ellison is Senior Research Fellow in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at the Harvard Forest, and Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Program in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He received a B.A. in 1982 from Yale University, and a Ph.D. from Brown University in 1986. Dr. Ellison received the National Science Foundation's Presidential Faculty Fellow award in 1992 for 'demonstrated excellence and continued promise both in scientific and engineering research and in teaching future generations of students to extend and apply human knowledge.' His research foci include: food web dynamics, community ecology of wetlands and forests, evolutionary ecology of carnivorous plants, and the application of Bayesian inference to ecological research and environmental decision-making. Dr. Ellison currently serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief of Ecology and Ecological Monographs, with primary responsibility for statistically oriented manuscripts