This book is a core introductory text which examines basic principles of ecology for first year undergraduates. The authors have expertise in population ecology and plant ecophysiology which will give the book a balanced treatment of plant and animal ecology and a strong applied and evolutionary bias. The book will not present ecology as a tight, predictive science in the way that other areas of biology (such as genetics) can be. Instead, it will aim to give the student a good grounding in the basics of ecology, including patterns in biodiversity, population biology, the ecology of assemblages and the interpretation of ecological data. It will also try to stress the links between different aspects and different levels and also emphasise the overall intellectual coherence of the subject.