4 reviews
Sales Rank: 135001

Media: Hardcover
Edition: 3
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 736
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.3
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 8.1 x 1.1

ISBN: 0131008498
Dewey Decimal Number: 597.9
EAN: 9780131008496
ASIN: 0131008498

Publication Date: July 20, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new book delivered from the UK in 10-14 days.

Also Available In:

•	Hardcover - Herpetology (2nd Edition)
•	Hardcover - Herpetology
•	Hardcover - Herpetology
•	Hardcover - Herpetology

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
For upper-level undergraduate courses in herpetology, found in departments of Biology, Zoology, Natural Resources, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology. Collaboration by the six authors--whose research specializations include autecology, synecology, systematics, evolution, morphology, physiology, and behavior--emphasizes the integration of information from different biological specialties to produce a comprehensive picture of amphibians and their important roles in modern ecosystems. This book presents the biology of amphibians and reptiles as the product of phylogenetic history and environmental influences acting in both ecological and evolutionary time.

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars

Excellent conceptually January 23, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

It's certainly not complete or perfect, and as a reviewer notes, contains some omissions and errors. However, while a textbook should strive to be as good as possible in those areas, it's no substitute for the primary literature in peer-reviewed journals and shouldn't be viewed as such, and instead should be seen as more of a conceptual introduction, in which I feel it does well. It avoids the tempting parade-of-taxa style, and instead focuses on the important concepts uniting reptiles and to an extent all animals, such as osmoregulation, feeding, locomotion, reproductive strategies, etc.

The section dealing with my primary focus, locomotion, is rather sparse, and contains some outdated information, but nothing that can't be corrected with a quick read through the literature. With any luck, my own work will be in the next edition.

4 out of 5 stars

Anurans and Squamates and Crocodylia! Oh, my! November 19, 2002
1 out of 4 found this review helpful

This is easily the best herpetology text book out there. It is informative, yet not full of the boringness (if that's a word...) of many textbooks. You might say that it's...fun to read.

3 out of 5 stars

Herp Textbook May 3, 2000
20 out of 23 found this review helpful

I have just finished an undergradute course which used this book as the main text. I agree with the previous reviewer that there is considerable overlap and occasional contradiction. The early chapters tend to use a lot of technical jargon, and seem to be written for people who already understand the material. I was not so impressed with phylogenic descriptions which frequently failed to discuss unifying characteristics within families. Later sections, including locomotion, water balance, and mate selection are well written. This book would benefit from a glossary, more relevant tables and figures, and a more inclusive index. Overall, editing is rather sketchy.

4 out of 5 stars

Best of what's available October 21, 1998
37 out of 37 found this review helpful

Despite some fairly serious errors and omissions, this book is the best academic treatment of the field of herpetology yet written. It is a multi-authored text which allows people to write on what they know best, rather than making authors stretch well beyond their fields of expertise. This unfortunately means there's a lot of repetition between chapters, and some flat-out contradictions. It does a fairly good of reviewing the literature in a number of sub-fields of herpetology, and so provides more up-to-date reviews than you're likely to find in "Biology of the Reptilia". It is a good choice for a herpetology course for undergraduates--in fact I plan to use it for such a course in summer 1999. Amazing omissions: dinosaurs!! birds!! biogeography!! Notable inclusions: good chapters on foraging ecology, classification (too short), & thermoregulation.