This is a critical review of the origins and development of ecology, with emphasis on the major concepts and theories shared in the ecological traditions of plant and animal ecology, limnology, and oceanography.

The Background of Ecology is a critical and up-to-date review of the origins and development of ecology, with emphasis on the major concepts and theories shared in the ecological traditions of plant and animal ecology, limnology, and oceanography. The work traces developments in each of these somewhat isolated areas and identifies, where possible, parallels or convergences among them. Dr McIntosh describes how ecology emerged as a science in the context of nineteenth-century natural histor

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Antecedents of ecology
2. The crystallization of ecology
3. Dynamic ecology
4. Quantitative community ecology
5. Population ecology
6. Ecosystem ecology, systems ecology, and big biology
7. Theoretical approaches to ecology
8. Ecology and environment
References
Name index
Subject index.