A Primer of Ecology with R
Ecology is more quantitative and theory-driven than ever before, and A Primer of Ecology with R combines an introduction to the major theoretical concepts in general ecology with a cutting edge open source tool, the R programming language. Starting with g
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M. Henry H. Stevens
A Primer of Ecology with R
M. Henry H. Stevens Department of Botany Miami University Oxford, OH 45056, USA [email protected]
ISBN 978-0-387-89881-0 e-ISBN 978-0-387-89882-7 DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-89882-7 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009927709 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights.
Printed on acid-free paper
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 (Corrected at 2nd printing 2010) Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
To my perfect parents, Martin and Ann, to my loving wife, Julyan, and to my wonderfully precocious kids, Tessa and Jack.
Preface
Goals and audience In spite of the presumptuous title, my goals for this book are modest. I wrote it as • the manual I wish I had in graduate school, and • a primer for our graduate course in Population and Community Ecology at Miami University1 It is my hope that readers can enjoy the ecological content and ignore the R code, if they care to. Toward this end, I tried to make the code easy to ignore, by either putting boxes around it, or simply concentrating code in some sections and keeping it out of other sections. It is also my hope that ecologists interested in learning R will have a rich yet gentle introduction to this amazing programming language. Toward that end, I have included some useful functions in an R package called primer. Like nearly all R packages, it is available through the R projects repositories, the CRAN mirrors. See the Appendix for an introduction to the R language. I have a hard time learning something on my own, unless I can do something with the material. Learning ecology is no different, and I find that my students and I learn theory best when we write down formulae, manipulate them, and explore consequences of rearrangement. This typically starts with copying down, verbatim, an expression in a book or paper. Therefore, I encourage readers to take pencil to paper, and fingers to keyboard, and copy expressions they see in this book. After that, make sure that what I have done is correct by trying some of the same rearrangements and manipulations I have done. In addition, try things that aren’t in the book — have fun. A pedagogical suggestion For centur
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