Charles Krebs' field experience translates into Ecology texts.

CHARLES KREBS is Professor of Zoology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and has been teaching for 40 years. He received his B.S. from the University of Minnesota and earned both his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. In addition to teaching ecology, he has worked extensively on the population of rodents in Northern Canada, the United States, and Australia, trying to understand the mechanisms behind population fluctuations. He has published three ecology textbooks including Ecology: The Experimental Analysis of Distribution and Abundance, Fifth Edition and Ecological Methodology, Second Edition both published by Benjamin Cummings. In his spare time, Charles can be found drinking fine wines.

BC | How have your experiences in the field affected your writing?

CK | I spend my time in the field doing field experiments, and the experimental approach has been the key to unlocking ecological secrets. My book emphasizes the need to investigate all ecological questions with field experiments. My field experiences have shown me the need to test ecological theory rigorously, and to be suspicious of simple mathematical models.

BC | You spend a lot of time in the field. What are your latest research projects?

CK | My latest research projects have been on snowshoe hares in the Yukon. These hares have 10 year cycles, and by experimentally manipulating predation and food supplies, we have been able to show that predation is the dominant driver in the system and that food is important but secondary to predator impacts. We have also been studying lemming populations in northern Canada. Lemmings are fed on by almost all arctic predators and have 3-4 year cycles, and we are concerned that climate change may impact these cycles.

BC | How is your book different from other ecology books on the market?

CK | Textbooks tend to evolve into encyclopedias. I avoid this by concentrating on the key questions ecologists try to answer and the ways they go about answering them. I present science as an ongoing activity, not just as a pile of facts to be memorized, and I try to point out all the unanswered and unknown parts of ecology to the student. I think the key to a successful textbook is how easy it is to read. My challenge to you is to sit down and read a particular topic in several ecology texts and compare how well other texts contrast to mine for an undergraduate coming to ecology for the first time.

BC | You've been teaching and writing in your field for many years. What changes have you seen in ecology?

CK | During the 40 years I have been teaching and doing field research in ecology, the largest change I have seen has been in the public awareness of ecology and the pressing environmental problems it highlights. This has been accompanied by a tremendous growth in ecological experiments on plant and animal populations and communities, and a concomitant increase in our ecological understanding of how these systems work in nature. The pressing need now is to move the wisdom of ecologists into the political and policy areas of governments.

BC | Over the course of your career, what moment stands out as the most memorable?

CK | My most memorable moments have occurred while doing fieldwork in northern Canada. Simple observations of snowshoe hares and lemmings carrying on their daily activities remind me of the need for good natural history information in all our ecological studies.

BC | Who in your field has influenced you most? How?

CK | I have been influenced most by Charles Elton and Dennis Chitty. It was my privilege to know Elton in Oxford during my graduate studies, and to have been able to interact with Dennis Chitty for more than 40 years. Both these ecologists challenged me to do better research, and illustrated to me the essence of good science.

Ecology: The Experimental Analysis of Distribution and Abundance, Fifth Edition, by Charles J. Krebs