Surveying Natural Populations is a user-friendly primer to the essential methodologies of quantitative field ecology or paleoecology. Combining the intuitive methods of the field researcher with the mathematical precision of the statistician, the volume determines, through real biodiversity and ecological examples, the necessary measures for a complete community assessment while clarifying the confusions between biological and statistical terminology. Focusing on underlying mathematical concepts, it describes how to complete incrementally a quantitative sampling of any recent or fossil...