Review of Textbooks of Invertebrate Zoology

Abstract

Just when environmental issues are enjoying un? precedented attention from the public, and enrollment in biology courses is taxing the capacity of many bi? ology departments, the number and variety of taxonoriented courses at colleges and universities are declining. About 1,500 students per year take a course in Invertebrate Zoology in North America, which is far fewer than was the case just a decade or two ago, when Invertebrate Zoology was taught at many more insti? tutions (Fautin, 1998). Two pressures appear to be pri? marily responsible for these declines: the economics of higher education and competition for students. Efforts by administrators to increase the number of credit hours taught per professor results in abandonment of classes with small enrollments. Invertebrate Zoology courses are commonly?although not invariably? small, and enrollments have diminished further as they compete for students with an increasing variety of courses, particularly in cell and molecular biology. We risk training biologists who know a great deal about certain details of structure and function but little about the context in which those structures and functions oc?