“Zoological Introduction” to Between Pacific Tides

Abstract

Edward F. Ricketts revised the original draft of Between Pacific Tides throughout the early 1930s, appending his four-page “Zoological Introduction,” in which he defended the book's ecological arrangement as “a natural history in every sense of the word.” In this introduction, he notes that arranging Between Pacific Tides according to shore habitats “necessitated a great amount of field work, most of which could have been obviated if the traditional treatment had been used.” Despite the establishment of academic thinking against which he worked, Between Pacific Tides is Ricketts's most recognized scientific achievement, and is revered as a classic and pioneering text in marine biology. In this work, the distribution of Pacific littoral invertebrates within a given region is seen in the light of competition and interrelation between the animals themselves, and the limiting aspects of the following factors: wave shock, tidal level, and type of bottom, along with a good many others of lesser importance, such as temperature, stagnation, silting, etc., all pretty well intermingled and interdependent.