Concepts of Biology
Before reviewing the book I would like to make the following comments.
After teaching Introductory Biology for 15 years, having created many course notes and PowerPoint presentations based on the 3 textbooks used over the years plus many other biology related books, articles from scientific journals and news papers, I wondered if a textbook for my course was still necessary. Wouldn't the notes and PowerPoints that I posted in the course’s website, be enough? They do contain everything I want to teach my students. They also contain much of what I want to introduce to those students who are interested in more than the mandatory material, many of whom are interested in becoming a major in Biology. What has stopped me from abandoning the textbook is the somewhat haphazard way my notes are written and organized. If time were available I would organize my notes and PowerPoint presentations into a nicely flowing text presented in a logical sequence of topics. In other words, write my own book for Introductory Biology, containing the topics that I think are of importance and presented at a level of understanding that will match the needs of my students. A book that would be available for free to my students, the same way that my notes and PowerPoints are.
The appearance of open source textbooks may eliminate the necessity of organizing my own notes into a complete text. An open source textbook would still allow me to base my lectures and other class activities on my own notes, which often are brief explanations of key terms and summaries of concepts, while at the same time offering my students a complete text. in book format.
My participation in this workshop was based on the following question. Is there an open source textbook that covers the topics of my course and that will be good enough for my student to fall back on? I decided to pick Concepts of Biology to find an answer to that question. I soon started to incorporate parts of another book, Biology, as I was looking for answers to questions left by the Concepts book. The Concepts of Biology is aimed at non-majors, while Biology is aimed at the biology majors.Both books are OpenStax College publications.
My review of the books was in particular aimed at the chapters of both books that I cover in my course. For Concepts of Biology I did review all chapters.
Now Comprehensiveness.
Concepts of Biology is designed for a single-semester introduction to biology course for non-science majors. The book has about 600 pages of text split over 6 Units, which cover the basic topics one can find in many biology textbooks.
Unit 1: Cellular Foundation of Life (chemistry, cells, respiration and photosynthesis)
Unit 2: Cell Division and Genetics (cell cycle, mitosis, meiosis, Mendel)
Unit 3: Molecular Bioloy and Biotechnology (DNA, Central Dogma, biotech)
Unit 4: Evolution and Diversity of Life (mechanisms of evolution, phylogeny, diversity of bacteria, fungi, protists, plants and animals)
Unit 5: Animal Structure and Function (contents actually cover human biology: anatomy, physiology, diseases and immunity, reproduction and development)
Unit 6: Ecology (population and community ecology, ecosystems, biosphere, conservation biology)
The amount of material covered by this book is in my opinion too much for non-major students to comprehend in one semester. The modularity of the text allows to chose those chapters needed for a specific course. The units can be used on their own. My course has an emphasis on Genetics, Evolution, and Diversity of Life (with some physiology and ecology thrown in when appropriate). My review will focus on those units in more detail.
Here first some remarks on the Units not used in my course.
Unit 1 is well written, in a matter of fact way, to the point. The illustrations in the text are clear and supportive. Topics that are treated are the ones one would find in any biology book. I am always amazed at the amount of terminology and concepts students are supposed to comprehend in a short amount of time. The book does a nice job in explaining many of them (examples are the illustrations on the workings on enzymes, catabolic and anabolic pathways), but still, then there is suddenly something like NADH, without introduction. There is something of a catch 22 in studying biology (and maybe any discipline): one cannot fully comprehend most topics in biology until one has studied it all. Where does one start?
Unit 5 is named Animal Structure and Function. I consider myself a Plant biologist and was somewhat disturbed by the idea that an intro to bio book has an entire unit dedicated to animal biology and not one to plant biology. This concern, a lack of attention to plants in biology, is shared by the entire plant biology community. This feeling disappeared after I read this Unit. The unit is misnamed. It is all about humans. A better title would be: Human Biology. A unit like this in an introductory class can be justified as many non-majors might be particularly interested in the workings of their own body. This unit plus units 1, 2, and 3 would work well in a Human Biology course. The text is written in a straightforward matter of fact way as well (by a health specialist?). A part is dedicated to viruses and the diseases they cause in humans. It is the only part in which viruses are discussed in the book (they are absent in the unit of life's diversity, Unit 4).
Unit 6 is on Ecology. This unit is an excellent introduction to principle concepts of ecology; ecosystems and its components and processes ; and conservation biology. The illustrations are up-to-date. This unit would work well in an Environmental Science course to introduce students to the principles of ecology and conservation.
More detail on Units 2, 3 and 4:
Chapter 6: Reproduction at the cellular level.
The chapter discusses chromosome terminology, the cell cycle, mitosis, cell division in bacteria, oncogenes and tumor suppression genes. Several terms are used but not introduced: centromere, centrosomes, centrioles, mitotic spindle, microtubules. The Evolution in Action of this chapter goes into detail on the structure of the mitotic spindle. This part will be hard to understand for non-majors.
I decided to check the OpenStax Biology for majors textbook to see how that handled the terms not introduced in the Concepts to Biology book. A step I was to take for all the chapters of these units that follow. Chapter 10 of Biology does explain the terms centromere and others missing in Concepts.The explanations of the workings of regulatory molecules like cyclin, would go too far for non-majors. I can tell them to skip those paragraphs.
Chapter 7 has a nice introduction to reproduction before continuing with meiosis and all its aspects. Mutations are discussed. Chapter 11 of Biology for majors discusses meiosis in a somewhat similar fashion, but treats meiotic errors in a separate chapter, Biology Chapter 13.
Chapter 8 of Concepts discusses Mendel's life and Mendelian genetics: monohybrid and dihybrid crosses, plus some exceptions to the rules. Chapter 12 of Biology for majors does the same but includes some extras about the basics of probability and the forked line method for trihybrid crosses. These topics are not discussed in my Intro course. Chapter 13 of Biology gives some nice examples of inherited disorders in humans plus nondisjunction and mutations. These topics are discussed in my Intro course. I would need to add those topics because they are lacking in chapter 8 of the Concepts book. Instead of Chapter 8 of Concepts, I could use chapters 12 and 13 of Biology and skip the paragraphs that go into too much detail for my students.
Chapter 9 of Concepts: Molecular Biology. This chapter covers both the structure of DNA and the Central Dogma. The chapter does refer to the 3' and 5' ends of the DNA strands. What is missing is an emphasis on Rosalind Franklin's work, good illustration to sho
Most of the content seems accurate. I discovered a few mistakes. See Comprehensiveness.
Most of the text will be relevant for some time. Updates might be needed within a few years on the systematics of protists Some evo-devo content will be needed soon.
In general the text is written in a way that most students will understand. At times, terms appear in the text without introduction, for instance the centromere; centrosomes; centrioles; the mitotic spindle and microtubules (in chapter 6). Their role in the cell cycle is hardly explained as well.
A few other inaccuracies are mentioned in my Comprehensiveness part.
The text is internally consistent.
The writing styles suggest that different authors were used for the different units. Units 1, 5 and 6 are written in a more matter-of-fact way than the other ones.
The modularity is good. At times a self-reference would be advisable, in particular when not the entire text is used in a course. Example: microtubules are mentioned in chapter 6 but there is no explanation on what they are. Reference to chapter 3 would have helped.
In general the text is presented in a logical order. A difference in the order in which topics are discussed can be a mater of taste. By reading chapters from both Concepts in Biology and Biology (for majors), I noticed that both books follow different orders of topics on a regular basis. The order in lectures might be different again each semester.
I did not have problems with the organization.
One exception: viruses should be part of chapter 13 too.
I did not encounter any problems with the interface.
I did not find grammatical errors.
The text is not offensive in any way.
I started the review of this book Concepts in Biology to determine if I could use it for my Intro to Biology course. My course has an emphasis on Genetics, Evolution and Diversity. Topics like Cell Biology, Physiology and Human Biology are parts of other courses in my school. I soon found that Concepts of Biology stays at the surface of many topics more than I do in my course. I started to include reviewing the comparable chapters of Biology (OpenStax, a book for biology majors). The majors book does treat many topics at a level I do in my non-majors course. At times it goes beyond of what I can expect from my non-major students. Still, I find the way relevant topics are treated in the majors book far more interesting than the short treatment in the Concepts book.
It is at times difficult to find balance between what can be comprehended in a short amount of time and the limited pre-knowledge of students that do not major in the field. At the same time, more complex concepts are hard to understand without going into some detail. In those cases, it might be better to avoid those concepts altogether. I tend to go into detail in these cases, but avoid asking too complicated questions on them during exams.
The dilemma posed on me by these two books is: use the non-majors book and include my own text where extra text is needed, or: use the majors book and eliminate text not needed. I will chose the majors book here. This book has more and nice illustrations as a bonus. I will evaluate that choice after the next semester.
The Concepts book is a simplified version of many of the chapters of the majors book (it also does not cover all the topics of many other chapters of the majors book). One could argue if this approach, a non-majors course as a simplified version of a majors course, is the one we should follow. Several non-major books approach the topic of biology differently. They emphasize biological issues in society in biology for non-majors, such as health, biological conservation, the environment. They explain many biological processes like the cell cycle or physiology at a very superficial level. This has the danger of reducing a science course to a series of anecdotes, where a thorough introduction to the workings of science, with all its need for detail, should be preferred.
Concepts of Biology is a short and simplified version of the Biology for majors.
Both books have some nice features: selected topics are taken a step further in:
Evolution in Action: evolution as we recognized it as happening right now.
Career in Action: presentations of careers in the biological sciences.
Biology in Action: biological concepts in everyday life.
Art Connection: figures related to the text with questions to be answered by students to apply what they have learned. Nice discussion options for class.
Concepts in Action: online activities and animations.
I like these extras.