Why a New Edition Now, and Why
Call It “New”?
In the 1997 edition coverage expanded and, as in the
1989 edition, I really did strive to be a real “companion”
to my readers and write in layperson’s terms without
becoming overly reliant on scientific jargon. I tried to
tell in a basic and uncluttered way just how the ecology
of the tropics works and why it is so remarkable.
But I also added a considerable amount of academic
material, and in accordance with that, citations from
the scientific literature, some 800 of them, were
interspersed throughout the book. Nonetheless,
some academics thought it to be too general. A few
professors told me it was just not rigorous enough
for use in their courses (forgetting, I suppose, that it
was never meant as a textbook). Some academically
focused folks also commented that they thought I was
too colloquial, inserting myself too often into the book.
Other, more general readers had the opposite reaction
and thought the writing to be a bit too much like that
found in a textbook, at least in a few places, and said
it was a bit arcane for a field guide, even regarding a
complex subject like tropical ecology. Fortunately,
many (hopefully most) readers accepted my attempt to
balance academics and basic natural history, and thus
the book has enjoyed a strong continued readership to
this day. It has been translated into Spanish, through
the efforts of the Birders Exchange Program of the
American Birding Association; several thousand copies
of the Spanish edition have been handed out free of
charge to Latin American scientists, conservationists,
and students, and it is available as a free download
from the ABA website. It pleases me to know the book
has been useful to so many.
My next project was major in scope: an outgrowth
of A Neotropical Companion but far more extensive.
Scientific knowledge and new insights about the
tropics continued to burgeon and there was a clear
need for a rigorous and comprehensive book that
would provide a solid academically based introduction
to not only the Neotropics but also the global tropics
in general. Thus I elected to write such a book and
did so. That effort resulted in Tropical Ecology, a
comprehensive upper- level college textbook, published
by Princeton University Press in 2011. This was meant,
wholeheartedly, to be a rigorous and thorough text.
The book seems to have found its intended audience
among the offerings of colleges that include Tropical
Ecology courses within their curricula.
Since the publication of Tropical Ecology I have come
full circle, back to wondering what to do about what
was once the Little Green Book. The information in A
Neotropical Companion needs to be updated. Science is
always a work in progress, and that is certainly true of
tropical ecology. There remains, in my view, a need for
a general book for nonacademically focused readers
and travelers that with a broad brush describes New
World tropical ecology and that serves to interpret
and explain the most biologically diverse terrestrial
ecosystems on Earth.
And thus it is that I chose to revise A Neotropical
Companion and call it The New Neotropical Companion.
It is new. It has been written to be much less academic
in tone. I have adapted some of the former edition
to this new edition and, as well, borrowed liberally
from my 2011 text, Tropical Ecology, converting
the academic writing to a more user- friendly and
generalized treatment. There is an abundance of color
illustrations that adds immeasurably to the utility of the
book. You not only read about the Neotropics in these
pages, you see the Neotropics. The writing is up to date,
with full discussions of some of the newest and coolest
scientific insights. Some of what was in the previous
edition is essentially unchanged, some is somewhat
changed, much is very changed. And, of course, there
are numerous insights in the NNC not in the previous
edition because they were not known then. That is the
nature of science.
And that is why there is a New Neotropical
Companion.10 preface