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Best 5 Biology Textbooks of 2023

Feb 17, 2023 13 Min Read

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Table of Contents

1. Campbell Biology Textbook, 11th Edition

2. molecular biology of the cell textbook, 6th edition, 3. biology textbook by eldra solomon et al, 11th edition, 4. prentice hall: biology, 5. biology, 12th edition by peter raven et al, frequently asked questions.

Biology is the study of living organisms, in a general sense. Those studying Biology in depth would take specialized courses, like Genetics, Marine Biology, or Botany. Consequently, students using the textbooks listed would most likely be high school students or undergraduates. Studying the natural sciences can be challenging, but rewarding, if you enhance your learning with the right materials. We have curated a list of the top 5 Biology textbooks in 2023.

5 Best Biology Textbooks of all time

To engage learners in developing a deeper understanding of biology, the 12th Edition of Campbell Biology challenges them to apply their knowledge and skills to a variety of new hands-on activities and exercises in both the text and online.

Campbell Biology is one of the best-selling and most widely-used textbooks for college-level Biology courses. What sets this textbook apart from its counterparts is its clear and engaging narrative, superior skills instruction, innovative use of art and photos, and fully integrated media resources to enhance both teaching and learning.

This textbook has been rated the best Biology textbook on numerous lists and is widely recognized as the standard for Biology courses in the last decade. The layout, language, and overall content of Campbell Biology lends itself to the engagement and information retention of its readers.

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As the amount of information in Biology expands dramatically, it becomes increasingly important for textbooks to digest this vast amount of scientific knowledge into concise principles and concepts. Dubbed as “the bible of the natural world”, Molecular Biology of the Cell accomplishes this goal with clear writing and beautiful illustrations. The Sixth Edition of this textbook has been extensively revised and updated with the latest research in cell biology, and it provides a designed framework for teaching and learning.

Unlike most Biology textbooks, Molecular Biology of the Cell places an emphasis not only on what we know, but how we know it. In this textbook, written for upper-level graduate and post-undergraduate students, the authors seek to present concepts in a way that both motivates and inspires students apply them in biological further study.

Molecular Biology of the Cell dives into cell biology with facts and diagrams, and moves to real-life, and work-place application, with research studies and social context. Students interested in pursuing careers that require a focus in cell biology can use this textbook as a resource in many ways. Users rated this textbook very highly and is among the top-rated Biology textbooks for graduate study and post-graduate self-study.

Biology 11th Edition has often been described as the best major’s text for studying the subject. Written for undergraduate intro level Biology courses, the Biology-practicing authors of this textbook intend for its reader to pursue a major, and career, in Biology. The layout of the text is structured as a tour guide for the reader through the fundamentals of Biology.

Working like a built-in study guide, the integrated learning system in Biology 11th Edition guides the student through the material, starting with key concepts for each chapter and learning objectives for each section. Students can then reinforce their understanding of the learning objectives with chapter summaries, followed by knowledge tests, before moving onto the next concept. The authors of Biology 11th Edition made information retention the aim of this textbook, with a plethora of opportunities for testing one’s knowledge.

Biology is a comprehensive text for an introduction to biology for any high school level student. The writers included some humorous content to make it more entertaining, and was written in a teenager-friendly manner. It is also suitable for students below high school age, with a fascination for biology. Biology has full-color pages to help visual learners with memorization, which is a large part of learning biology. The text also contains helpful study hints, reading strategies, science activities, and related topics of study to help students succeed. Science experiments can be viewed in the online resources to keep the information fresh and fun.

The textbook contains informative and challenging material to keep the reader interested. Worksheets are available for each section that cater to a range of learning levels. Biology’s online resources are helpful for in-class, virtual, or a homeschool education, so all students can succeed. It contains enough material for two years of biology education at the high school level. The information is also an excellent resource for re-learning material prior to taking a college-level Biology course. This text also delves into the career possibilities for the budding Biologist.

For the 12th edition of this iconic Biology textbook, the Raven/ Johnson author team has been dedicated to keeping students engaged in learning and retaining Biological concepts. Biology 12th Edition maintains the clear, accessible, and engaging writing style of past editions, with the solid framework of pedagogy that highlights an emphasis on evolution and scientific inquiry that have made this a leading textbook for students majoring in biology.

Unlike many of their counterparts, this textbook’s emphasis on the organizing power of evolution is combined with an integration of the importance of cellular, molecular biology and genomics to offer our readers a text that is student-friendly and current. In addition, Biology 12th Edition focuses mainly on conceptual information and committing them to memory, rather than applying the knowledge after the course is over. Rather, there is a laser focus on the developmental of critical thinking skills and data analysis, within the context of Biological knowledge and concepts.

A hefty textbook, at 1472 pages, Biology 12th Edition is one of the thicker and heavier books of its kind. There are 2 tables of contents: one brief and one more topically detailed. All pages are filled with colorful graphics, easily digestible tables, defined terms, and thoroughly explained topics. This textbook is the most highly-rated by users of all the other textbooks on this list and is recommended for all students learning Biology: beginners and majors, in the classroom and self-study alike.

What is the hardest part of learning biology?

Biology requires the application of acquired knowledge, which can be difficult in itself. While earning a degree in Biology, the most difficult aspect can be the memorization. No matter what field of Biology you pursue, there will most likely be an overwhelming amount of scientific terms, phrases, and acronyms that will need to be memorized in order to properly communicate with other scientists. For many, the rote memorization of terminology determines how successful they will be in earning their biology degree.

What career paths can I take with a degree in Biology?

Unlike many fields, there aren’t years of prerequisites needed to start the study of cutting-edge Biology. A Biology degree can earn a career working for the local, state, or federal government or in the private sector, performing research, providing diagnostic services, testing, counseling services, and health education.

Biology degrees can also be a starting point for a more advanced education or career. Biology is an excellent background for pursuing a career in medicine, pharmacology, healthcare, or forensics.

What are some specialized branches of biology?

The major fields of Biology include Zoology, Botany, Microbiology, Genetics, Biochemistry, and Ecology.

How much money can I earn with a degree in Biology?

The range of pay for someone with a Bachelor’s degree in biology varies greatly. Earning potential depends heavily on place of employment and degree of education. Many doors of opportunity in Biology open when a higher degree, like a Master’s or Doctoral, is achieved.

Highest Paying Jobs With a B.S. in Biology

Not looking for a biology textbook? Read Reviews of Other Textbooks

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Are you looking for the best biology books? We have gathered them for you. We know that you are dedicated to researching this or other topics, either because you study them or simply because you have a special interest in the subject. Whatever your goal, we can help you.

The origin of biology , like that of the other sciences, comes from philosophy, from which it was separated at the time of the Enlightenment. However, its modern conception developed after the essential findings of Darwin and Mendel , at the end of the 19th century. This is when the most relevant advances in evolution and genetics were made.

The importance of this natural science lies in the fact that it explains how life develops on earth, its origin, evolution and even its possible death. It is also in charge of studying the natural laws that govern life and how to improve it, collaborating with branches such as ecology, medicine or chemistry. Its theoretical principles feed many other important disciplines.

Thanks to biology, crucial discoveries have been made in the history of mankind, such as the case of penicillin and vaccines, which have saved so many lives to date. Also, the future seems to advance thanks to molecular biology that contributes to the genetic modification of food.

1) Animal Biology Books

In animal biology, animal tissues are made up of different cells, which are joined together. Likewise, the extracellular matrix is formed through characteristic junctions.

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2) bacteriology books.

Bacteriology as a discipline appears as a necessity for physicians to test and apply the microbial theory of disease, as well as economic concerns related to food and wine spoilage.

3) Biotechnology Books

However, with the development of various scientific areas, especially those related to the DNA molecule, they transformed the way of manipulating organisms, relying in part on recombinant DNA techniques, which led to the use of genetic engineering techniques, giving rise to modern biotechnology.

4) Botany Books

The father of botany was Theophrastus , a disciple of Aristotle , who in the 4th century B.C. published the first works focused on the study of plants. Few advances were made in the following centuries. Perhaps the most outstanding figure in the field of botany is Carl Linnaeus , an eminent Swedish scientist of the 18th century who devoted most of his life to studying and classifying plants and animals.

5) Cell Biology Books

It also helps to propose therapeutic alternatives to improve the repair processes of human tissues and organs, as well as to combat agents that cause severe disorders in living organisms, such as those that occur when bacteria or viruses appear.

6) Ecology Books

7) environmental biology books, 8) evolutionary biology books.

Evolutionary biology is the branch or discipline of biology that studies the origin of species and their changes, dissemination, differentiation and any evolutionary process that arises over time.

9) Genetics Books

Genes are the units of information used by organisms to transfer characteristics to their offspring. The gene contains encoded instructions for synthesizing all the proteins of an organism. These proteins are the ones that will eventually give rise to all the characteristics of an individual (phenotype).

10) Histology Books

The results of histological studies are key to medicine and biology, both for understanding the properties of the organism under normal conditions and for examining the presence of pathologies, their evolution and possible diagnosis.

11) Marine Biology Books

12) microbiology books.

Microbiology is the branch of biology that studies microorganisms, both prokaryotes and viruses as well as simple eukaryotes, uni and multicellular. The organisms that are the object of this branch are those that are only visible under the microscope. Etymologically it comes from the Greek mīkros (small), bios (life) and -logia (treatise, science).

13) Molecular Biology Books

14) Physiology Books

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High school biology

Looking for high school biology material, biology foundations, energy and transport, reproduction and cell division, classical genetics, molecular genetics, human body systems, course challenge.

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Guest Hollow’s High School Biology Online Textbook

Welcome to guest hollow’s free biology textbook.

Get ready to learn about science and the natural world in this absolutely FREE book! Why do are we offering a free book? Have a look at our About Us page , and you’ll get a sense of who we are and why we care about homeschoolers like we do. Having said that, please consider using Guest Hollow as your source for other curriculums and materials . Despite being a tiny mom-and-pop, our company has a lot to offer, and it’s growing all the time. Please explore our site as well as our social media presence and let us know what you think !

This FREE book is designed to be used with Guest Hollow’s Free High School Biology Curriculum , but anyone is free to use it. 🙂 Enjoy! The Guest Family © Guest Hollow, LLC

Guest Hollow's Homeschool Biology Curriculum Textbook

We’ve taken the well-known and rigorous CK-12 biology textbook and edited it (thanks to a Creative Commons license) to fit a Christian creationist perspective.

Choose a chapter or section and dive right in!

Question: What edits were made to the CK-12 text?

We’ve taken the rigorous CK-12 biology textbook and edited it (thanks to a Creative Commons license) to fit a Christian creationist perspective. Edits are as follows:

We also added in a schedule that ties in a variety of lab options, activities, videos, workbook assignments, games, free printables, additional books, and more to make a rich learning experience that goes beyond the text!

Question: Where are the answers to the end-of-chapter questions?

We don’t provide those answers, but you can get them from the original Ck-12 Biology Teacher’s Guide . Some of the questions and answers may not match up with the edited Guest Hollow book.

Do you offer a physical copy of this book or a PDF?

No, we don’t offer one. You can print sections of the book out for your student from the online web pages via a home printer, or you can save the sections as a PDF file and take that to your favorite printing company. The other option is to visit the files section in our Facebook Biology group . A customer uploaded a Microsoft Word version of the online textbook that you can print. We are not responsible for any errors or the content of that document.

Some of our customers use The Homeschool Printing Company or Family Nest Printing . We don’t endorse any specific printing company. They are shared for informational purposes only.

How can I access the free biology workbook?

You can get the free printable (PDF) biology workbook by clicking here: https://guesthollow.com/store/free-high-school-biology-workbook/ You’ll need to add it to your cart and checkout to get the download. Once you’ve downloaded it, you can print it out as needed or all at once!

Chapter 1 What is Biology?

This chapter provides an introduction to scientific investigations, methods, observations, and communication.

1.1 Science and the Natural World

1.2 Biology: The Study of Life

Chapter 2 The Chemistry of Life

This chapter covers matter, the significance of carbon, lipids, proteins, nucleic acids, amino acids, biochemical, and chemical properties and reactions.

2.1 Matter and Organic Compounds

2.2 Biochemical Reactions

2.3 Water, Acids, and Bases

Cellular Structure and Function

This chapter introduces cell structure and function, features of prokaryotic, eukaryotic, plant, and animal cells. General structures and functions of DNA, RNA, protein, cell transport, and homeostasis.

3.1 Introduction to Cells

3.2 Cell Structures

3.3 Cell Transport and Homeostasis

Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration

This chapter introduces energy, glucose and ATP’s role, stages of photosynthesis, light reactions, the Calvin cycle, cellular respiration, glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, the electron transport chain, anaerobic and aerobic respiration, and fermentation.

4.1 Energy for Life

4.2 Photosynthesis: Sugar as Food

4.3 Powering the Cell: Cellular Respiration

4.4 Anaerobic Respiration

The Cell Cycle, Mitosis, and Meiosis

This chapter covers cell division, the process of producing new cells, and sexual and asexual reproduction.

5.1 Cell Division and the Cell Cycle

5.2 Chromosomes and Mitosis

5.3 Reproduction and Meiosis

Gregor Mendel and Genetics

This chapter covers Mendelian genetics, inheritance, probability, dominant, recessive, and sex-linked traits.

6.1 Mendel’s Investigations

6.2 Mendelian Inheritance

Molecular Genetics: From DNA to Proteins

This chapter covers DNA, RNA, protein synthesis, mutation, and regulation of gene expression.

7.1 DNA and RNA

7.2 Protein Synthesis

7.3 Mutation

7.4 Regulation of Gene Expression

Human Genetics and Biotechnology

This chapter covers the human genome and genetic diseases/disorders, including autosomal vs. sex-linked inheritance patterns, DNA technology, The Human Genome Project, and gene cloning.

8.1 Human Chromosomes and Genes

8.2 Human Inheritance

8.3 Biotechnology

Classification

This chapter introduces Linnaean classification.

9.1 Classification

Creationism vs. the Theory of Evolution

This chapter gives you a foundation to understand creationism vs. evolution.

10.1 Exposing the Flaws in Evolution

The Principles of Ecology

This chapter covers ecology and its relationship to energy, ecosystems, and the water, carbon, and nitrogen cycles.

11.1 The Science of Ecology

11.2 Recycling Matter

11.3 Biomes

Communities and Populations

This chapter covers communities as part of biotic ecosystems, populations: size, density, dispersion, and growth, biodiversity, natural resources, and climate change.

12.1 Community Interactions

12.2 Characteristics of Populations

Microorganisms: Prokaryotes and Viruses

This chapter serves as an introduction to the specifics of prokaryotes and viruses, as well as the interactions between bacteria and other organisms.

13.1 Prokaryotes

13.2 Viruses

Eukaryotes: Protists and Fungi

This chapter serves as an introduction to the Kingdom Protista, the three types of protists: animal-like, plant-like, and fungus-like protists, and the classification and ecology of fungi.

14.1 Introduction to Protists

14.2 Types of Protists

14.3 Introduction to Fungi

14.4 Ecology of Fungi

14.5 Protists, Fungi, and Human Disease

Plant Classification

This chapter is an introduction to the plant kingdom and covers the four categories of plants: nonvascular plants, vascular plants, seed plants, and flowering plants.

15.1 Introduction to the Plant Kingdom

15.2 Four Types of Plants

Plant Biology

This chapter discusses plant tissues, including roots, stems, leaves, and plant growth.

16.1 Plant Tissues and Growth

16.2 Plant Organs, Roots, Stems, and Leaves

16.3 Variation in Plant Life Cycles

16.4 Plant Features and Responses

Introduction to Animals

This chapter gives an overview of animals, including invertebrates, discussing characteristics and classification.

17.1 Overview of Animals

17.2 Overview of Invertebrates

From Sponges to Invertebrate Chordates

This chapter provides an overview of sponges, cnidarians, flatworms, and roundworms, discussing structure, function, reproduction, and ecology.

18.1 Sponges, Cnidarians, Flatworms, and Roundworms

18.2 Mollusks and Annelids

18.3 Arthropods and Insects

18.4 Echinoderms and Invertebrate Chordates

From Fish to Birds

This chapter is an overview of vertebrates from fishes to birds covering their characteristics and classification.

19.1 Overview of Vertebrates

19.3 Amphibians

19.4 Reptiles

Mammals and Animal Behavior

This chapter provides an overview of mammals covering mammalian traits, reproduction, and classification. Animal behavior is also discussed, including learning and communication, as well as migration, aggression, courtship, and mating.

20.1 Mammalian Traits

20.2 Reproduction in Mammals

20.3 Classification of Mammals

20.4 Overview of Animal Behavior

© CK-12 Foundation Licensed under CK-12 Foundation is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) • Terms of Use • Attribution Changes/edits were made to the original ck12 biology text by Guest Hollow. Changes are not endorsed by CK-12 in any way.

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Free Textbook List » Life Science Textbooks » Biology

Free Biology Textbooks

Biologists study living organisms, their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. It is a huge field of study, as varied as the many creatures and plants that share the earth with us.

University students studying biology may opt to specialize in biochemistry, molecular biology, physiology or ecology. Biology is is the field of study originated by Aristotle and dates back to 300 years before the birth of Christ.

Biology is also one of those fields of study that many colleges and universities require all of their students to take an introductory course. It can be a real challenge for non-science majors. The availability of free course materials, lecture notes and online biology textbooks provide students with a better chance than ever to succeed.

The section of The Free Textbook list will focus on identifying free online biology textbooks that educators and scholars have made freely available to their own students and anyone else studying biology.

List of Free Biology Textbooks

Cells, molecules and mechanisms.

Cells, Molecules and Mechanisms is a free online molecular biology textbook written by E.V. Wong. Geared for college sophomores, PDFs free for downloading.

Essentials of Glycobiology

A team of educators at UC San Diego and elsewhere worked together to create Essentials of Glycobiology a free online glycobiology textbook. Written for scholars and novices.

Inside the Cell

Three science writers (2 with science-related Ph.D.s and 1 with a biochemistry graduate degree) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences offer a free biology textbook suitable for high school and college students.

Kimball’s Biology Pages

After a lifetime of teaching biology in classrooms, John W. Kimball continues teaching us all with his free online biology textbook and reference website.

Life on Earth

Life on Earth is full of glorious images, video and interactive exercises for biology students. Freely available on iTunes. Best resource on topic, from a visual perspective, IMHO.

Online Biology Book

Free online biology book written by Michael J. Farabee. 56 chapters of text, graphs, charts and illustrations.

Todar’s Online Textbook of Bacteriology

Free online bacteriology textbook written by an emeritus lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, Kenneth Todar Ph.D. Suitable for HS and college students.

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Biology - 2e

(67 reviews)

Mary Ann Clark, Fort Worth, Texas

Jung Choi, Marietta, Georgia

Matthew Douglas, Grand Rapids, Michigan

ISBN 13: 9781947172517

Publisher: OpenStax

Language: English

Formats Available

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Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Urbi Ghosh, Science, Adjunct Faculty, Bunker Hill Community College on 2/24/23

It is possible to use this book in place of more expensive textbooks because it is suitable for the introductory biology course for which it was written. The book included biological themes beginning at the cellular level and progressing all the... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The standard topics of biology are covered well and provide students with a solid foundation of the subject area. Each chapter has a number of useful key terms and definitions, a chapter summary, as well as review questions for the students.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

Clark's Biology 2e (OER) is clear and uses simple language, the topics are present with correct and up-to-date information, and include pertinent visual aids such as diagrams, pictures, and photographs. I think all these factors can enhance the learning experience and increase students' subject-matter comprehension. However, The themes of epigenetics, genomic research, non-coding RNA, and CRISPR-Cas gene editing were not discussed and need to be perhaps added on with additional course materials.

Clarity rating: 5

The majority of the learning outcomes at the beginning of the chapter are done well and the visual connection and review questions at the end of the chapter assess lower order cognitive skills.

Consistency rating: 5

The material is presented in a logical and consistent manner to facilitate effective learning and understanding. As a well-structured biology textbook, this book begins with a clear and short introduction to the subject, followed by a comprehensive explanation of essential subjects and concepts in a logical progression. Students should be able to build upon their knowledge and comprehension as they proceed through the course.

Modularity rating: 5

This is well done. The material is provided in a clear and succinct manner, a well-organized book with subheadings and appropriate level of reading smaller sections. The organismal themes are oriented toward animal function and structure (which can be found in the majority of the book), with only a cursory coverage of plant structure and function (similar to what is found in the majority of biology textbooks).

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

Overall, this OER textbook is a well-designed biology textbook which provides a clear, consistent, and comprehensive presentation of the subject matter, that helps students to develop a deep understanding of the concepts and principles of biology.

Interface rating: 5

A well-organized textbook interface is provided. This is important because it provides a framework for learning, allowing students to comprehend how the material links to the larger subject of study. This can contribute to the development of a feeling of coherence and purpose, so making the learning experience more meaningful and engaging.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

I did not see any.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

There just were not enough instances for me to make a suitable comment in this area for the OER Biology textbook by Clark et al.

Overall, This OER textbook is a well-designed biology textbook that gives a clear, consistent, and thorough presentation of the subject matter, so assisting students in developing a solid grasp of the concepts and principles of biology.

Reviewed by Laurie Lawson, Associate Professor, Tidewater Community College on 1/30/23

This online textbook covers most chapters for the biology 101 and 102 courses taught at TCC. There is a comprehensive table of contents, index, and "Key Terms" page for each section. read more

This online textbook covers most chapters for the biology 101 and 102 courses taught at TCC. There is a comprehensive table of contents, index, and "Key Terms" page for each section.

Content viewed appears to be accurate and unbiased.

This text, while far from being obsolete, probably needs an update as it was finished in 2018. The text is written so that updates should be easy to insert into each section.

This textbook has learning objectives at the beginning of each section. Topics are explained in a clear and concise manner. Difficult terms are defined in a "Key Terms" section. This text also contains chapter summaries, review questions, and critical thinking questions.

This text is consistent and organized throughout.

Chapters are broken down into easy-to-assign modules.

Topics presented are organized in a logical manner with topics building on previous sections.

I did not notice any interface issues, distortion of images, or anything that might confuse a student. All chapters are organized into headings and subheadings that are easy to navigate with the tool bar on the left hand side of the interface. Images are detailed and appealing to the reader.

I did not see any grammatical issues while skimming the text.

The text is not culturally insensitive or offensive. Images use a variety of skin tones in the peripheral nervous system and human pregnancy and birth sections.

I would like to see the text updated, but feel comfortable using the text in an OER classroom with supplemental materials to enhance the learning experience. I enjoyed the Links to Learning and Career Connections sections. The former links students to videos, animations, and primary literature while the latter highlights different careers that apply to the section discussed in the text.

Reviewed by Debora Christensen, Associate Professor, Drake University on 12/30/21

The textbook’s content and depth of coverage are comparable to current commercial introductory biology textbooks. At approximately 1,500 pages, the book is slightly longer than other books we’ve used, but the additional length may be due to the organization and inclusion of glossaries at the end of each chapter. The order of topics is also similar to other books and follows a logical progression: process of science, chemistry, cell biology, genetics, evolution, biological diversity, plant structure/function, animal structure/function, and ecology. In this review, we focus on the textbook units (cell biology, genetics, physiology) that align with the specific topics we teach in the first and second semesters of introductory biology for science majors. These are students with majors and interests that include biology, biochemistry, neuroscience, kinesiology, environmental science, and pre-professional students who aspire to attend professional graduate programs in medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry, and allied health care. With this target audience in mind, we found these units are discussed at an appropriate level for undergraduates, particularly first- and second-semester college freshmen. While, in general, the amount of detail and depth is also appropriate, the balance of coverage could be improved. In some cases, the text over-focuses on certain topics while omitting others. However, a significant strength is that the online, editable nature of the book enables an instructor to edit the text to best fit their course. In contrast to some introductory biology textbooks that focus almost exclusively on humans, this text consistently includes examples from all three domains of life, making the content more applicable to students with interests in different areas of biology. Several features are included to help the learner and educator alike. Each chapter begins with a list of learning objectives. Key terms are placed in bold font when first described. Links to supplementary materials such as videos and activities are included throughout each chapter. At the end of each chapter, there is a glossary of key terms, chapter summaries (divided by section), visual connection questions, multiple-choice review questions, and short-answer critical thinking questions. At the end of the textbook, appendices (e.g., periodic table, metric system) and a comprehensive index are included. The text also includes a variety of supplementary instructor and student resources (e.g., answers to end-of-chapter questions, PowerPoint slides, learning strategies for students).

Content Accuracy rating: 4

In general, the content of the text is accurate. We did find a few conceptual errors with minor errors scattered throughout. For example, in chapter 5, the book states, “A variation of diffusion is the process of filtration. In filtration, material moves according to its concentration gradient through a membrane.” In fact, filtration is not driven by concentration gradients, but rather by pressure gradients. In some cases, oversimplification of a topic can be misleading for students. Once again, however, the dynamic nature of the text proves to be its strength, as the community of users actively submit suggested corrections to address potential errors in concepts, typos, art, wording, review questions, and broken links. Errors are corrected in the text’s online format prior to fall and spring semesters, and the pdf version prior to fall semesters. Furthermore, an instructor can edit the text for their own student population and according to their unique needs.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

With a few exceptions, the textbook addresses relevant issues in biology while also presenting historical findings. With an introductory-level biology text, it is important to achieve a balance between the length of the text & number of topics and the inclusion of the most recent technological advances. To this end, the text could swap outdated, less commonly used biotechnology methods for more recent developments (e.g., CRISPR). This should be fairly easy to accomplish, as the short modular nature of book chapters facilitates continual updates and revisions. Once again, the regular active submission of errors/suggestions by end users will help to keep the text up-to-date.

Most chapters within the textbook are clear and relatively easy to read. Complex topics are clearly presented, many terms are defined, and there is a logical progression of ideas and information. Inclusion of well-labeled figures, tables, and charts throughout the text to compare and contrast structures and to help students visualize processes are particularly helpful. While the overall clarity is good, the use of jargon in places could be confusing to students. In some instances, the language could be simplified to make the text more accessible and terms better defined. In other instances, particularly later chapters, clarity could be improved with more and/or improved visuals. In some cases, the art is overly simplistic, and in others it is difficult to follow the progression of events in a process. End-of-chapter questions are included for students to check their understanding.

Consistency rating: 4

The format and terminology are consistent across units and chapters. Examples used early in a chapter may be revisited later in that same chapter as new information is presented, facilitating layering of knowledge and continuity of understanding. While some topics and visuals are redundant across chapters, this also helps with modularity of the text. Instructors frequently choose to omit one or more early chapters for the sake of time and because there may be an assumption that students are already familiar with those concepts. However, it is a reality that not all students will be facile with such foundational knowledge, so inclusion of these terms and figures in subsequent chapters reduces compromising student understanding. Consistency in the artwork could be improved such that visuals within and across chapters are more similar (e.g., plasma membrane visuals). This is likely a consequence of using open-access images rather than art created specifically for a textbook.

Each unit is divided into multiple chapters, which are themselves, subdivided into sections with clear headings. This format would allow an instructor to select specific sections that align with their course coverage. Students at this level often feel overwhelmed with the amount of information presented to them. This modularity breaks complex concepts and topics into smaller, more manageable sub-topics for student learning. It also makes it easier for a student to be able to navigate through the text and find a particular idea or piece of information that they may be searching for.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The overall organization of topics and concepts within the textbook is similar to current commercial introductory biology textbooks. Each chapter is arranged in smaller, manageable subdivisions. In general, chapters are arranged in a logical order, and topics flow seamlessly within chapters. Examples used earlier in a given chapter may be revisited later in that same chapter or unit, facilitating continuity and flow. Frequently, however, the flow seems stilted and information presented out of context or out of order. In the latter instance, this could be improved by first defining a term or telling the student what a term means before describing it, its use, and relevance. Another oddity is that table headings are located below their respective tables, rather than above them, contrary to the way these are normally presented. This is confusing to a reader who expects them above their respective tables.

The text is available in multiple formats: online, pdf, app, print, and iBook. We found both the online book and pdf to be easy to navigate and especially appreciated the online version’s expandable table of contents panel that allows for easy navigations across chapters. The font in the online text is easier to read than the font in the pdf. Links were functional, videos were integrated seamlessly, and it was easy to highlight text and zoom in on images without losing the integrity or altering the resolution of the visual. As noted above, in some cases the art is not consistent across ideas and within and between chapters, and this could be confusing for a student.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

No overt grammatical errors were observed, but frequent minor grammatical errors are smattered throughout that may cause confusion, particularly in a student who is struggling with the material or in a student who is a non-native English speaker. In many cases, we found this necessitated rereading and trying to interpret meaning from sentence context. For example, in this excerpt from Chapter 5, it’s not immediately clear what is being reabsorbed, “This filtrate, which includes glucose, then reabsorbs in another part of the kidney.” Is it the glucose, the filtrate, or both that is reabsorbed? Or take this example, “If the solute levels increase beyond a certain range, a hormone releases that slows water loss.” It seems that what the authors intended to convey is that a hormone is released that slows water loss, and this may be perfectly obvious to a well-informed reader. However, this may be a student’s first exposure to such concepts; in such an instance, word choice and grammar leaves one to draw one’s own conclusions. Thus, we found sentence syntax and structure could be improved in places.

The text includes examples of diverse organisms from around the world. There are few images of people in the text. While images in general represent different races, inclusion particularly of scientists from different groups could be improved. Use of simpler language and less jargon would make the text more accessible to students from different backgrounds. Likewise, more inclusive wording could be used with respect to gender. Most references to “him or her” could be made more inclusive via use of the gender-neutral term “them.” Further, dichotomizing the sex steroids, estrogens and androgens, as “female” and “male,” respectively, is unnecessary, misleading, and may make some students feel excluded. Therefore, the physiology section could be edited to recognize that sex steroids are not the domain of one sex specifically, as both estrogens and androgens play important roles in all humans and animals, regardless of sex or gender.

This review was collaboratively written by Dr. Heidi Sleister and Dr. Debora Christensen.

Reviewed by Jeffrey White, Assistant Professor, Framingham State University on 6/22/21

The book covers everything a traditional introductory biology major textbook covers at an average level of detail, organized in the usual hierarchy from atoms to ecosystems. A glossary of key terms is provided for each chapter. read more

As no comprehensive textbook like this is ever completely error-free despite the best of intentions, I am sure there are some inadvertent mistakes. However, I did not encounter anything glaring.

The book is reasonably current, as much as the most recent editions of mainstream print biology texts. The online, open-source nature of the book should allow for content to be refreshed on an as-needed basis. The book highlights different career paths for students in each respective field of biology using engaging real-world examples, and explicitly calls out areas that cause frequent confusion for students (for example, the difference between “weather” and “climate” when discussing climate change, and common misunderstandings about the process of evolution.

The text is clear and well-written, and defines key terminology on first use.

I did not notice any obvious internal inconsistencies in framework or use of terminology.

The book is divided into topical subsections much like mainstream print books of its kind. They are generally uniform in length, although some subsections are longer or shorter than others depending on the topic. The subsections are natural and permit the instructor to easily select the specific topics they wish to cover or not.

Like most biology textbooks, the topics are presented in hierarchy from small to large scale (atoms to ecosystems), which builds concepts logically and necessarily somewhat cumulatively. Although the book will be most naturally adoptable for courses that deliver content in this same order, the book should be flexible enough to allow instructors to adapt it to their own ordering of topics. I would say the authors play it safe and structure/organize the material in standard fashion (there is nothing revolutionary or new about the pedagogical approach it adopts): it reads like a very traditional print biology textbook. But this is not necessarily a “bad” thing, as it should make it easy for all instructors (regardless of their teaching style) to make the change and substitute this book for an equivalent print text.

The interface is straightforward and gets the job done. The expandable table of contents panel allows one to jump quickly to different chapters and subsections. Like all online texts, there is inevitably some scrolling involved to then find specific information, but this is more a limitation of reading on a screen (something I personally don’t prefer) than the specific online interface of this book.

I did not notice any glaring grammatical errors.

I did not notice anything culturally insensitive or offensive.

I think the book is of equal quality, scientific rigor, and depth as any mainstream introductory biology textbook currently on the market. As always when covering such a large amount of information in relatively selective detail, some topics will get more or less attention than an instructor may wish to cover in their own course, but the OER nature of the text makes it fairly customizable. The open access nature of the content means that figures and illustrations are readily available online, making it easier for instructors to access the supporting content and incorporate it into their own teaching materials (the book also comes with all the standard instructor resources), and for students to directly interface with other online media (for example, embedded YouTube videos). The free cost to students is the biggest plus and means the book is equally and equitably accessible to all students, and can be easily navigated or downloaded in a variety of formats to suit personal preferences. There really is nothing this book doesn’t provide that I would absolutely need as an instructor to teach my course.

Reviewed by Mark Wagner, Instructor/Life Sciences, Portland Community College on 6/14/21

I found the book to cover the topics in good depth, definitely a lower division, major-level text read more

I found the book to cover the topics in good depth, definitely a lower division, major-level text

While I found a few instances where I disagree with the text, but they are minor

The topics speak to contemporary relevance.

I feel the text is quite readable, concepts do not require much interpretation, and students do not appear to get lost in a concept

In no case did I find a chapter that appeared inconsistent with the overall quality of the text., nor clarity of concept

It does fit well into the organization of our curriculum, though I would prefer that the discussions of Evolution be moved to the beginning of the text, and more emphasis put on the role of Evolution in life

As above, I'd prefer that evolution be discussed in the first section

The book is very easy to read, concepts are well presented, and illustrations support the writing very effectively

I could find only a few minor grammatical issues.

In my opinion, the text is considerate of all cultural, racial, and ethnic sensibilities

In my opinion, this text has wide applications, and its ability to be customized makes it a strong candidate for adoption within our curriculum

Reviewed by Eric Johnson, Associate Professor, Virginia Wesleyan University on 5/7/21

For the topics most commonly covered (Cellular Resipration, Mitosis, etc...), this book does a good job. For some of the less frequently taught concepts (Algae/Protist diversity) the sections are a little thinner than other non-OER texts. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

I did not find any errors

The text is arranged to be able to stay up to date. I'ld like to see some deeper discussions into current topics such as CRISPR and other Biotechnology related concepts, although discussions around genomics was sufficient

The text and figures seem clear.

I did not find anything inconsistent.

I can easily envision plucking chapters or subchapter-units out for one class vs. another as the book is written for a 2 course sequence.

Seems to mimick other Intro Biology for Majors organizational schemes.

Interface rating: 4

I'm not in love with the interface when using the search function when it takes the plae of the TOC. I'm also not clear if students would have access to the answers for the review questions as I couldn't find it. Broadly speaking, the TOC and units are easy to navigate and the images/videos are placed appropriately.

I did not find any grammatical errors.

I did not find anything culturally insensitive.

Reviewed by Alyssa MacDonald, Assistant Professor of Biology, Leeward Community College on 4/23/21

While it is challenging to cover all Biology content in an introductory text, the book is an excellent substitute for the previous Biology text we were using. The online accessibility allows one to search the contents of the book, making it... read more

The book has minimal errors and seems to present a balanced overview of controversial topics with links to outside sources and videos for more information.

The authors have done a wonderful job incorporating current research in a broad perspective so that it can be updated without major changes to the content.

Clarity rating: 4

Because this content is designed for an introductory Biology majors course, there is quite a bit of jargon and technical terminology. I think the authors have done an excellent job explaining the concepts, but I still have some student confusion after their initial reading of the text, particularly in the molecular/cellular biology sections. To be fair, all previous texts I have used have had this same student issue because that content is challenging for anyone unfamiliar with Biology.

The book is very consistent and the formatting is carried from one chapter to the next, making it easy to navigate.

The Biology 2e text has done an excellent job of "breaking up" the reading material into manageable sections split with images, videos, and links to outside sources that deepen student knowledge and facilitate engagement with the material. Because there is so much information to cover in the Introductory Biology survey courses, it is helpful to organize the text in this way so students are not overwhelmed.

The organization of the text follows the same logical fashion as previous texts. The information builds on previous chapters in a manner that deepens student knowledge.

I have had no issues with the interface on my computer or phone. Everything is formatted correctly and links and images are accessible on both devices.

I have not encountered grammatical errors in the text.

The text does an excellent job of focusing on the content and providing examples from around the world. I supplement many Hawaiian examples throughout because our flora and fauna are unique, so students don't always understand references to mainland species. Additionally, there is a lack of images of people in the text, so I supplement the information presented with "scientist spotlights" to highlight diverse scientists in the wide range of careers available with a Biology degree.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised when we made the switch to Biology 2e from Campbell Biology In Focus. The Biology 2e text is comprehensive without being overwhelming and provides a similar organization and logical flow as the previous text. This is a wonderful substitute text for major's Biology courses and you cannot beat the price!

Reviewed by Archana Lal, Associate Professor of Biology, Labette County Community College on 4/6/21

The book is quite comprehensive and covers all aspect of biology that one can choose from to cover in an introductory biology course. read more

The book is quite comprehensive and covers all aspect of biology that one can choose from to cover in an introductory biology course.

The book accurately covers different aspects of biology.

The topics are relevant to cover in an introductory biology college at an undergraduate institution.

The text is written in a clear and easy to comprehend manner. It maintains a fine balance between using scientific language in a way that student will be able to understand with little effort.

The text is consistent in terms of terminology, illustrations, and descriptions.

Modularity rating: 4

The text is divisible into many reading sections within each chapter.

Different topics in the text are organized and presented in a logical manner that make sense from biological perspective.

The interface is good.

There are no grammatical errors.

It is a scientific text and presents the material in a way that should not be offensive to any one.

Overall, it a text that is a good value for students to learn basics of biology.

Reviewed by Eric Goff, Biology Professor, Midlands Technical College on 3/22/21

Content-wise, Biology -2e very closely aligns itself with most traditional introductory Biology text books. The topics are arranged in a typically progression and build on one another in a traditional fashion. The concepts are covered fully and are presented in a way that information can easily be scaffolded for a particular learner/course. The integration of career connections are an added bonus. While some introductory biology students have a general career plan, many are unaware of the scope of what work in biology can be. This text ties together conceptual understand and application to the real-world in a way that I feel will benefit many first year Biology students. The addition of key terms at the end of the chapters also adds a bonus summary for students to use as a resource to gauge their understanding of course concepts. Overall, I was pleased with the comprehensiveness of the text.

Overall the content accuracy was on par with an introductory course. There are some nuances of classification and speaking in generalities that could lead the learner to think in terms of absolutes where that may not be the case (ie. it could be conveyed that it notes ALL species variation is directly related to genetics). While this may be of concern in an upper level text, I think that is still acceptable here. I think that in an introductory course, it is more important to convey the more general, big picture of concepts without adding confusion with over-exertion of details. These details will inevitably be explored more deeply as students progress through their program of study. As a result, for this level,I am pleased with the level of accuracy.

The relevance for the most part is good. I would have like to see a more up-to-date depiction of Biotechnology and Biotechnological techniques. I understand that this is tough considering the expedited evolution of the field. However, it still seems slightly dated even with this consideration. This is especially important with the focus the text takes in its career connections. Giving a more accurate representation may sway students to pursue some of the more cutting edge aspects of Biotechnology research. My suggestion would be not to completely overhaul the text exactly but maybe update the ancillary materials in a way that teachers and students are introduced to new discoveries and new techniques on regular basis. The excitement may drive their interest to learn more.

The text is organized in a clear and easy to follow manner and provides formative assessments throughout so that students may gauge their learning. The text is easily readable and helps make complex topics easier to navigate.

The consistency in terminology and flow of content is solid throughout. The addition of vocabulary terms and definitions at the end of each chapter aid in clarifying any concerns with terminology. The organization of the topics and how each are approached make sense in the scope of the course.

Modularity is consistent and adequately divided throughout. Organization is appropriate and is adaptable for the specifics of individual course requirements.

The text is organized in a way that most introductory instructors would be familiar with. The chapters match what most introductory courses outline in their syllabi.

Most components of the interface were easy to navigate and only show minor distortion in few cases.

I noticed no glaring grammatical errors.

No cultural insensitivities were noticed as part of this course.

Overall, fantastic text and a great option for OER content for an introductory biology course.

Reviewed by Mark Wagner, Instructor/Life Sciences, Portland Community College on 1/10/21

The text integrates in-depth concepts over a broad range of topics. The text provides students with current, relevant information in a progression of topics and concepts based on empirical data and basic science. Support resources at the end of... read more

The text provides accurate, current information without bias. It provides the student with a strong foundation with which to analyze and respond to new knowledge and apply it in the contemporary world.

The text is up to date and addresses relevant and contemporary issues.

The text is very easy to read, written for a collegiate audience in a way that avoids jargon, or identifies it in quotes to indicate that it is. Terms and concepts are very well explained and significance is emphasized.

High quality in every sense, cover to cover.

The text is well organized and the sections well thought and relevant. For my own purposes, I would have preferred a bit more discussion of evolution in the first section since it has relevance at every level of life.

The text is very well organized and the material flows well. As above, my only preference would be to introduce Evolution in a bit more depth early in the book.

The text is easy to read as a PDF and in book form. I did not examine the online version in-depth, but I could find no issues with distorted images, pagination nor confusing captions. Generally, having so many possible ways to access the material makes the interface exceptionally positive for students.

I could find no errors in grammar in the text.

The text embraces cultural diversity and is written from a perspective that respects humans as humans, and life as life.

Since first looking at this text a year ago, I have been very impressed with the quality and comprehensiveness. While there is far more content than I cover in a 10-week term, the ability to customize this excellent text for specific use is invaluable. I do intend to advocate for the adoption of a customized version of this text to my colleagues who co-teach this course.

Reviewed by Julia Mabry, Adjunct Faculty, Clatsop Community College on 12/18/20

I have used chapter 1-16 of this book for a 100-level community college class "Integrated Chemistry and Cellular Biology for Healthcare Professionals". I have found the content for this purpose mostly comprehensive, with some need to supplement. I do think that the book misses several opportunities to have a more critical look at the use of science, but it thankfully does so in a side bar on eugenics. While it puts major discoveries into some historical context (Mendel is discussed at length) it forgoes that context in more recent discoveries (epigenetic and its historical context). With the general misunderstandings of the biological concepts of race, integrating the scientific answer to "are there human races?" in a basic biology textbook would be helpful. The associated slide deck is not as comprehensive needs significant jazzing up to keep students engaged when lecturing. It does contain some of the video links from the text.

Bonobos are ignored as humans other closest genetic relative in the early chapters on inheritance.

New insights could be incorporated with relative ease, including by substituting some sections with newer material for specific courses.

I have found the writing clear and easy to read. There is no superfluous verbiage. New vocabulary is introduced throughout in bold, and key terms are repeated at the end of each chapter. A chapter summary provides a good review for students, and I sometimes advised students to read the summary first, before getting into the weeds. The book would benefit from greater use of diagrams, charts, and images (and even lists and bullet points) to cater to visual learners.

Over the first 16 chapters, the text is consistent in its framework, as well as in its design.

This is one area in which this book truly shines: chapters are subdivided and can often stand alone. This makes it easy to expand on particular topics, replace a section with other reading, and tailor the text to the objectives of a course. In addition, chapters are grouped under 8 units, from "The Chemistry of Life" to "Ecology."

This is a traditional textbook. Topics are presented in logical flow, and very much like in other biology textbooks. Sometimes (as in other textbooks) the historical chronology of discovery appears to supersede the relevance as we understand it today.

The online version of the text is easy to navigate, has no broken links, and is searchable. Also helpful is the ability to highlight within the text, only requiring a simple log in. Chapters can be easily integrated into a learning platform to facilitate weekly reading assignments.

I did not stumble over any grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

This is not an enlightened book, but I have not found it to lack images and examples from across the spectrum of humanity. (Rosalind Franklin deserves a photo next to Crick and Watson.) That said, more and more scientific discoveries require extensive team work, making the worship of individual scientists -always questionable- impossible. I would like to see more than headshots of "discoverers", particularly since they are bound to be primarily white men, and more emphasis on the work of culturally diverse teams, reflective of what labs and discoveries look like today.

This is a fine textbook for my purposes (intro to chemistry and cell biology, as a foundation for an anatomy and physiology sequence). It is easily adapted, and accessible on multiple devices. With a little work to customize, this is a great alternative to an expensive textbook, and I will continue to use it. The option to purchase a bound copy is great for students who choose to do so.

Reviewed by Rhonda Hattar, Professor, Community College of Aurora on 8/12/20

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

Like most Biology textbooks, this was hit or miss for me. This is often a matter of opinion across Biology professors, so that is not surprising. I felt like there was too much detail on some processes, and too little detail on other topics. The Inheritance chapters stood out as chapters that had significantly less detail than common commercial textbooks-- a big disappointment if you love that topic and also a missed opportunity to provide more information about inheritance in humans. I would say that the standard commercial texts error on the side of being too detail heavy and encyclopedic and this text errors on the side of being too shallow . The biggest issue, though, is the images. Most chapters lack the highly detailed summary images that most will be familiar with from commercial texts--for example, a summary image of cellular respiration or cladograms for major phylogenies. An instructor who was teaching with this book would have to be able to create/provide this kind of summary for students on their own or from another source. Similarly, an instructor would need to be able to fill in more details and context for many of the topics by consulting other texts or teaching materials. For these reasons, I think this would be a very difficult text for a new instructor to teach from.

There were a couple of places where there was either an issue with accuracy and clarity of explanation, or else a typo (like for example, using the word phenotype when genotype would have been more appropriate)

My expertise comes only from what the newest editions of other textbooks have, but for what it's worth, a lot of the phylogeny and taxonomy is not updated to the most recent information.

Clarity rating: 3

The text is very concise--I would estimate that the chapters are probably half as long as traditional texts (hard to tell exactly because of the online format). Unfortunately, for many of the students at my college, the reading level of this text is difficult. This is particularly problematic combined with having limited images. I wish it had more of the style of some of the new condensed Majors books that include a lot more bulleted lists and other ways to make the text less dense and more accessible.

I did not notice any discrepancies in terminology. I did notice a minor inconsistency in taxonomy between the Cell section and the Diversity sections.

The chapters are divided into sections and subheadings. The website lets you easily navigate directly to specific sections. There are also chapter summaries and review sections at the end of every chapter. Chapters are also organized into larger units.

I noticed a couple of issues, like introducing a concept before it has been defined or explained. For example, trying to show how Valine is substituted in hemoglobin before Translation has been covered. The overall order of the chapters seems to me to reflect an "order of discovery" approach that I have seen in the Campbell book (Mendelian genetics before DNA, speciation before population genetics). I prefer a different order that introduces DNA before Mendelian genetics, for example ( as in Brooker Biology). However, I can't say for sure that one order is better than the other for student learning. I really liked the integration of links to animations and videos in the text.

Some of the text in images is a little hard to read. I think visibility might be even more of an issue on a cell phone, which I know many students use to view their digital texts.

I did not notice any grammatical errors.

There were biological examples from across the globe. This textbook does not include very many biographical "stories" of scientists/pictures of people other than for the seminal discoveries/experiments (Darwin, Mendel etc). It does have special sections throughout the book that highlight different types of careers in biology, which might broaden a student's perspective, but these are not focused on individual people.

I think this book has great potential and I really want to adopt this book in order to save students money. However, I have a lot of reservations. Despite its brevity, the reading is still pretty dense and mostly in paragraph form. For many students, it will be a slog to get through, and they will struggle to identify key concepts on their own On the instructor side, anyone who relies on powerpoints, especially new instructors, would find the lack of included images to be challenging and the need to add images will raise some issues around using copyrighted material from other sources. For new instructors, I would also feel like they would need an alternative textbook, at least for reference since this book has so much less depth on most topics. It would then fall on the instructor to really add a lot of depth and context for the content into their class in lectures and active learning activities. This would be what good instructors always do, but new instructors often have to take more of their clues from the text. I would love to see this text evolve to have more images, especially summary type images, as well as more areas of text simplified into lists, bullet points or other more simple ways to organize and present information.

Reviewed by Marisa Cases, Adjunct Professor, Middlesex Community College on 6/25/20

This textbook includes more depth than the current publisher's edition. More vocabulary is presented which is a good thing to expose the students to. read more

This textbook includes more depth than the current publisher's edition. More vocabulary is presented which is a good thing to expose the students to.

Unless you use a third party software to remix, textbook is highly accurate.

Text is already in its second edition. Not sure how often they update, but it would be easy to do in an online platform.

Sometimes a bit on the technical side, but the publisher book had the same issue.

The structure and formatting of the text allows for the students to build up a set of habits over time if used properly.

While I feel some of the topics and concepts are broken up over more than one chapter, there is ample opportunity to pick and choose which sections to use.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

I am not as excited about the flow of information in this text, but it can be rearranged to fit individual college's needs.

Have the text as both an online and pdf document is helpful because if student needed to increase the size of the image, they could always look at the other version.

No grammatical errors

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

Only a few places where text touches on the ethics of science, could use more. But it does allow the reader to come to their own conclusion.

This book is a great free replacement for the textbook we normally use from a large name publisher. We have a two part biology series for majors and pre-nursing students that should have a good grounding in biology. Its nice to have a free textbook from a reputable university that can give students from lower incomes the ability to have the same depth and breadth of information for no money on or before the first day. Teaching in an area with many first generation college students from disadvantaged background that is key.

Reviewed by Beth Graham, Part-Time Instructor, Portland Community College on 6/23/20

I teach "Cell Biology for Health Occupations" at a community college, and we currently use an abridged version of Pearson's Campbell Biology in Focus textbook. The first third of this Biology 2e text is roughly equivalent to our abridged version of Biology in Focus. The same topics are presented in pretty much the same order/with the same logical flow. Biology 2e seems to go into slightly more detail in some places, especially in regard to molecular biology. It's a solid traditional biology text.

I didn't notice any major factual errors while I was going through the book.

The book follows the sequence and structure of other traditional biology textbooks that I have seen. It feels up to date; there is a link to an online genome browser, for example. That said, it isn't particularly cutting edge, either in terms of content, or in its approach to teaching.

The text is clear but perhaps a little dry and sparse. Some students may need more context to learn the vocabulary.

The book is consistent. The 4 rating is because there isn't the same consistent visual "language" in the illustrations as there is in a commercial textbook. The images are good -- I recognize many of them from Wikipedia and other internet sources -- they are just all done by different people, so they might not use a consistent set of symbols, etc.

This text is modular in the way that most textbooks are modular -- information is organized into chapters, and chapters are organized with subheadings. You can assign students some chapters and not others. I don't find it to be any more modular than a rather textbook, however.

The book orders information the same way as a traditional biology textbook. This will make it easy for instructors of other texts to transition to. However, I wonder if there might be a better way to organize some material. For example, does it still make sense to start teach students about genetics by starting with Mendel, or does this "plant" (haha) some misconceptions about the way that genes work from the very beginning?

I didn't notice any issues. Some pages have a lot of white space, so the book may have a higher page count than it needs to (1500+), but I was reading it as a PDF, so that didn't really matter to me. It is nice that links to animations and webpages are included. I would love to see a version that takes advantage of the electronic format more and becomes a little more interactive.

I am interpreting this question as 5 = no grammatical errors and 1 = oh-my-goodness-so-bad. I did notice a few grammatical errors, but it wasn't terrible.

I didn't notice any content that was culturally insensitive or offensive, but I didn't notice anything particularly inclusive, either. There is one image of a white woman scientist and there are two dark-complexioned individuals with skin conditions. The text includes information on various jobs in biology, as well as information on many human health conditions. However, I don't think it goes out of its way make science more accessible.

This book does an outstanding job of replacing a traditional textbook. I absolutely intend to use it to replace expensive textbooks. However, I personally find most traditional textbooks a little uninspiring, and I think that by following the standard format closely, this book misses out on an opportunity to improve on a formula that could probably stand to be updated.

Reviewed by Samuel Flaxman, Associate Professor, University of Colorado Boulder on 6/11/20

The PDF of the text is over 1500 pages in length, making it very long (by print standards). I found chapters and subheadings on nearly every topic that I expected to see in a biology text for majors. The chapters are organized into 8 main units. As I looked at the units, their order, and the titles, I found a very familiar feel, like I could have been looking at the table of contents of several well-known commercial textbooks. Each chapter has a list of “key terms” defined at the end of the chapter (in the PDF; the online version has a shorter “glossary” at the end of each chapter).

The vast majority of the content is accurate. There are a few things that pervade the text that I take issue with. For example, “prokaryotes” are consistently referred to throughout the book. On p. 23 the authors write: "Scientists classify cells as prokaryotic or eukaryotic". This is not correct in the formal sense of “classification”. "Prokaryotes" do not comprise a monophyletic group, and thus, while the name "prokaryote" may still be used, it is definitely not a basis of modern, formal, scientific classification. Their own figure 1.17 underscores that “prokaryotes” are not a valid monophyletic group. Another inaccuracy has to do with wording used to describe genes and their influences on traits. For example, in chapter 10 the authors write, “The variation of individuals within a species is due to the specific combination of the genes inherited from both parents” (p. 281). The sentence conveys an implicit idea that ALL variation in a species is attributable to genes. This is false, of course. The variation of individuals within a species is due to genetic factors, environmental factors, and their interactions. There are roles for deterministic processes and stochastic processes. However, the blanket statement as written by the authors instead plays to the very common misconception that genes are all-powerful and determine one’s fate. Another inaccuracy has to do with gender and genetic determinism. Page 344 has a link to a Khan Academy video that is ostensibly supposed to be about sex-linked traits. However, the video opens by talking about how “gender” is determined by chromosomes in humans. This video again reinforces the misconception of genetic determinism. Furthermore, the video is really talking about sex, but incorrectly uses the term “gender” for reasons that are unknown to me. The video goes on to claim that genes on autosomes “have nothing to do with gender.” This is patently false. There are many genes on our autosomes that affect primary and secondary sexual characteristics (including the potential to affect some aspects of gender expression). While the authors/publisher did not create the video, they are responsible for it being embedded in the textbook. Please see also my comments below under the prompt about “cultural relevance”.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 2

In general, the content to me felt like a “classic introductory biology” set of material. There were some obvious modern features that I thought I would find but didn’t, such as genome editing with CRISPR-Cas9. Sanger sequencing is described in chapter 14 as being “widely used” today (p. 385). That might be true in a sense, but relative to “next generation”, “high throughput” techniques, it is a very small portion of the sequencing actually happening in this day and age. Even less accurate, the text goes on (p. 386) to say that “Sanger’s genome sequencing has led to a race to sequence human genomes at rapid speed and low cost, often referred to as the $1000-in-one-day sequence”. Sanger sequencing is NOT what is used for cheap sequencing today. Next generation sequencing is the topic of only one VERY short paragraph in chapter 17 as far as I found. The word “bioinformatics” appears in the text but is never explained, though a few -omics fields are briefly discussed, most notably genomics and proteomics. I also think that the consistent lumping of Archaea and Bacteria together as “prokaryotes” is out-of-date (see my comments on this above). My own sense is that the “r/K selection” paradigm (presented in Chapter 45) has largely fallen out of usage by practicing ecologists, in favor of more comprehensive and nuanced analyses of life histories. It may remain as a heuristic that is often mentioned, so perhaps there is still some use in having in a textbook, but it’s not exactly an up-to-date framework. Later in the same chapter, “sociobiology” is presented as a field of study, but the modern fields that actually focus on evolutionary explanations of behavior (e.g., Neuroethology; Behavioral Ecology) are not. This is a shame and could wind up creating misconceptions about the current study of animal behavior. On the positive side, the section on global climate change is quite welcome as being highly relevant. The authors linked climate change very clearly to human activity. Thank you!

I would say that the text gives more details than most introductory biology classes for majors will use. Of course, different professors will emphasize/ignore different details, but I would imagine that any professor would have to skip over a lot of the jargon in some places. This might be particularly true in some of the biochemical terms and pathways presented. I think that the chapter glossaries and ample index do a good job with the jargon.

I found it to be internally consistent. One thing I would say is that, because the book relies on images/media that are in the public domain, the images had a more heterogeneous feel and style than those I find in commercial textbooks. This is not a criticism, but rather merely an observation. When the authors have constructed their own images, they are rather basic by modern standards, but that is not a bad thing in my view.

I intentionally stepped into chapters out of order and found them to be appropriately modular.

The organization and flow are exactly what many introductory biology teachers would expect – in terms of major topics/themes and their ordering – if one is used to a number of the major commercial offerings: topics progress from molecules to cells to organisms to ecosystems. The organization is so similar, in fact, that I have to believe it was intentionally pattered, sometimes chapter-by-chapter, after offerings from major commercial publishers. Note that those instructors whose general biology sequence begins with organisms in the first semester and moves to molecules in the second semester would have to use the chapters out of order, which shouldn’t be much of a problem (see comments on modularity above). At the level of details, I found a few places in the text in which terms were used before they were defined, though in such cases they were usually defined in the following paragraph/page.

Interface rating: 3

Some of the figures in the PDF have very small components that can’t be magnified (they just become pixelated if one tries). An example is chromosomes in Figure 11.7. Otherwise I had no interface issues. I did not check to see if higher resolution options were available online for such figures.

I did not encounter grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 1

This is a place where I feel the book was really lacking. Since the review prompt asked for me to consider inclusion specifically, I made a point to page through the book, one page at a time, specifically looking for portrayals of human diversity and humans working as biologists/scientists. I have to say I was disappointed in multiple ways. First, the visual portrayals: The vast majority of working scientists shown in photographs appear to be light-skinned, and mostly male-presenting. (I use the phrases “appear to be,” “light-skinned,” and “male-presenting” because I do not presume to know how all the people in all the photographs identify.) There are the all-too-familiar historical photos of white men who are credited with the discovery of major things. One unfortunate (in my mind) example is that a photo featuring Watson and Crick is present, yet there is no photo of Rosalind Franklin (though her name is mentioned in the text). I found only one photograph of a named female scientist, Elizabeth Blackburn, in Figure 14.16. I found no unambiguous portrayals of scientists of color. Furthermore, there are a great many photos in which the hand of a human being is shown as holding a sample, such as holding a test tube or holding an animal studied in the field. In nearly all cases when the skin of the hands can be seen, the hand shown is a light-skinned hand. This highly consistent repetition of “white” role models, and mostly male role models to boot, is not the kind of imagery that is likely to communicate that biology is a science open to all. It’s a shame because it would have been relatively easy to bring in a great deal more diversity in portrayals of human scientists. Specifically, the large majority of the “Career Connection” pieces have no photograph at all; this would have been an easy way to add diverse role models. Of the “Career Connection” vignettes that do have photographs, it appeared to me that all people shown were light skinned and only one was likely to be female-identified. A second way I was disappointed was in the handling of biological sex. Human sex determination is presented as being very simple, completely chromosomal, and binary. On p. 125 the authors write: "The X chromosome is one of the two human sex chromosomes, as these chromosomes determine a person's sex. Females possess two X chromosomes while males possess one X and one Y chromosome." This is an obvious example of the fallacy of genetic determinism; it’s the kind of writing that instills misconceptions about the power of genes and chromosomes. We biologists know that chromosomes do not entirely "determine" a person's sex. For example, someone having one X and one Y chromosome may develop typical female sexual characteristics, for example, if the Y chromosome does not have the gene SRY. This alone happens at a frequency of perhaps 1 in 20000, and there are a great number of additional ways in which a person’s chromosomes might not follow the statistically most common pattern. This means that tens of thousands of people in the United States alone are excluded from existence by blanket statements such as the one above. Furthermore, in a classroom of 300 students, I probably have 3-12 gender-non-conforming students who feel that statements such as these deny their existence, causing them to readily give up on "science." Finally, we biologists also know that there are many humans born intersex, and their existence is completely ignored by the statements made by the authors. I know that I have such students, and I know that this text would be hurtful to them. We biologists study the diversity of life! Why should our textbooks ignore it? Similarly, there are blanket statements about humans such as “Human body (somatic) cells have 46 chromosomes” (p. 280). That may be true for most humans, but some humans have 45 or 47.

Reviewed by Kara Nuss, Instructor, Northeastern Illinois University on 5/5/20

Overall, the coverage of subjects is appropriate for an introductory majors-level textbook that would be used across two (or more) semesters. Like many other biology texts, the book begins with an introductory chapter on the nature of science, before introducing atoms and chemistry, and then progressing all the way to ecology and evolution, with units on genetics, diversity, and anatomy/physiology along the way. In my review, I focused mainly on Units 1 – 3 (Chemistry, The Cell, and Genetics) as those encompass the topics that I typically address in the first semester of General Bio.

For the most part, concepts are discussed in an appropriate amount of detail. Obviously, individual instructors will vary in how much coverage they give to specific topics, but in general, this book matches the level of detail I expect from my students. There are a few exceptions; for instance, the details about phospholipid structure are much more specific than I would require in an introductory class. In other places, there are attempts to make connections with topics introduced in later chapters. However, there is not enough explanation or detail provided for most students to make any sort of meaningful connection.

There is not a glossary, which would be helpful, but new terms are generally in bold. A browser plug-in for Safari allowed me to click on any text and see a definition. Additionally, the end of each chapter features a list of key terms. Both the pdf and online version contain an index. In the online version, each term is hyperlinked to the appropriate section, whereas in the pdf index, the link goes to the key term list at the end of the chapter. The pdf is also easily searchable when opened with the Preview app on a Mac.

Because the book provides only survey-level detail, occasionally concepts are over-simplified, but I did not notice major factual errors.

As this book is designed to provide foundational knowledge rather than understanding of current research, I don’t think it is necessary to highlight extremely recent findings. I did not notice anything glaringly outdated, but given the speed of new research, it is likely that regular updates will be needed to keep the book current. The organization of the book seems like it would allow for this.

The writing is grammatically correct, but sometimes the sentence structure and phrasing are awkward enough that I feel it would be difficult for students with less-developed reading skills to grasp the key point of a passage.

This book does suffer from the “expert gap” phenomenon. Many times, a new term is used, but there is no definition or introduction of it. Often the term is explained later (either later in the paragraph or chapter, but sometimes not until another section of the book). For instance, ligand is mentioned in Section 5.2 but not defined until Chapter 9. Another example occurs in the chapter on cells. The section on prokaryotic cells does not mention the circular shape of their DNA, but it is then eluded to in the section on eukaryotic cells.

Additionally, sometimes terms are never explicitly defined. In some cases, these are not strictly related to biology; for example, quantitative and qualitative are discussed but not defined in Chapter 1. Overall, the non-technical vocabulary is appropriate for students entering introductory majors courses, but there are some exceptions.

Consistency rating: 3

There are some areas of the book that would benefit from additional copy editing. In some places, information is repeated within a paragraph. In other places (particularly Chapter 6 on metabolism), it seems like the order within the chapter had been changed, so that sometimes topics (including the second law of thermodynamics and entropy) are referenced, but not fully explained until later in the chapter. In Section 10.1 (p. 280) on genomic DNA, the text makes a distinction between character and trait (a tricky concept for many students) but then conflates the two on the following page (referring to hair color as a trait instead of a character).

Each chapter is broken up into sections, generally between three to five sections per chapter (but ranging from two to seven). Within each section, subheadings are used effectively to break-up and organize material. I think it would be difficult to teach the first three units out of order or to select only a few chapters/sections to include in a course, but this has much more to do with the interrelated nature of the material itself, rather than the design of the text.

The unit and chapter organization are logical, and comparable to other texts. Additionally, I like the summary tables at the end of many sections and/or chapters (particularly cells and membranes). These are concise and provide a better “big-picture” summary than the text I currently use, where students often become overwhelmed and lost in the details.

Interface rating: 2

The figures in the online version are too small. Usually they are much narrower than the text, and there does not seem to be a way to enlarge them other than increasing browser magnification. Further, labeling of figure components is often too small and borderline blurry. Figure 1.16 is one example where the display issues make the figure almost useless. Figures are wider and slightly larger in the pdf version, but labeling is still difficult to read.

Aside from the figures, other aspects of the interface function well. The online version features a side menu table of contents with a drop-down option for each unit and chapter, so that one can navigate to individual chapter sections. The pdf also contains a hyper-linked table of contents. The online version has features to search, highlight (with five color options), and add notes. These features are useful and work well. The top menu bar has a My Highlights icon that brings up all notes and highlighted passages organized by chapter.

I did not notice grammatical errors, although there are occasional typos. My concerns over the writing are more about clarity and consistency (as described in those sections of the review) than technical usage.

I did not observe any culturally insensitive content. The book uses relatively few examples or images of people, so while it does not highlight diversity, it also did not feel exclusionary to me. This book includes less detail on landmark scientific discoveries than other books I’ve used. Although some might miss that focus on the history of science and classic experimental designs, I appreciated that this led to a decrease in the number of pictures of what my students have deemed “old white men doing very serious science,” which can feel almost constant in other introductory texts.

Each chapter includes at least one link to an external resource. These resources vary in quality, but links do work properly and redirect to functioning sites. Many of the links are to YouTube videos, some of which are embedded and play directly in the text, whereas others open in a new tab. A few of these external resources are Flash, which may not be accessible to some students.

The Career Connections are a nice feature. These are relatively short and simple. In the introductory chapters, they are heavily focused on careers relating to health and medicine, but there are a few mentions of professions relating more toward ecology. I also like the connections to diet and nutrition throughout Chapters 2 – 4. These are clearly presented and provide simple ways for students to connect the material to their own lives.

Reviewed by Lisa Johansen, Senior Instructor, University of Colorado Denver on 4/20/20

The text book covered all the chapters I would assign for first semester General Biology course at the college level (Molecules to Cells). The chapters are divided into topical sections, making it easy to assign or not assign specific topics. Each... read more

I have not read each chapter, but the few I did, I did not find errors. I am rating a 4 just based on the fact that I have not read the entire text, nor all the chapters I intend to assign.

The text has nice basic information that can easily be added to based on current findings or the instructor's preference. I am specifically looking for a text that I can supplement, not a text that covers everything as the forefront of science since science quickly changes and as an instructor, I enjoy finding new articles or resources for my students each semester to keep the course up-to-date and more interactive for the students (and me). For me, a text book is a resource of basic information that allows the students to learn a bit on their own (the critical basics) before applying their knowledge to in class activities.

The chapters are clear and concise. They are at just the right level for a first year biology student. The text is not bogged down with technical jargon, but subject-specific terminology is used were appropriate with adequate introduction to the material.

I appreciate the highlighted boxes that provide additional information, such as the Visual, Everyday, and Career Connections. These highlighted boxes standout for the students as something extra and interesting, and the information is not lost in the main text.

The set up of the text book is easy to navigate and the framework is consistent. For each chapter there is an outline (list of sections). For each section there are 2-4 objectives for the students to focus on. Most chapters have multiple Link to Learning offerings, which are links to an animation or other external resource. Each chapter has the appropriate figures for enhanced learning and understanding. Key words are in bold and are defined at the end of the chapter. Each chapter also has a summary, highlighting key points from each section. Finally, each chapter has review questions, both multiple choice and short answer (critical thinking).

The chapter sections are well defined and accurately titled. This will make it quite easy to assign specific parts of a chapter. The Table of contents is easy to access (always on the top navigation bar) and so with a click a student go right to the assigned chapter or section. The navigation is a bit easier with the downloaded version, as the online version is divided into units, so if you just give your student a chapter to look at, you may need to tell them which unit the chapter is listed under. For the downloaded PDF version, each chapter and section are listed in the drop-down table of contents.

Organization of the chapters for a biology course that covers: molecules, cells, energy, cell reproduction and genetics, this text follows the conventional organization.

Every link that I clicked on was active. I really liked the variety of outside sources and animations the text directs students to explore. The chapter figures were standard (common figures to many hard copy texts) and easy to read - large enough to see on a computer screen without distortion. Figure legends were descriptive. Sometimes, after opening an outside resource (following a link) with the PDF version and then clicking the back arrow when you are done, you were taken back to the beginning of the text, and you would then have to find the chapter/page that you had left, but this only happened a couple of times. Most of the time you are linked right to the page you clicked off of.

I did not find any grammar / proofreading errors.

The text book used various external resources with both female and male voices. There is not much, in my opinion, that a general biology resource text book needs to include for cultural sensitivity. I believe this is where the instructor comes in to highlight other scientists and contributors to the field. I did not read any insensitive or offensive language in the chapters I reviewed.

The text book is easy to navigate with essential and well chosen figures and links to outside resources, some very good and simple animations. The text book covers the basics of what I am looking to teach. The text is visually appealing; section titles and sub-section titles are easy to see (green text). Figure numbers are in an orange/brown and stand out (easy to find). Key words in bold are also easily visible and defined at the end of the chapter, so students can quickly find definitions.

Reviewed by Aruna Kilaru, Associate Professor, East Tennessee State University on 4/13/20

This book will serve the purpose of introductory biology and could very well be used in place of the expensive textbooks. The book followed a typical format of introducing biological concepts starting with cell and ending with community biology. As is the case with most biology textbooks, the focus of the organismal topics are heavily biased towards animal structure and function (10 chapters), while plant structure and function (3 chapters) are poorly covered. Students would benefit from learning about totipotency and tissue culture, development and growth, phytohormones and associated signaling mechanisms etc., in plants, Each chapter is provided with much useful key terms and definitions, chapter summary and review questions.

Algae should have been discussed as a separated chapter (like fungi) and not lumped with seedless plants. Some analogies used to make a point were dull and unintelligent.

Introduction to some of the emerging concepts and techniques would have been useful. For example, there was no discussion on epigenetics, -omic studies, non-coding RNA, gene editing by CRISPR-Cas etc.

In general, the text is simple to follow but some sentences are awkward to read; there was also unnecessary use of abbreviations that might not make it easier for freshman and sophomores who may want to use the text. Figures were overly simplified, yet serve the purpose.

The authors maintained a consistent style and flow throughout the book. Managed to relate content between the chapters and provided an evolutionary context to the topics.

The chapters could be easily reorganized into smaller subunits as needed for a class. In doing so, however, care should be taken to not divide the topics where some continuity could be lost.

The text is easy to read with consistent flow and rationale. Interactive exercises (links to learning) and visual connection would be well appreciated by the students.

I have reviewed the content online and also in PDF format and in both cases I did not encounter any issues with the text, figures or any html links. The resolution of the figures is not great when you zoom into study the details.

I have not noticed any grammatical issues but did find some of the sentences to be too long or awkwardly constructed.

The text could have certainly benefited from using the pictures of scientists to give a human face to the work presented. Historical aspects are important so the students recognize and understand scientific pursuits and can be inspired. As such the text was lacking in examples and depicting a diverse cultural tone and images when possible.

Despite some minor criticisms, I would use this text to replace our current biology textbooks in use for Biol 1, II and III.

Reviewed by Chris Pantazis, Assistant Professor of Biology, John Tyler Community College on 3/24/20

All areas of introductory biology were covered. This book will suffice in a 2 semester biology course. I found it had enough depth for a majors course while being accessible for non-majors. The index is easy to use in both the PDF and online... read more

I was impressed with the quality of the content. It was accurate and error free, to my knowledge. Sources were cited appropriately and they were relatively recent.

While many biological concepts have stood the test of time (like Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution), modern techniques and ideas are presented in the book as well. CRISPR-CAS technology is sufficiently explained for an understanding of the concept without going into too much detail. The book had a slightly heavier bias toward molecular techniques rather than organismal or behavioral science, but that field appears to be the current zeitgeist, maintaining the book's relevancy.

Wherever technical jargon is used, it is immediately explained so the reader gets used to field terminology but also understands it. The book is not written in a conversational or condescending voice, a plague among other biology textbooks. I feel this book would be relevant for biology majors, learning their new field, as well as non-majors exploring the topic for the first and (maybe) only time.

Terminology is consistent in most chapters read. The only issues were alternating terminology between Kreb Cycle and Citric Acid Cycle as well as between Calvin Cycle, Calvin-Benson Cycle, and Light Independent Reactions. In a few cases, I saw Hydrogen ions referred to as protons (and vice versa) without explaining that they were the same thing in the same chapter.

The text is divided logically and often, providing a break for students reading. When I re-arranged chapters, the individual chapters could be understood without referring back to previous chapters EXCEPT for the basic chemistry and water chapters. These were foundational and references in many other chapters without explanation.

The topics were presented in a logical, clear fashion. They followed the format of most other textbooks making a transition to OpenStax from Cambell or Biology in Focus simple.

The electronic version of the textbook was easily read on a Mac, PC, and on various tablets and phones. It has a high degree of accessibility.

There were very few grammatical errors. Those that occurred did not interrupt the flow of reading and understanding.

There was nothing culturally insensitive that I could find. All of the material is based on objective science and, after presenting facts, offered learners the chance to evaluate their own beliefs based on new information.

I love this book. It is a high quality text that can provide free access to students of any income level. I do not understand why it is not more widely adopted. The only issue I have convincing others to use this text is that there is a lack of free to use, pre-generated content that instructors can readily use on the first day of class. There is no adaptive learning software like publishers use. Still, if you prefer to create your own lectures, this text is without a doubt a top choice.

Reviewed by Emily Jane McTavish, Asst. Professor, University of California, Merced on 3/6/20

The text covers the appropriate breadth of material in appropriate depth for an introductory biology class. read more

The text covers the appropriate breadth of material in appropriate depth for an introductory biology class.

The content is as accurate as I expect from a biology textbook. There are currently ongoing rapid changes in our understanding of some aspects of biology, such as whether the three domain model for life is correct. The book addresses that there is conflict. In some cases simplification can result in explanations that lack the accurate nuance of a more complex explanation, but that is a necessary tradeoff in an introductory text.

The book is relevant and well structured. As mentioned above, changes in our understanding of biology are happening quickly, but those can be incorporated into the the framework of this textbook in a straightforward way.

The writing is clear and makes good use of figures and images. The applied examples make great connections for students.

The terminology is consistent.

Reading sections seem appropriate. The questions at the end of sections are helpful to student learning.

Organization was straightforward and followed standard introductory biology progression.

I reviewed a downloaded pdf. The interface was fine. Figures rendered well. The line width of text on the pdf download was a little wide for easy scanning, I would prefer a two column per page format, but that may simply be personal preference.

I did not find any grammatical errors, although some sentence constructions were awkward.

The book was culturally appropriate, but could highlight a greater diversity of researchers.

Reviewed by Petra Kranzfelder, Assistant Teaching Professor, University of California, Merced on 3/5/20

This textbook covers the typical introductory biology course topics for biology majors, including chemistry, cells, genetics, evolution, biodiversity, plant and animal form and function, and ecology. One critique is that the learning outcomes at the beginning of the chapter and the visual connection and review questions at the end of the chapter are mostly lower order cognitive skill questions (i.e. knowledge and comprehension for Bloom's taxonomy).

I didn't notice any errors in the textbook.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

Biodiversity chapter information (e.g., Table 28.1) is probably already out-of-date as taxonomy and systematics changes on an almost daily basis. Could these figures, tables, and text link to online databases (e.g., https://www.gbif.org/species/search) that are retrieving species data on a more regular basis?

While the textbook appears to be clear to me (someone with a PhD in biology), I wonder if it would be clear to my students? Many of the key terms are highlighted in bold, but it would be nice if students could click on bold key terms to get definitions. It seems cumbersome for my students to go to the end of the chapter to look up the key term.

Yes, the text appears to be consistent in terms of terminology and framework.

Overall, modularity is good; however, between chapters (in the PDF versions) there is a blank white page.

Each chapter subsection starts with 3-5 clear and concise learning outcomes. For example, in 4.1 Studying Cells, one learning outcome is "Describe the role of cells in organisms."

It was easy to find specific topics using the "Search this book" feature on the online version.

I didn't notice any grammatical errors.

The text appears to be culturally sensitive, but there are not very many examples of the importance of biodiversity to a variety of groups of people across the globe.

The book is not aligned with the core concepts and core competencies of Vision and Change (V&C). In future versions of this book, could the learning outcomes of each chapter be aligned with V&C?

Reviewed by Sarah Foltz, Assistant Professor, Radford University on 1/14/20

General coverage is good – the text covers all of the areas I’d expect to see in an introductory biology textbook, including behavior, which I find is sometimes overlooked. It’s detailed enough to provide a good foundation for introductory students without overwhelming them. In general, it hits right at the level it’s aimed at. The index has links to the relevant sections, which is helpful, and each chapter contains a Key Words section.

I haven’t found any obvious errors.

The content is fairly up-to-date, but not so specific in most places that it would need constant updating to stay relevant. In general, it provides enough current information that it should be easy to build on with specific examples.

The writing is fairly accessible for beginning biology students. Specialized terms are introduced (in bold) and defined, and examples are provided. Each chapter also includes a list of key terms – basically, a mini-glossary – at the end just before the chapter summary.

Terminology is used consistently throughout.

The book is divided into subsections, each of which contain several chapters relevant to that topic, and chapters are further broken down into subunits. Each section is relatively short and self-contained. Overall, the organization is much like the intro textbooks from major publishers that I’ve used in the past, and it would be easy to assign specific sections rather than whole chapters. I plan on doing this with my course this semester.

The organization makes sense and flows well.

I haven’t noticed any major interface problems with the .pdf or the online version (viewed in Chrome). Both online and .pdf versions have links embedded in the Table of Contents, making it easy to skip around through the book as needed. It does occasionally hang while loading if the internet connection is slow, but that’s to be expected. Nothing appears distorted or out of place in either version, and the in-text links to animations, videos, and figures all seem functional so far.

It’s generally well-written. I haven’t noticed any glaring errors so far.

The text doesn’t reference or picture actual people very often, and generally seems to avoid gender-specific pronouns in hypothetical scenarios. However, the scientists who are mentioned are the typical examples – there’s no obvious effort to include or highlight contributions from a variety of cultures or ethnic backgrounds.

Overall, this book provides what I need content-wise for my introductory courses. It's professional and well-written, and while the visuals (though accurate) may be less polished than a traditional textbook, I think the fact that it's free more than makes up for that lack.

Reviewed by Lily Arias, Lecturer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on 1/1/20

The textbook is comprehensive; the extent and depth of the topics and concepts covered are at the level required in an introductory course for biology majors. The index at the end of the book and the glossary-“key terms”- at the end of each... read more

For the most part the content is accurate, error-free, and unbiased. I found only one incongruence. In the section “The process of science” in chapter 1, it’s mentioned that hypotheses “could be correct or false”. In other sections, the definition of hypothesis is accurate. Some of the links on the textbook take you to trusted sources such as Khan Academy and TED talks, but others don’t look very reliable to me

For the most part the concepts and topics are up-to-date. However, most of the scientific articles cited are more than 10 years old, being the most recent article from 2015. The section dedicated to gene therapy is very short and there's no specific mention to CRISPR. The book is easily adaptable.

The textbook is written in a clear language, easy to understand by freshmen students.

All the components of the textbook, including the terminology and framework, are consistent throughout

Each chapter is divided into several smaller sections and each section has their own learning goals. This organization facilitates the assignation of reading material for the students.

For the most part topics are presented in a logical sequence, except for the Evolution chapters. I find that these chapters lack organization and clarity. For instance different aspects regarding natural selection are found in three sections in two different chapters, being the sections: “understanding evolution”, “population genetics”, and “adaptive evolution”. I think the logical way to organize these concepts is to give the definition of evolution first and then list and explain the mechanisms that lead to evolution, being natural selection one of them [and here is what all the concepts related to NS are given, in a single place]. The approach of including Hardy Weingberg under “population evolution” and drift, flow, mutations, and natural selection under “population genetics” is different from what I’ve seen in other books. Usually HW is what you find under “population genetics”

I did not find any navigation issues, all images and charts are nitid

I did not find any grammatical errors

The book is not culturally insensitive or offensive. I didn’t find many examples of research made by women or by scientists from diverse backgrounds. Working towards a more culturally relevant content would be appropriate.

This is an excellent resource for instructors and students. I really appreciate the efforts of OpenStax and the authors to provide such a helpful resource for free. I have chosen this textbook for my Animal Biology course that I will teach in the Fall of 2020. Even though simple, I like the illustrations in this textbook because they are clear, to the point. I’ve been using them for my class even before adopting the book The career connection sections are a great addition to the book. I haven’t seen anything like this in any other biology textbook.

Reviewed by Philips Akinwole, Assistant Professor, DePauw University on 10/16/19

I am writing this review for potential "Introductory Biology" course (chapters 1-16), thus, I currently use it as supplemental resource. I think this book is comprehensive for a general biology textbook, but it lacks some depth and breath for some concepts. For example, Cell Communication, Cell reproduction, Mendelian genetics and non-mendelian traits, DNA replication and repair and mitosis and meiosis I believe are covered adequately.

I found few errors. Content is generally accurate and relevant. Figures were also accurate, though simplistic in many cases but current.

Topics are well covered and relevant, mostly. Also, the references to recent studies makes it an up-to-date text.

I found the chapters to be easy to read, student friendly and lucid. Few chapter, though, like Gene expression might need more detail/clarity.

Consistency is generally good but need some help in few instances. For example, the text describing seven steps of the Kreb cycle phases did not align with the accompanying figure (with eight steps).

For future use, I like that I could assign small sections to students. Students are more likely to complete assigned readings that are shorter sections and mostly self-contained.

The topics are presented and arranged in a traditional manner as most biology textbooks and as taught in many colleges.

I found no problems navigating through the pages. Easy to navigate the contents list, especially when downloaded as PDF, and very easy to switch from one section to another.

I hardly found any grammatical errors in the sections read, but found the text easy to follow and understand.

I did not find any culturally insensitive material.

Overall, acceptable trade-off to conventional high quality textbooks. Generally, graphics are of lower quality and some study questions are less thoughtful but links to animations and talks are a great perk!

Reviewed by Shaun Blevins, Adjunct Professor, OhioLink on 8/15/19

This textbook provides an excellent discourse on the many foundational ideas of Biology. I found it to be broad in scope but still provided the depth you would want in a major's level Biology course. read more

This textbook provides an excellent discourse on the many foundational ideas of Biology. I found it to be broad in scope but still provided the depth you would want in a major's level Biology course.

The scientific information provided in this text is very accurate. I would feel confident in this textbooks ability to provide scientifically sound ideas to my students. There are a few errata, but they were mostly grammatical errors.

The information and real life examples provided in the text are both up-to-date and relevant. One of the great benefits of this textbook is its ability to be updated without the need for students to purchase a new edition.

I greatly appreciated how the text explained scientific concepts in ways that students would be able to understand. I found it to be very clear and concise, yet still containing the rigor you would expect of a major's level textbook.

The terms and phrasing used within the text were extremely consistent. The layout and framework were also extremely consistent. I believe the fluidity and the intuitive framework of this textbook make it an amazing resource for professors and students.

I greatly appreciate the attention given to this textbook's organization down to the subtopics within each section of every chapter. I believe this will allow for easy alignment into any new or existing Biology course. I found it very easy to divide the readings into manageable segments that provide clarity and promote student understanding.

The overall organization of topics is very sensical as it goes from "small-scale" Biology (cells, DNA, etc.) to "large-scale" scale Biology (evolution, ecology, etc.). I appreciate this because it allows for the cross-referencing of important cellular and genetic concepts in later chapters. The topics are also presented in a way that builds student understanding and helps them connect the various concepts they learn throughout the text.

Overall I feel this textbook is easy to use and easy to read. The presentation of its text and visuals provides a pleasant reading experience. The navigation bar is simplistic but does the job.

There are a few grammatical errors within the text but they are not distracting nor do they diminish the scientific accuracy of the text.

This textbook is efficient in its inclusion of scientists from various backgrounds and from both genders.

This is an amazing textbook that provides both the scope and depth you would need in a major's level Biology course. It is written and presented in a way that students could actually use and understand. The framework and organization allows this to be a resource that professors could actually use as well. It provides a path to cut student cost while still maintaining rigor.

Reviewed by Rachael Detraz, Associate Professer, Edison Community College on 7/31/19

The textbook is comparable to a general biology textbook for majors from any of the major publishers. read more

The textbook is comparable to a general biology textbook for majors from any of the major publishers.

It is accurate.

Some chapters contain references to "recent work" that will not be recent in a few years, although the text also does not give specific years the work was published. There will be some chapters that will need to be updated in a few years.

Generally, the book is written at a student's level. I think my students will have an easier time following this book than some of the publishers' textbooks that appear to be written for more upper level students than freshmen.

The book is consistent.

Modularity rating: 3

Due to the nature of a general biology course, there are certainly chapters that should be covered before other chapters. There is previous knowledge assumed in several chapters that students would not have if entire units of the textbook were skipped or covered out of order.

The flow of the chapters themselves is fine. However, within individual chapters, the topics may not always be presented in the most logical order. For example, in Chapter 20, phylogenetic trees are discussed before taxonomy. In every other published textbook, taxonomy is presented first, and it can then be discussed how cladistics is a better approach since it takes relationships into account. In Mendel's chapter, the text gives a brief, insufficient description of topics like linkage and independent assortment that would confuse a student and then only at the end of the chapter does the text cover these in depth. It would make more sense to discuss the topics as they arise than to briefly mention and revisit later. It must be assumed that students have no prior knowledge of these concepts.

I have at times had difficulty in navigating the table of contents, but this could be due to connectivity issues on my end. I have tried to obtain a paper copy of the textbook, but it is not as easy as calling my publisher for a desk copy. Just something to think about if you want to use it for seated sections on campus.

The book itself is generally free of grammatical errors. However, the powerpoints that go along with the book do have many grammatical errors.

It is not culturally insensitive.

This is an excellent textbook for a majors general biology course. It covers all of the same topics as books sold by the major publishing companies, but it's free to the students! In addition, it streamlines many of the chapters to cover just the essentials, so it is half the length of a publisher textbook. Part of the reduction in length is a loss of supporting images and real world examples, but these can be easily supplied to the class in a powerpoint or out-of-class reading assignment. Overall, I highly recommend the book.

Reviewed by Emma Murray, Instructor (Biology for majors), Aims Community College on 7/23/19

Overall this text covers each topic in adequate detail and provides enough detail and content for a two semester coverage of biology for majors, especially if this text is used alongside additional instructor input and labs. For example, chapters on Chemistry and Biological molecules both explain important fundamentals and provide adequate detail to maintain interest and give context to these topics. Ideally some complex themes could be covered in more detail. There is adequate coverage of evolutionary processes and mechanisms of speciation in later chapters. Since evolution is such an important theme in Biology and a chosen connecting theme in this book by the authors, Chapter 1 should cover evolution in some detail instead of leaving this essential topic to a later chapter. Evolution is mentioned in Ch.1 but is not defined or explained, assuming that students already understand this complex. Given that many students struggle with thoroughly understanding evolutionary processes and have misconceptions regarding evolution, this does seem to be an oversight.

I found few errors. The information presented was accurate and relevant. Figures were also accurate and current.

Overall the content has longevity - many topics are relatively unchanging, especially since this textbook covers fundamentals. One area that may need updating are topics such as phylogenetics and climate change; however the authors do a good job of giving relative examples. It would improve the longevity of the book to better connect climate change with speciation and evolution, for example by including more relevant examples and current research at the end of the evolution chapter. Instead, climate change is dealt with separately.

The text is very accessible to students in terms of clarity and accessibility of prose. The authors 'talk' to the students and the text feels welcoming and understandable. I do think that changes to the layout and would make this book more accessible. Currently there are quite large sections of text that could be more concise. Figures and images are places between paragraphs. If the images were to be integrated more into the text using close wrapping it may improve the accessibility and make the text feel less intimidating. Getting students to read textbooks is always a struggle and so I do think that making the layout appear less daunting would be an improvement.

This textbook does a great job at being consistent throughout in terms of style, dialogue, summaries, resources, etc. After reading the first few chapters students will know what to expect from future chapters. The authors do a great job of this important aspect. I also found the instructor resources to be consistent.

This book does do a good job of being modular. It would be useful for a variety of styles of classes. I would like to see more integration of topics; however the layout and the style of the textbook does allow for some flexibility. Topics are broken up enough so that particular areas could be omitted if needed without making a chapter or coverage of a topic incomplete.

The textbook is organized in a clear and logical way. Ideally evolution should be covered right at the start in some level of detail to help students understand and connect the chapters before the evolution chapter; however overall the organization is good and flows well. I do think that the book would benefit from integrating more questions throughout the text to check student understanding throughout the chapters instead of having the majority of questions at the end of the chapters.

I had no issues browsing and reading the textbook. Links are provided for quick navigation and the PDF is fully searchable. Lots of options are provided for accessibility.

In the sections I read closely and thoroughly I found no errors. The prose is consistent and accessible to students. The authors' voices are clear and the text is easy to follow and understand. There is good use of bolding for emphasizing particular text and themes.

This text is culturally accessible and inclusive. I did not find any culturally insensitive material.

Overall this book does a great job and overall I believe that it is an adequate substitution for a published text that students purchase, although some connections between themes may need to be emphasized. The chapter summaries and key terms are nice editions for students and illustrations are clear and professional. The themes are appropriate and comprehensive. I love that there are instructor resources available. If I were to adopt this book I would need to pay close attention to connecting some themes, providing plenty of examples, and checking comprehension throughout. My main issues with the text are that evolution is not covered in enough detail at the start of the text and that the book could be laid out in a way that made the text more accessible, i.e. by integrating more images into the text to break it up.

Reviewed by Cathy Sistilli, Professor, Biological Sciences, OhioLink on 7/19/19

Good coverage of topics appropriate to a two semester biology majors course. The index is helpful but there is no glossary read more

Good coverage of topics appropriate to a two semester biology majors course. The index is helpful but there is no glossary

There are some typos and the answers provided to some questions are incorrect. However, these errors are minimal for a 1500+ page text.

The references to recent research areas is an asset.

Chapters that involve complex areas including genetics, physiology, and the immune system could be a bit more user friendly for the population that this text should serve.

Consistency is excellent!

This text easily lends itself to be parceled into units/modules, such as between two semesters.

Organization is certainly logical, topics are in their predicted locations.

The interface is adequate.

A few typos, but not excessive for such a large text.

Cultural issues are handled appropriately.

There are an array of instructor resources available through OpenStax for this text. Quite an asset!

Reviewed by Christy Fillman, Senior Instructor, CU Boulder on 7/1/19

I am writing this review of the genetics unit from Biology 2e (chapters 11-17) in the context of potentially using this book for an introductory level, one semester genetics course for majors. Note: I have not yet used this book in a class. I think this book has is comprehensive for a general biology textbook, but it lacks some depth and breath for a genetics class. Mendelian genetics and non-mendelian traits, DNA replication and repair and mitosis and meiosis I believe are covered adequately for a genetics class, but I think to use this book for a genetics class many outside resources would also need to be used (epigenetics, modern bioinformatics and next generation sequencing, genetic testing, ethics, and CRISPR-cas are some examples). I found the index and glossary complete; it was easy to find topics of interest and the completeness of the topics matched my expectations from the index.

The content appears to be accurate. The figures are simplistic, which for some topics is helpful like meiosis, but in other cases I think more details in the figure would be helpful. For example, the figure depicting Southern blotting (17.6) does not show how the probes hybridize (why you get a band rather than a smear) though it is described in the text. But overall regardless of the depth of information in the figures; they appear accurate.

Much of the genetics content that I would use from this book is sort of timeless in that it hasn’t changed in many years and is unlikely to change in the near future (meiosis, mitosis, mendelian genetics). These topics are presented in similar ways in most genetics and biology textbooks and haven’t changed much in the years that I have been teaching. However, modern genetics is a rapidly changing field and many of those topics (listed below) are either not included or not included in depth. These topics including sequencing, genomics and genomics techniques, epigenetics and genome editing. Some of these topics, for examples DNA sequencing, only Sanger sequencing has a figure and next generation sequencing is described in a few sentences.

I liked the clarity of this text. Topics are explained simply in shorter rather than longer paragraphs, and details that often bog down longer texts are omitted. However, some topics at least for a genetics class, I believe do not have enough detail (examples gene expression, sequencing).

The genetics section of this book appears to be consistent. The figures have an overall similar look and parts of them are colored the same way for consistency for example the homologous chromosomes (blue and red).

The genetics section in particular seems to be modular. I did not find references to other sections of the book, and these chapters could be used without the rest of the text.

I think the modularity of this book helps with the flow. Chapters can be taken out of order. For example, I would introduce DNA structure, replication, central dogma and gene expression (chapters 14-16) before classical genetics (chapter 12), and I think that would work fine with the way this text is written.

I found the online interface difficult to use, because the pages load slowly and only one section of a chapter was visible on the page at a time. As I was looking through a chapter, I kept needing to load the next section and could not see the entire chapter at once. The table of contents is not available on each page, so navigation other than directly forward or backward is difficult. I also did not find an easy way to highlight or make notes in the online version, which are features often available in commercial online texts. I used the PDF version to read/review this text and that avoided many of the problems with the online version, and highlighting and notes are available on many free PDF readers.

I did not notice grammatical errors in the text or figures.

I did not notice cultural insensitive in this book; it includes mention of women scientists (Figure 14.16 Elizabeth Blackburn, telomerase) and discussion some genetic disease that occur more frequently in particular populations.

Reviewed by Dan Atwater, Assistant Professor, Earlham College on 6/23/19

The comprehensiveness varies but is overall mostly appropriate. Diversity of life and physiology get a lot of attention and surprising detail for an introductory textbook. Cell biology gets more cursory coverage and evolution is surprisingly spare. Molecular biology gets some detailed figures but without much explanation in the text. Indexes and glossaries are good, which is important because definitions are often not given in the text.

Content Accuracy rating: 3

I didn't notice any major errors, but there were some omissions, especially in the evolution section, which is a disaster. For example, I didn't find any mention of drift, mutation, or gene flow. Evolution is defined--incorrectly--only once (in the Chapter 18 Summary). Systematics could be another trouble spot, but the authors do OK presenting an up-to-date, albeit conservative phylogeny. For example, I object to Phylum Zygomycota being described in a modern textbook, but this is a minor quibble. Protists are another trouble spot, but the authors do a good job discussing the modern perspective on the protists.

Since the text is foundational, many of the subjects aren't changing rapidly. The areas with the most change are systematics and human ecology, and those are reasonably current.

In terms of writing and clarity, some chapters are great, others are mediocre. A few are poor. Readers will get the impression that multiple authors contributed. A weak spot was that bold-face words were not always defined in the text. Readers will have to go to the glossary for some definitions, and that is not ideal. Overall the text is not overly technical, but sometimes it fails when it is not technical enough. For example, there is a box in the plant section discussing whether green algae are considered as plants. The authors use a confusing 'straight line' terminology to try to explain monophyly. It doesn't work very well. Other sections are excessively technical and will probably confuse students. I wonder if the text needed a firmer editor.

Consistency is good but not great. Some of the figures did not match well with the text. For example, the text describing the citric acid cycle outlines seven steps, but these are not indicated on the accompanying figure. The external link is no help because it uses a completely different scheme. Also, the degree of taxonomic detail given for clades varied seemingly at random. Some clades were given with their taxonomic rank and others not. For example, most fish taxa are listed with their rank, but not gnathostomes (which might've been referred to as a superclass). Other sections completely ignored taxonomic rank. This is a guaranteed trouble-spot because the field is experiencing so much revision. But an editor had to step in and work for consistency.

This is a bright spot. The modules make sense, are well organized, and (mostly) self-sufficient.

Overall, the organization is good, probably because it follows longstanding conventions. Some of the chapter introductions could use improvement. One example is section 25.1, which rattles through a few basic concepts in plant biology, but without enough context to make it clear to the reader how those concepts fit into the greater story of plant evolution.

I noticed one broken video link, but that's the nature of this kind of resource. My major complaint is that many of the figures were small in my browser, with no way I could find to be enlarged, except for right-clicking and opening them in a new tab. It would be nice to have links to the full-sized image.

I did not notice grammatical errors but I was speed-reading.

The two most likely trouble spots, human population growth and human impacts on biodiversity, are softballed in this textbook, avoiding cultural insensitivity. However, the authors missed an opportunity to discuss how conservation and population control impact, influence, and are lead by local societies. I believe that more modern books will more thoroughly discuss the human element to conservation and management.

Overall, this book provides a mostly adequate resource for teachers who are trying to save on textbook costs. It is comparable to most conventionally printed textbooks in being fair, but not great. Compared to conventional textbooks, it is typically accurate and perhaps a little above average in freshness. Unfortunately, it is also uneven relative to the printed alternatives. The evolution section is a particular bad spot, which is inexcusable. The graphics are fewer and lower quality compared to expensive conventional textbooks, and the study questions are fewer and less thoughtful--an expected and acceptable trade-off given that this book has the potential to save students hundreds of dollars.

Reviewed by Katelyn Butler, Assistant Professor of Bioogy, Anderson University on 1/9/19

Overall, this book covers the essentials required by an introductory biology textbook. It covers the main topics such as genetics, evolution, and cell biology in sufficient detail. I do wish there was more content on plant biology. read more

I have not found any errors within the text.

I found many references to modern techniques, jobs, and information. I feel this text is relevant and would be easily updated with new information.

The writing was clear and succinct. Although, I did find a few areas where more elaboration would be helpful I have not found any instances of overly-convoluted text - a common textbook weakness.

I've found all the terminology to be consistent.

I have found assigning readings to be easy and convenient. I like that I can find small sections throughout the book to assign to students. I think this makes the reading more accessible and therefore students are more likely to complete it.

The organization of the book is intuitive and I can easily find information and readings associated with class topics through the table of contents.

I have found a few broken links throughout the text. Most of the images are clear and appropriately arranged.

No blaring grammatical errors detected.

No insensitive or offensive language. I would like to see something like "Scientist Spotlights" featuring scientists from diverse backgrounds and how their work has contributed to our understanding of biology.

Reviewed by Maria Quintero, Graduate teaching assistant, Florida State University on 11/28/18

This seems like a great book for freshman because often at that stage the students are interested in science but are unsure of what branch of science they want to go into. This book teaches them the basics every biology major should become familiar but spans a large amount of disciplines within biology.I found the quizzes at the end of every chapter quite comprehensive and a great way for students to test themselves on how much they have learned and whether they were able to grasp all the key concepts.

The book overall was very accurate and descriptive.

Something especially unique about this book is the “Career connections” Section within every chapter. These provide real world examples as to why they are learning these topics and how they can be applied to a career or are being used by other scientists and professionals. The topics are all relevant.

I thought the explanations were very specific and well versed. The illustrations were also very helpful and I can see them providing a lot of help to those visual learners. This book is readily available online and provides the same diversity as other freshman text books with current and up to date images and tables

The book is consistent every chapter is clearly laid out in a good order and would make a great book for freshman biology majors.

The book could definitely be broken up into small sections for lectures, discussions and homework. Each subunit is organized well and has a comprehensive outline at the end of every chapter along with questions.

Clear and logically organized.

I saw no evidence of any navigation problems, all the displays looked clear and adequate. It was easy to download and view.

I saw no evidence of grammatical errors.

The book is inclusive, I did not see any cultural biases.

Biology 2e seems like a great text book for freshman biology majors. It focuses on many broad aspects of biology such as Chemistry, Cell biology, Ecology and Geology. This seems like a great book for freshman because often at that stage the students are interested in science but are unsure of what branch of science they want to go into. This book teaches them the basics every biology major should become familiar but spans a large amount of disciplines within biology.

Reviewed by Joseph Ly, Lecturer, St. Ambrose University on 10/26/18

Is able to cover aspects of biology very well. read more

Is able to cover aspects of biology very well.

Is correct in terminology and descriptions.

Though relevant, it may need revisions to trends in the future.

Clear and defined, but definitions can be overly complex depending on the rigor of the class it is used in.

Consistent and flowing from one logical chapter to the next.

Chapters are logical and divided well.

No issues so far.

No grammar errors so far.

Not culturally offensive.

Reviewed by Anthony Arment, Professor of Biology, Central State University on 10/11/18

No additional comments. read more

No additional comments.

I personally would put mitosis and meiosis and heredity before metabolism but was able to rearrange chapter orders with no difficulties.

I would like to see more supplementary materials generated, things like end of chapter problems that are not so dependent on multiple choice. Easier import power into different LMS platforms. Additional supporting materials with simulations and problem sets.

Reviewed by Jonathan Karpel, Associate Professor, Southern Utah U on 8/2/18

Yes, this text is much like any of the regular, paper general biology textbooks. It covers all the topics in sufficient detail for the student to succeed. I don’t see any glaring errors in terms of subjects that are missing from the text. The... read more

As far as I can discern, the information looks accurate and does not favor one pedagogy over another. I looked over the major sections that I regularly teach (chapters 1-16) and I didn’t run into any inaccurate information.

This textbook is almost exactly like any paper textbook. So it will remain relevant for the long term, as general biology subjects do not change very much anymore.

This textbook reads much like any other textbook. I don’t think this type of writing will attract any students to this type of text over a paper textbook. So if you are not trying to differentiate yourself from any of the other general biology textbooks, then the writing in this website doesn’t really make a difference in the selection of a textbook. The writing is not hard to understand and students can quickly search for terms to help them find information.

I think the layout is consistent within this text. I like how vocabulary words are in bold as this makes it easy for students to make flash cards. The overall framework makes it easy for students to find what they are looking for and they are not constantly adapting to a changing layout.

The modularity of this textbook is excellent. The contents on the left side of the page make navigation very easy and you can easily switch to different sections to find the information that you need. This is very helpful from a student’s point-of-view, as they can try to find the pertinent information for whatever question they are trying to answer. For a professor, it is easy to point to a chapter and section to provide guidance on where students should focus their studies.

This book is laid out just like the other major paper textbooks, like Campbell and Raven textbooks. It presents the same problems if one wishes to teach topics out of order, which is that the student will have to pay attention to the section they are currently teaching on as not all professors go in chapter order.

I didn’t encounter any problems navigating through the pages. It was easy to navigate the contents list, and very easy to switch from one section to another. It was also easy to search the whole document for terms of interest. One thing that was kind of annoying is that you encounter hyperlinks for “figure” and you click it and it really doesn’t do much. You might want to consider having the figure become larger in a popup or opening a new window. Not sure this is a major hang up, just something I noticed. I also do not like being required to download some videos through links, but would rather watch the video within the website.

The text that I perused did not contain any grammatical errors. I like the way the text is easy to read, it seems different than the worst textbooks.

The nice thing about biology is that it is accessible to most everybody who is interested in learning. I didn't find anything in the text that would turn off a particular ethnicity or other background.

This is a nice replacement for a standard paper textbook. It doesn't really provide much differentiation from paper products other then the fact that it is free. So this can easily be used for this purpose.

Reviewed by Dara Wegman-Geedey, Professor of Biology, Augustana College on 6/19/18

Given that this is a text for two semester introductory sequence in biology for undergraduates, it appears to be very comprehensive. I was expecting to see basic cellular biology and a survey of organismal diversity including units on evolutionary change and interactions of organisms at the ecosystem level, but I was surprised to also find several chapters on human anatomy and physiology including the basics of the immune system.

It appears the text has been crafted to meet the needs of a general/non-major biology course that might be more human-biology based as well as a more typical (in my experience) two semester foundational course for biology majors.

I liked that chapters were separated into a handful of subsections with a concise heading -- some other texts seem to over-partition concepts which can prevent a novice from understanding the connections between sections.

I feel the text is mostly accurate, but as in any large text, the occasional error slips by editors now and then. A few are important to correct, especially given that we push students to understand the need for precise use of science terminology and vocabulary (e.g., Section 34.2 is titled "Nutrition and Energy Production," which might confuse a student who has learned that "energy can neither be created nor destroyed."). Others are likely typos (e.g., in Table 4.1, it is shown that "Some" bacteria have cilia, which is not correct. I checked several other sources just to be sure and can find no confirmation of this claim).

Some of the concepts in introductory biology are refined from time to time as our techniques improve, but many of the basic ideas have great longevity and are conveyed in the text in logical ways with well known examples and references. One of the most attractive features of an open source text is that it can be more readily revised that hard copy since it is a web-based text.

I was happy to see that the text includes the relatively new supergroup taxa presented in Chapter 23 when Protists are the first eucaryotes discussed, but I'd like to see the supergroup concept reinforced at the beginning of the chapters on Fungi, Plants, Invertebrates, and Vertebrates. Few students know that humans are Opisthokonts and more closely related to Fungi than Fungi are to Plants.

The overall clarity if the text is equivalent to other introductory level biology textbooks, but one feature that I feel elevates this text beyond average is the inclusion of several "Visual Connection" items in each chapter. Many of our students lack critical reading skills and the "Visual Connection" items help to reinforce important or subtle concepts by zooming in on a portion of a figure, clarifying a particular idea and then asking the student to apply that concept using a "so what do you think would happen then?" format.

I also like the frequent inclusion of the "Career Connection" items -- they're very accessible and our students need to know there are many, many careers in biology beyond healthcare, teaching, and academic research.

I noticed just one inconsistency with terminology in the text: Citric Acid Cycle is almost exclusively in Chapter 7, with the first mention of "Kreb's Cycle" in the link to an animation (which might confuse students) and the first mention of TCA cycle in the end of chapter glossary. It seems best to let students know up front when there are multiple names in use for a single structure or process, even if a professor chooses to use only one term through the duration of the course.

As noted above, I like the logic of the subdivisions of each chapter (not too many, not huge blocks of text) and the amount of material on one page is less than I feel most other books offer. Not having to worry about printing costs per page allows for more freedom and prevents "widowing and orphaning" of paragraphs that don't belong with the rest of the page content.

I felt that the eight major units of the text had a logical flow to them, moving from smaller, discrete concepts to applications and interactions among concepts. It also seems easy enough to omit or shift order to fit one's preferred teaching plan given the clearly titled subdivisions in each chapter.

I had problems with the interface for several of the animations I tried: a few took me to pages that didn't work (in either Chrome or Explorer), some opened a TED talk or YouTube video in my browser window and when I wanted to navigate back to the text, I had to wait for the entire pdf to load. Hopefully this is not an issue when the pdf is accessed from a desktop...I'd have preferred to have all animations open in a new window.

While there were a few typos, I noted no grammatical errors in the text.

I was disappointed that the vast majority of images were of white people. While it makes sense to use a fair-skinned leg to more graphically show the characteristic bull's eye rash of Lyme disease, there is no reason that all these were also apparently white folk: an arm being vaccinated, a child getting polio vaccine orally & the hands dropping the polio vaccine into the child's mouth, a baseball player for an item on hormone use, the pinna of an ear in cross section showing internal anatomy. I saw a handful of images that were ambiguous enough to construe as possibly portraying people of color, but only one photograph (portraying gouty toes) was from someone with a dark complexion. The diagrams of almost every human body system had outlines that suggested long, straight noses,, non-ethnic hair styles, and no disabilities (e.g., someone using a wheelchair). Most of the "skin tones" colorized in these diagrams where light beige to pinkish tan, but it would be easy to resort to a pale olive tone or even a neutral light grey if a darker brown tone would make it difficult to visualize the line drawing of the system portrayed in the image. At a time when inclusion strategies in education are critical, this is a part of the text I feel needs the most revision.

Reviewed by Conner Sandefur, Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina Pembroke on 6/19/18

This text covers all subject matter used in a one semester introductory biology course. Some of the content, such as mitosis and meiosis, are separated into different chapters, which is different from some of the standard texts used (e.g. Concepts... read more

I did not see any inaccuracies in my use of the book; however, there were few references available (at least that I could find).

Content seems up to date, relative to the content level. For a majors, there might be some supplemental material required, if the instructor wants to dig into particularly new technologies.

The language of the text is at a reasonable level for an intro biology course for majors or non-majors.

Each section is consistently laid out and includes a glossary, chapter summary and review questions for students.

I found this text responded well to being reordered as each section sat on its own. Additionally, the text was quite modular and is broken down well into distinct topics that maintain complexity but are also self contained.

The topics are presented in a traditional manner as most biology textbooks.

Interfacing with the online version was straightforward. I enjoyed the navigation of the text via the left-hand side contents menu. Additionally, the search feature is somewhat fuzzy. I found my topic if the end of the keyword was different from the text but a misspelling in the middle of the word returned no matching results.

I did not find any grammatical errors when using this book.

I saw very few references to race/ethnicity in the text

Reviewed by Thomas Giardina, Assistant Professor, University of Delaware on 5/21/18

This review will focuses specifically on a representative chapter—in this case, Chapter 7: Cellular Respiration. I compare the chapter from Biology 2e to both the first edition Openstax Biology and a traditional introductory text from a major publisher. I selected Cellular Respiration because this is a complex, multi-step concept which is challenging for many students. In terms of comprehensiveness, Biology 2e is very thorough. The text wastes no words on poetry, and moves through the material with a workmanlike approach. It hits all the major points of cellular respiration, covering some of them in more detail than I would require of an introductory course (the section on glycolysis, for example, walks through each step of the process in the main text, instead of shunting it off into a figure as I have seen in traditional textbooks.) One feature I like is that students can explore these concepts in greater depth by following in-text links to online resources. Especially for multi-step processes like glycolysis and the citric acid cycle, these tools will be useful for visualizing each stage.

I very much appreciated the inclusion of Career Connections and Evolution Connections. These sections make the material more relevant to students, and help them shift focus from the proximate, detail-oriented perspective to the ultimate, ‘big-picture’ perspective. The Scientific Method Connections help to reinforce the process of science, which is always welcome in an introductory class.

One surprisingly omission in this section is the lack of total ATP yield from oxidative phosphorylation. As the text states, the ATP yield from a single molecule of glucose will be variable, so I can appreciate some reluctance to nail down a specific number. However most texts offer a “maximum ATP per glucose” value to frame the possible range, then go on to explain the factors influencing total ATP produced. I think that this omission by Biology 2e makes it difficult to frame how absolutely important oxidative phosphorylation is in terms of energy yield, and also to compare the efficiency of aerobic to anaerobic respiration.

Biology 2e works through cellular respiration diligently and thoroughly, making it very useful as a reference text. However, I would like to see a bit more of the ‘big picture’ ideas of cellular respiration. For example, redox reactions are briefly described, but their value in removing free energy from glucose molecules is given short shrift. What happens to the free energy of that original glucose molecule as it is processed through cellular respiration? Why do organisms need energy at all? Putting these pieces together would help students gain a more unified understanding of cellular respiration as one component of larger biological processes.

Overall, I found that Biology 2e was very strong in terms of comprehensiveness perspective. It was comparable to the similar chapter from a traditional textbook. While I think the traditional text did a better job of framing the big-picture perspective of cellular respiration, the depth offered by Openstax is beyond reproach. This depth is supplemented by online materials which were not offered by the traditional textbook. I found no major changes between Openstax Biology 1e and 2e.

Overall, this chapter was accurate, with concepts clearly described. I found no problems with the accuracy of major concepts or with the more specific steps of cellular respiration.

I did find a couple of minor errors that are not related to conceptual issues. Both of these could almost be considered ‘typos,’ except for that they risk confusing students. For example, there is one instance in which a figure caption did not match the figure. (Fig 7.4 claims to show a phosphorylation reaction in which the third phosphate of ATP attaches to a protein. However, the image shows the reverse—substrate-level phosphorylation of ATP, in which the third phosphate is attached to ADP from some substrate. This error appears to be due to a change in the figure from the first edition which was not accompanied by a corresponding change to the caption.) In another (pg227, alcohol fermentation), the text claims that it is providing the first chemical reaction of alcohol fermentation below. Instead, both reactions are below, formatted such that they appear on a single line. Again, while this error is very minor, it risks confusing students, especially those not familiar with chemical equations.

Overall, I found this chapter to be of high quality. Although there were some minor figure errors which I did not find in the traditional textbook, there was effectively no difference in accuracy. There were no major differences I observed between 1e and 2e.

I don’t see any problems with relevance/longevity for this chapter, or with the text more broadly. The information provided is up to date and comparable to similar texts. Should our understanding of cellular respiration or fermentation change, the chapter should be easy to update.

The body of this chapter is readily understandable, with a level of clarity similar to other texts. The figures are far less polished than those found in traditional textbooks, reducing clarity somewhat. However, this is offset by links to online resources which allow students to click through the stages of cellular respiration for themselves. This seems to be representative of the textbook more broadly.

Overall, this chapter is consistent in its use of terminology and concepts. For example, they use the term “Citric Acid Cycle” instead of the “Krebs Cycle,” and this is conserved throughout the text. (The text does link out to an online resource which invites students to click through the stages of the Krebs Cycle, however the usefulness of this tool far outweighs the confusion of the older term.)

One thing that I would have liked is greater consistency in the figures. For example, figures 7.6-7.8 all label the steps of the reactions taking place, which I found useful. In figure 7.9 (Citric Acid Cycle), this convention is jettisoned. The text describes the reactions in steps, but they are not accompanied by labels on the figure, which I think is a shame. In another example, 7.11 and 7.12 both refer to pH gradients across the mitochondrial membrane. So far as I can tell, pH isn’t referenced in this way anywhere else in the chapter. Although a keen student will immediately connect pH with hydrogen ion concentration, I think it would be more useful and consistent to refer to “hydrogen ion gradient” as it does in the text.

I found the text to be highly modular. Chapter 7 was broken down into small, manageable sub-sections which could be easily assigned to students.

In fact, I would argue that a strength of digital textbooks is the ability to quickly zip from one section to another with a click. From this perspective, I would have actually preferred if the text was less modular. For example, the structure and function of ATP was discussed only briefly in chapter 7. While this provides a concise orientation to ATP, why not take the opportunity to link to the more detailed description of ATP provided in chapter 6 here?

As I would expect, this chapter is organized in a logical, straightforward manner. In traditional fashion, the text begins by introducing the important chemical processes in cellular respiration, then working through the catabolism of a glucose molecule. The placement of the chapter within the larger text makes sense, following a section on the introduction to metabolism, and preceding a section on photosynthesis. Again, I think this structure is typical for an introductory class. This is consistent across the textbook, with the chapters following what I would consider to be a logical flow.

I only viewed the text using a laptop, so I cannot comment on its interface on a smartphone or tablet. That said, I found no problems with the text interface. I personally prefer navigating a physical text to a pdf, however I have observed that students take naturally to the digital format, and stand to benefit from the convenience of carrying their books digitally wherever they go. Should a student wish to purchase a physical copy, they can do so at a very reasonable rate.

Overall, grammar in the text is strong. I noticed no grammatical errors in this chapter, though I have noticed a couple minor typos throughout the book. While there are probably a few more grammatical errors than would be typical for a traditional textbook, I have no problems with the grammar of the text.

I found nothing in this chapter which could be construed as offensive or insensitive. Naturally, other chapters addresses some scientific concepts which have unfortunately become politicized (evolution and anthropogenic climate change, for example), which may be alienating to some students. The text does not dive into the controversy, merely puts forward the biological information as it should.

I recommend this book highly. While it is not as polished as a traditional text, I feel that the advantages it offers far outweigh the costs. I have personally adopted the Openstax Biology textbook, which I assign to my introductory biology students as a reference text. After one semester of using Openstax, I have received positive feedback from students. In particular, they praise Biology for its convenience, affordability, and succinctness. I am unlikely to switch back to the traditional textbook model, which I feel has become far too costly for my students. Openstax Biology 2e offers a low-cost alternative that meets the needs of an introductory biology class.

Reviewed by Dilrukshan Wijesinghe, Associate Professor, LaGuardia Community College on 2/1/18

The book is comprehensive and suitable for use in a 2-semester (year long) college-level biology/science majors general biology sequence. It compares well in this regard with widely used textbooks such as Campbell Biology, Biological Science by Freeman et al. and Biology by Russell et al. However, since the publication date is 2013 and completion of the book was perhaps a year or two before that date the text does not include newer advances in some fast-moving areas like molecular genetics. For example, there is no reference to CRISPR-cas9 gene editing.

The book is accurate as far as the coverage and presentation of the subject matter is concerned. No errors of fact or interpretation were evident to me.

As stated above, for those areas in biology where there have been significant advances over the past decade or so (e.g. molecular genetics) I don't think this book reflects very well the sate of knowledge now. The book has links to external digital content at OpenStax but some of the QR codes and/or URL do not seem to function. If there are provisions for regular revisions of the textbook these issues can be addressed easily. My impression is that with a publication date of 2013 the book is in need of revision now (2018).

I found the book well written and very readable. The sequence of topics covered, the organization of content within chapters, and each chapters ending with a list of key terms, a summary and questions contribute to the book's clarity. The illustrations while generally very appropriate perhaps could be shown larger and in more visually appealing ways (e.g. better use of color).

The book is internally consistent between different sections in spite of the multi-author origin of the content.

The organization of the book follows a well established and familiar pattern, with the chapters organized into sections as in many other well known general biology textbooks, e.g. Unit 1: The Chemistry of Life, Unit 2: The Cell, Unit 3: Genetics, etc. This would allow the subject matter to be distributed among two or more courses easily. However, as with any subject, certain topics in generally biology (e.g. cellular respiration or molecular genetics) will rely on knowledge gained from the chemistry and cell focused parts, so naturally in distributing the subject matter among several courses proper sequencing of those courses in the curriculum is desirable.

See previous section.

The chapters include QR codes and URLs that take the reader to animations and movies on the OpenStax website. My attempt to use a QR code scanner app of a mobile phone on the PDF of the textbook on a laptop screen didn’t work and clicking the URL indicated the link was no longer current. Web resources have a notoriously short longevity and links to external sources need updating, so their inclusion makes regular updating essential if only for that reason.

No issues with grammar were noticed .

No instances of cultural insensitivity were apparent. Perhaps the diverse and multi-author origin of the book's content ensured the excellence of the book in this regard.

This textbook is comparable to several widely used college-level textbooks such as Campbell Biology, Biological Science by Freeman et al. and Biology by Russell et al which are all well suited for a two-semester general biology sequence such as is typically taken by biology and science majors. (It might be worth mentioning here that Concepts of Biology also from OpenStax is meant to be used in non-majors biology courses.) The book was published in 2013 and in spite of the 2017 Rice University copyright notice it does not appear to have been updated since the original publication.

My overall impressions of Biology from OpenStax by Rye et al. is positive and it is certainly a book I would consider using in my general biology course sequence, not only because of cost considerations (the web and PDF versions are free and even the printed version is inexpensive). The book provides a sound and sufficiently detailed and accurate coverage of general biology and is readable, has appropriate illustrations, comes with questions and has links to supplementary external digital content (but see comment on QR codes and URLs below). My main concern is that in some areas the book is already out of date and unless there are provisions for regular revision and updating it will soon become significantly out of date. This will probably be apparent especially in the molecular genetics topics. One example will suffice: there is no mention of the CRISPR-cas9 gene editing method which even the general public is aware of now because of extensive media coverage of the work of Dr. Jennifer Doudna and others. While the artwork is generally good some of the illustrations are too small and generally not as visually appealing as in commercial textbooks. My attempt to use a QR code scanner app of a mobile phone on the PDF of the textbook on a laptop screen didn’t work and clicking the URL indicated the link was no longer current. Web resources have a notoriously short longevity and links to external sources need updating, so their inclusion makes regular updating essential if only for that reason. More importantly, however, rapid advances are made in many aspects of modern biology, most notably in molecular genetics, but even other areas are undergoing change from the application of molecular approaches and new discoveries. I believe the time is ripe for a revised edition. If an extensively updated version was available which also addressed some of the other concerns noted earlier I would definitely adopt this textbook in my majors biology sequence.

Reviewed by Laura Lambert, Administrative and Professional Faculty, James Madison University on 2/1/18

I focused in on Chapter 15: Genes and Proteins. I found that the level of detail is appropriate for a lower level undergraduate biology course. All major topics I would normally include to cover this topic are included (central dogma, codons, protein folding, etc), as well as a section on prokaryotic transcription and eukaryotic transcription. There is a figure error in the description of prokaryotic transcription, but the text is correct. Additionally, when describing the different types of RNA that can be found in a cell, not only does the text mention mRNA and tRNA, but additionally rRNA, which some introductory books leave out. At the end of the chapter, there is a mini glossary, defining key terms that were found throughout the chapter, which will be a nice resource for students. What I found particularly refreshing was the inclusion of a biotechnology and genomics chapter later on in the book. As my class has a focus on biotechnology, this will be the first time it is included in a 'general use' textbook.

There is a glaring error in Figure 15.8: Prokaryotic genes do not have introns, and there is little to no mRNA processing that occurs in prokaryotes, as transcription and translation are often coupled in time and location. The text in that section was correct, but an incorrect figure can easily confuse students who are not familiar with the topic.

This particular information is relatively new in the field of biology, though most of the current discoveries lie in the realm of gene function and would be included in an upper level course. This chapter will be “current” for quite a while, I would imagine. I enjoyed that throughout the chapter, there were little “blurbs” relating the material being discussed to a potential experiment, a human disease, or thought questions. This helps students connect what they are learning with their lives.

There is a bit of redundancy when talking about amino acid structure, as every time amino acids are mentioned, there is also the mention of the amino group and carboxyl group. However, to a new learner, redundancy is never a bad thing. The text is written in an understandable, clear manner, and all major terms are bolded and referenced in the end-of-chapter glossary.

I found the book to be consistent in regards of terminology and layout, definitions of terms, and general chapter scheme.

This book will work taken as a whole, or taken in parts. I have smaller, one week “chunks” and this book will still allow for that approach, using chapters or parts of chapters each week, as well as taking parts of chapters in isolation, or in conjunction with other chapter parts.

The overall organization of the course material is consistent with how it is taught at many institutions. Content is presented in a logical fashion, building upon one another as the book progresses. I appreciated the additional “learning links” included within the chapter, particularly the one detailing transcription and translation, allowing students to practice this concept in a manner likely to be encountered on an in-class evaluation or in other evaluations the student may encounter later in their career.

I found no interface errors.

I found no grammatical errors.

I did not find any instances of cultural insensitivity. Most of the images I saw were biological in nature, and did not include human subjects.

This is a good book for an introductory level class, covering all material that would traditionally be presented in a one or two semester series. Be on the watch that the figures mirror the text, but aside from that, I look forward to using this for my class.

Reviewed by Chris Trimby, Assistant Professor, University of Delaware on 2/1/18

The OpenStax Biology book has units and chapters that cover all of the major topics that one would consider for a general or introductory Biology course. There seems to be less volume of coverage of Ecology/Evolution compared to Organismal... read more

Chapters seem to be accurate, and there does not seem to be any significant bias in the content.

The relevance of this textbook is and will be fantastic, as new examples can be addressed in a relatively short period of time, keeping the text fresh and relevant. Text does not seem to be written in a way that will make it obsolete any more quickly than any other textbook. Topics such as biotechnology and conservation/ecology will, of course, have a quicker update cycle as new technology is developed and example animals are driven to extinction.

Text is well-written and does not seem to be overly technical. Would seem to be easily digestible for an early-career college student. Blocks of text are broken frequently by diagrams and questions, which helps them feel less intimidating.

The chapters that I have read through follow the same/similar format and feel like a cohesive text.

The text feels very modular. As mentioned, there are not long blocks of text that most units and chapters are divided into short, directly linkable chunks. My current use of this textbook has only portions of the text assigned, and this does not seem to be an issue for students.

The structure makes sense and is consistent with most presentations of this material. As a result of the modularity, if a different progression is preferred it is easy to select material in a manner that aligns with your course/preferences.

I have only used the online interface, which had no issues. It would be nice to be able to click on images and have them blown up or popped out, but it is easy enough to zoom in the browser.

None that I noticed.

Examples overall seem fine. It would be nice to see more career examples and spotlights on diverse scientists, but this would make the text hard to keep updated and current, so I can understand it not being done.

I think it is a great alternative to using a for pay text, and with the multitude of formats (browser, pdf, app, print) it can be accessed in the format that is best for a particular student. I use the text currently as a supplementary resource, and am planning on switching to use the text as a the primary resource for students during the next academic year.

Reviewed by Karen Sirum, Associate Professor, Bowling Green State University on 2/1/18

Core concepts for introductory level college course are addressed in sufficient detail, without overly complicating the material for this audience. Presentation is straightforward, but I find that supplementing with additional web based teaching... read more

I found no errors, and if I felt certain topics needed further reinforcement or detail, there are many other free web based teaching resources such as those available from HHMI and Learn.Genetics.

The content covers the foundational concepts and therefore are unlikely to change or need radical revising in the short term. Updating with new information should be relatively straightforward, but as with all texts, the challenge will be to maintain brevity.

The text uses straightforward language, maintaining clarity in this field full of specialized vocabulary. Images are simple and clear.

The text is consistently organized into brief modules, that break down the ideas into manageable chunks of information.

The organization of the text makes it easy to assign very specific chapters and subsections according to the goals of the course, and to read these sections out of order. The sections, though integrated, can, in many cases stand alone as an introduction to the topics. When more depth is required, other web sites and tutorials can be added to the students' reading materials. This text is a nice way to help students organize those core ideas, all in one place.

The core concepts of biology can be taught in many different orders and there is not one best linear path through the material. Even when using the material in a different order than presented in the text, it does not affect the continuity and connectedness of the material.

The web based interface is simple and clean, and not overly complicated. External supplementary links are provided and augment the text. Navigation is obvious, reliable, intuitive, and resembles a traditional hard copy text, so that it should feel familiar to most students.

There are no grammatical errors, and the language is not overly complicated in terms of sentence structure and organization.

The text is not culturally insensitive, and material can easily be supplemented with current news articles and essays addressing the moral and ethical implications of current findings and technologies.

Where this text could be improved is in providing more practice questions and tutorials for students to check their understanding.

Reviewed by David Carlini, Associate Professor, American University on 2/1/18

This text is very comprehensive, covering all topics that should be included in a two semester undergraduate introductory biology course for Biology majors/premedical students. I liked the fact that there was a glossary of terms in each section, rather than a full glossary at the end of the chapter, because I think it will help students organize the information and help them to understand the material better as a consequence.

I did not find any obviously inaccurate information in the book, so I would agree with the statement that the content is accurate, error-free, and unbiased.

For the most part, the content is up-to-date, but I did find a few sections that already needed updating. In particular, Chapter 17 (Biotechnology and Genomics), needs to be updated. For example, section 17.3 discussion of next-generation sequencing needs to be updated. Also, there is no discussion of applications of next-generation sequencing (e,g, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq) that are commonly used today. I do believe that the text is written in such a manner that it would be relatively easy to update.

The text is very clear.

Given the fact the book is written by a variety of authors in different subject areas, I found the book's consistency to be quite impressive.

Each chapter consists a number of sections - this makes it easy for the student to break the material up into manageable chunks. It would be nice if there were links within each section that took you to other sections.

The book is organized in a very similar manner to most introductory Biology textbooks - with good reason. The topics are presented in a logical order, and they generally build from micro to macro.

The main problem I noticed (at least with the online version of the text) is that you can't click on the figures to open up an enlarged version of the figure in higher resolution, either in a separate window or within the body of the text. Many online books and journals offer this feature..

I didn't notice any culturally insensitive statements or examples in the text. On the other hand, there did not seem to be many opportunities for the inclusion of racial, ethnic, or socio-economic variation in the text. Therefore, I conclude that the text is neither culturally relevant, nor culturally insensitive.

Links to Animations Good, but a bit variable in quality.

Link to Learning Another advantage of online textbooks. The links to talks given by leading researchers (e.g. Svante Paabo’s TED talk,) are a great perk.

Review Questions at End of Section Better than most textbooks which have all the questions at the end of each chapter. However, there is quite a bit of variability from section to section in the number of review questions provided. This doesn’t always correlate with the amount of material covered in each section (e.g., Section 45.3 is pretty dense but only has three Review Questions).

Glossary Very useful.

Graphics It would be nice if, when using the online version of the textbook (rather than pdf), one could click on the figures to view them enlarged in a separate window.

Notes on Specific Sections Chapter 12 No Dihybrid Cross (Independent Assortment) in 12.2 Characteristics & Traits, even though incomplete dominance, codominance, multiple alleles, and X-linkage are discussed. Independent Assortment is discussed in 12.3 along with Linkage, but Linkage section did not provide any information about determining the distance between and order of genes on chromosomes. A very general discussion of linkage analysis of two genes is included in chapter 13, but very little information or opportunity for practice is provided, and no information on how gene order can be inferred from linkage distances.

Chapter 15, Section 15.4 Alternative splicing is not mentioned in this section, which is titled “RNA Processing in Eukaryotes”. Although alternative splicing is mentioned in Chapter 16, it should be described in Section 15.4.

Chapter 17 appears to be in need of updating. For example, section 17.3 discussion of next-generation sequencing needs to be updated. Also, there is no discussion of applications of next-generation sequencing (e,g, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq) that are commonly used today.

Chapter 19 Section 19.1 Link to Learning online calculator is a useful tool but it would be nice to have an animation illustrate the principle of HWE (similar to the Link to Learning on Drift in Section 19.2).

Section 19.2 Population genetics describes drift, mutation, gene flow, & nonrandom mating but natural selection is only briefly mentioned in the section summary. The next section, 19.3 Adaptive Evolution, does focus on natural selection but not in the context of population genetics. Here I think an animation or worksheet would be useful, where two alleles compete against one another over time to show the effects on allele frequency change given different magnitudes/directions of selection.

Reviewed by Paul Heideman, Professor, College of William and Mary on 6/20/17

I am reviewing this textbook not for a first year course in introductory biology, but for a second-year one-semester course on the integrative biology of animals. For “Integrative Biology: Animals”, I need a biology textbook with three types of content: (1) the ‘toolkit’ of genes, proteins, structures, and pathways used by animals for the processes of life, (2) a biodiversity section that covers motile protists and about 10 major phyla of animals: Porifera, Cnidaria, Ctenophora, Platyhelminthes, Nematoda, Annelida, Mollusca, Arthropoda, Echinodermata, and Chordata, and (3) physiology and anatomy covering the basic structure and function of animals. For my purposes, the text covers these topics at the right breadth and depth. For my purposes, the weakest section is on phylogenetics, but I always need to supplement that section of any text. The second-weakest section for my course is on developmental biology, and there are some other texts that offer more (e.g., on polarity genes, segmentation genes, and hox genes). I offer more details on comprehensiveness and other topics in my additional comments at the end of this review.

Generally, this text meets the level of accuracy I find in other texts. During my review, I noticed some things i would correct. For example, the link on text page 149 to “the process of diffusion” links to a video showing dispersion (not diffusion) of a dye in water, with the dispersion clearly due to turbulence created by adding the dye to a beaker of water. The short video is correctly labeled as dispersion in Wikipedia rather than as diffusion. I may notice more such problems when I adopt the text for my course.

The text is relevant, and it should remain so for some time. Details from recent discoveries are always additions I make to the course, and I do not need the most recent findings in my textbook.

The book reads clearly to me. But I'll need student feedback to assess whether it reads clearly to students.

In the sections I plan to use, there is consistency. I may discover more inconsistency when I am using it with my students.

The books modularity is what makes it helpful. I can focus on the sections I need, and they seem to stand alone without needing references to others.

The topics are presented in a format that is typical and logical for a large introductory biology text.

Many figures are not readable until viewing at 200% or even 300%. That should be fine on a laptop or desktop computer.

I noticed no problems. But I confess that I was not look closely at the grammar.

I did not perceive any problems.

For my course, "Integrative Biology: Animals" at the sophomore level, this book should be a useful resource for students. There is no open source zoology textbook available, and in any case, the published texts tend to be too heavy on facts and too weak on what I present as the ‘logic of zoology’ – the evolutionary reasons or biochemical constraints that are common drivers of the structure and function of animals. (Examples include: why do we use action potentials for internal communication instead of direct current or signaling using photons; why are our skeletons made of calcium and phosphate rather than other minerals, and why do mammals use an inefficient tidal lung while birds use an efficient one-way flow that can extract more oxygen than mammals?) None of the existing textbooks for zoology cover this material well enough to be worth the cost to students. In the sections of my review below, I discuss the information my students need in relation to the content of this text.

1. The ‘Toolkit’. Students will have seen much of the necessary content in a year-long introductory sequence, but nonetheless will need reference and reminders on the chemistry of life (Ch 2), biological molecules (Ch 3), cell structure (Ch 4), and membrane function (Ch 5). Most of the descriptions and illustrations in these chapters and those below are useful ones that are equivalent to those in most other textbooks. In addition, students need to refer to some of the background on cell metabolism and cellular respiration (Ch 6 and Ch 7, respectively). A quibble I have with this and most other textbooks is that the energy of a phosphate bond is described solely in terms of the chemistry. Nowhere does the text point out that attaching a phosphate with its -2 charge will necessarily cause a change in the conformation of the protein, and taking that phosphate back off will cause a change back to the original conformation: that cycle causes the protein to do physiologically useful activity, from powering the movement of sodium and potassium across membranes to the movement of a myosin head. I wish that any textbooks would explain what actually happens to proteins when phosphorylated and dephosphorylated, rather than solely referring to changes in energy state. Chapter 9, on signaling, provides a good explanation of the basics of cell-cell communication, a central element of what makes animals different from unicellular eukaryotes. Finally, the sections on eukaryotic transcription, translation, and gene regulation (Ch 15 & 16) provide sufficient background for students to understand why all cells in an animal can have all the same genes but nonetheless have very different patterns of gene expression and function.

2. Single-celled eukaryotes and the major phyla of animals. In order to understand animal function, students must understand that the fundamental molecular tool kit of animals is largely present in single-celled eukaryotes. The chapter on protists (23) provides a good summary of structure and some aspects of function. I would prefer more detail on, for example, the similarity of the molecular basis of movement in protists and in animals. However, no zoology textbook I’ve found since R. MacNeil Alexander’s “Animals” of the 1990’s has attempted to fully integrate these molecular details of function with protist structure. Chapter 23 provides a foundation. Chapters 28 and 29 on invertebrates and vertebrates, respectively, provide an overview of the major phyla. For each of these phyla, there is at least one illustration of major structural elements and a discussion of characteristic features, along with images of typical forms. These chapters provide sufficient background, though they will be best if supplemented with a laboratory text that provides more details and images.

3. Physiology and anatomy covering the basic structure and function of animals. Unit 7, Chapters 33 – 41, covers the major systems of animals, including digestive, nervous, sensory, endocrine, musculoskeletal, respiratory, circulatory, excretory, immune, and reproductive systems. In approximately 280 pages these offer a solid introduction to structure and physiological function. Images of structures and processes are clear and useful, and this section is limited mostly by the comparatively strong focus on mammalian and human physiology. It would be helpful for my objectives to have a stronger treatment of invertebrates.

4. Links. The video links I checked were generally good, although a few include misconceptions. One misconception is in the link on text page 149 to “the process of diffusion” as it actually links to a video showing dispersion of a dye in water due to turbulent currents created by adding the dye to a beaker of water (and is correctly labeled as dispersion in Wikipedia), rather than diffusion. Some of the links would not open, such as a video link illustrating the fluidity of membranes. In another case, for videos on enzyme function, the web page opened, but the enzyme videos were not visible on my old MacBook Pro running Safari 9.0.3. Overall, I felt that the authors made wise choices in balancing clarity of illustrations against complexity of an illustration. I will be comfortable adding information and details on the logic of structure and function.

5. End of chapter problems. I did not read these in any depth because I write my own problems for students. The problems I read through struck me as sensible and mostly straightforward. Most require that students explain or apply a concept from the textbook. Students who did these problems would gain in understanding, but I think the questions are not especially strong with respect to developing new skills at applying the concepts, doing broader analysis, or synthesizing ideas.

6. Conclusion. I plan to adopt Biology OpenStax in place of a (highly-priced) standard zoology or integrative biology of animals text. Even if this text was not free, I suspect it would be a better choice because the page-count is more manageable. My students have always struggled with the ever-higher page count zoology or integrative biology textbooks. They hold far more fine details than students can absorb (or need), and there’s no easy way to tell students to read only selected pages or sections from those books. When using Biology OpenStax, I can direct students approximately 160 pages on the molecular toolkit of animals (most of which will be review from introductory biology), much of the approximately 110 pages on protists, invertebrates, and vertebrates, and most of the approximately 200 pages from Unit 7 on structure and function. In other words, the new content will be a much more manageable 300 pages that will complement short videos I prepare. I predict that this text will serve my students as well as my previous texts for this course.

Reviewed by Stan Guffey, Faculty Scholar, University of Tennessee on 6/20/17

Biology (OpenStax) is as comprehensive as, and follows the general topical format of a commercially available introductory biology textbook designed for life science majors. Comprehensiveness in an introductory biology textbook is a daunting issue: A text needs to be sufficiently comprehensive to meet the needs of adopters in courses of widely varying organization and focus, without at the same time becoming so massive as to be unwieldy. For my purposes this text does an adequate job of achieving that balance, and any deficiencies in content coverage can be made up by supplementary materials supplied by individual instructors.

In the survey of the major groups of organisms (Protists, Fungi, etc.) there is little use of graphical phylogenetic hypotheses (“trees”) to illustrate evolutionary relationships and to identify the hypothesized origins of key evolutionary and clade-defining characteristics. This is the major shortcoming of the text from my perspective; but I can supplement as needed.

I have not identified any specific errors in the text. However, I have found some points of disagreement that are perhaps matters of emphasis, philosophy or omission.

The most distressing to me comes early, in the first chapter. In the section discussing “The Process of Science” the author writes: “The scientific method is a method of research with defined steps that include experiments and careful observation.” This is followed by a more in-depth treatment of “the scientific method.” Unfortunately this treatment perpetuates a misconception that most of our students arrive with: that the practice of science consists of a series of formalized sequential steps that lead to knowledge that we can be put on the shelf and move on (although the “Art Connection” graphic does point out the iterative nature of hypothesis-based science). Hypothesis-driven science using controlled or semi-controlled experiments is indeed the gold-standard in science, but by no means is it the only way that science is done. No small amount of science is discovery science, research that while firmly embedded in existing theories, questions, and hypotheses, is not driven by a particular specific hypothesis. And in the discussion of hypothesis testing only controlled experiments are addressed. There is no discussion of hypotheses that cannot be directly tested by controlled experiment, for ethical reasons or reasons of temporal or spatial scale. No mention is made of other ways of testing hypotheses such as with new observations (as predicted by a hypothesis), by comparative studies or natural, inadvertent, or unfortunate experiments, or by mathematical modeling. From my perspective this is the weakest part of the text, and unfortunately early on, one that I must rectify in my teaching.

I did not examine all of the review questions in the 26 chapters I engaged, but I came across one that to my mind rises to the level of error (Section 19.1 “Population Evolution”

Population genetics is the study of: a. how selective forces change the allele frequencies in a population over time b. the genetic basis of population-wide traits c. whether traits have a genetic basis d. the degree of inbreeding in a population The correct answer was identified as “A.” While that answer is obviously “more correct” than the others, it is certainly incomplete and misleading. I suggest that instructors pay close attention to review and end-of-chapter questions in this and all textbooks!

The text is relatively up-to-date, certainly adequately so. In any case it is an instructor’s responsibility to supplement with the latest understanding and findings as they may pertain to a course. The organization of the text will allow for easy updating and revision by authors and users. Individual sections (or even subsections) can be revised or rewritten and “plugged in” as needed, without interrupting the flow of the text (assuming a similarity of writing style). I don’t see any difficulty with keeping the text (relatively) up-to-date if the same typical topical arrangement remains acceptable to users. Of course other organizing principles are possible, and perhaps desirable; for example the AAAS Vision and Change core concepts in biology. This would necessitate a rewriting.

The text is lucid and concise in use of language, and overall well written. I think, well, hope, that this attention to clarity of language will allow students to more readily grasp the concepts without becoming mired in the weeds of jargon. For example, in Chapter 7 (Cellular Respiration) the section “ATP in Living Systems” begins with: “A living cell cannot store significant amounts of free energy.” That’s a great set-up for a paragraph, with the key concept laid bare in clear language! There are numerous areas that could be improved, but none that I have seen that stand out as warranting complaint.

Necessary and appropriate disciplinary terminology is employed well, and definitions in context are supplemented by end-of-chapter lists of key terms, with definitions.

The text is structurally and terminologically consistent as is the writing style.

One inconsistency of note is the use, or lack of use, of graphical phylogenetic hypotheses. The importance of phylogeny, and the basic elements of phylogeny construction and interpretation are fairly well presented in Chapter 20, but they are sparsely employed in the remainder of the text. Again, the instructor can supplement.

The topical treatment by chapter and the sections within chapters allow for modular assignment of material. This is especially important at my institution where our introductory sequence for life science majors consists of two free-standing semester-long courses: “Organismal and Ecological Biology”; and “Cellular and Molecular Biology.” This is a strength of the text, considerably easier to use in that way that most texts I have examined.

The organization and flow of the text is logical and straightforward. I encountered no glaring examples of concepts being presented in a sequence that would hinder student comprehension. Numerous other ways of logically organizing chapters are certainly possible, but that employed in this text flow nicely.

I encountered no interface issues other than that of slowness of loading. No internal links were dead or misdirected, and figures were clear.

No errors of grammar noted.

I encountered nothing that could be construed as culturally insensitive of offensive in any way. And I do keep an eye out for that sort of thing. I wouldn’t call the text “culturally relevant” but it is certainly not culturally insensitive or offensive.

This review is based on close examination and reading of all or sections of 27 chapters (1,4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 43, 44, 45, 46, and 47).

I would like to see greater use made of graphical phylogenetic hypotheses ("phylogenetic trees") in the diversity overview sections, and in other areas where the evolution of key characteristics is discussed.

I advise reviewing and using review questions with caution so that students are not conceptually mislead, or think the questions are isomorphic with your own assessment questions. Of course this applies to any textbook.

I have adopted OpenStax Biology for my life science majors introductory course "Organismal and Ecological Biology."

Reviewed by Alex Werth, Professor, Hampden-Sydney College on 6/20/17

The book is nicely comprehensive in its overall selection of units and chapters—all the basic components of any standard semester-long or year-long general biology course for majors or a mixed nonmajors/majors audience. All topics are covered appropriately. It seems clear that different chapters are written by different people—some of the chapters (for example, on the immune system) are exceptionally detailed, whereas others (e.g., on evolution and speciation) are a bit more bare-bones, but all the bases are covered. I especially like the individual glossaries for each chapter rather than a single glossary at the end.

There are a few errors or misstatements in this book, but they are few and far between. For example, the large aquatic reptiles of the Mesozoic Era were not in fact dinosaurs; they were just contemporaries of dinosaurs. But given the abundance of information in this text, I am quite pleased at the factual accuracy.

In a very few places this book might need to be updated—for example, some of the taxonomic diversity of prokaryotic and eukaryotic groups, and some other statements (for example, there is a lot of life near deep sea vents that does not depend in any way on photosynthesis). However, any such statements could easily be clarified or amended, so I think this book will have good longevity. Any possible problems can be easily fixed or updated.

Some amount of jargon is inescapable in a general biology text, where students are hit with as much new terminology as in an introductory course in a foreign language, but this book is refreshingly free of unnecessary jargon. Also, all terms that might be unfamiliar to students are used simply and properly, then defined in each chapter-end glossary. Descriptions of complex processes (especially of genetics and physiology) are also clear and easy to understand.

Terms and concepts are used consistently throughout the book; there are no problems in that regard, even if this book was written by a big team of authors. The chapter-end questions, the opening outlines, and other such framing devices are used consistently throughout the book.

I am especially keen to look for modularity of basic biology books because my school has long used a “top-down” approach in which we first focus on whole-organism concepts in evolution and ecology before zooming down to reductionist areas in biochemistry, genetics, and so on. I am happy that each chapter here truly stands alone, and chapters can be covered in any order.

As noted above, the chapters can be covered in any order as instructors prefer, but the overall outline of the units and chapters fits perfectly with any standard biology course taught over one or two terms. Material flows logically both between and within chapters.

The online interface is clear, easy to use, and free of problems. I liked being able to click on a link in the index or table of contents, which takes the reader directly to a specific page within the book.

There are very few grammatical or typographical errors, and these can easily be fixed in subsequent versions. In a book of this size, I would expect there to be lots of mistakes, so I was pleased at how mistake-free this is.

This book is perfectly appropriate for all readers. There are no problems regarding cultural insensitivity. In fact, not only are there no such problems, but many of the examples used demonstrate a clear commitment to human (and other biological) diversity.

I I have been teaching general biology for 25 years, during which time I have used traditionally published texts. In other words, I am unfamiliar with open source, online texts. I must admit that at first glance this book looked to me to be much less glitzy than traditionally published books, without all the bells and whistles, the fancy graphics and human interest stories. However, I actually find this quite refreshing, in that there is more of an emphasis on essential information. I worry a bit that students used to traditional science books will initially find this open source book dry and unappealing, but I think they will soon be won over by the “just-the-facts” approach (and I truly mean that in a good way). This book focuses on proper concepts and details, not extraneous stuff. I am optimistic that this book will be quite useful for me and my students.

Reviewed by Melissa Kilgore, Biology Instructor, Lane Community College on 6/20/17

The textbook covers all of the major topics that I address in a year of non-majors biology. read more

The textbook covers all of the major topics that I address in a year of non-majors biology.

The content is accurate and unbiased.

Additional content should be added regarding topics such as pseudoscience and the influence of social media and politics on science. The rest of the content is current and relevant.

The clarity of the text is very well done.

The text is very consistent in terms of terminology and framework.

The authors did a good job of organizing the textbook with appropriate headings and subheadings.

The topics are presented in a logical, clear fashion, with minimal searching for an area of interest. The underlying theme of evolution is throughout the book and unifies the theme.

The website was easy to use and search. The search feature worked well, and the table of contents was easy to navigate. The additional content of animations was well done and accessible.

I couldn't find any errors.

The text was not culturally insensitive or offensive but the inclusion of races and ethnicities was lacking. For example, the section on global climate change could include information on rising sea levels and how island nations and their culture will be eliminated. There were also areas where American Indian culture could have been included but were not. However, the authors did an excellent job of looking at a global perspective when reviewing conservation issues and biodiversity on other continents.

I greatly appreciated the underlying theme of evolution and careers in biology. There were also many resources for both the instructor and the students that make the use of this book ideal. It is a complete package!

Reviewed by Christopher Sorenson, Instructor, St. Cloud Technical and Community College on 4/11/17

This text book is as comprehensive as the McGraw Hill and Pearson texts that we have been using. It includes both the cell biology and organismal biology required of a 2-semester biology post-secondary sequence. read more

I have found no inaccuracies. The level of depth of material is consistent enough as well that the information covered is "accurate" to the level required for the text book. For instance "anabolic pathways require an input of energy to synthesize complex........ is accurate. On the other hand if the authors wanted to dwell on minutia they could say that catabolic reactions also require input of energy to overcome the energy of activation. The authors have done an excellent job in this regard.

This text book shows relevance. It shows biology in light of evolution and in light of molecular biology. It includes video embedded that will be updated as needed. The video looks current. Bar codes are used in many places for easy conversion as media changes. As is typical, some of the video does not have captioning so every video does not allow full accessibility. I did also have trouble opening one barcode.

The text book uses accessible prose while at the same time expecting the student to remain current with the material learned in previous chapters. The sections (chapters) are quite small, which helps the compartmentalization of the material but at times feels a bit choppy.

The chapters are edited consistently; a great improvement from the first versions of open materials. The language skills needed are consistent throughout the text and the organization of the material is consistent.

This text book has taken modularity to new heights. Each section is very short. It will be interesting to try to adapt these sections to a lecture format. It should work very well with logical breaks for interactive materials or group work.

This text book follows the usual pattern of chapters in covering the subject of general biology. I prefer to have more evolution covered in the first 2 chapters but it is just as easy to jump to chapter 19 to harvest enough info to inform the rest of the cell biology chapters.

The interface is simple. It is linear, without unnecessary bifurcations. I did not find instructional resources, but I assume that if I had purchased the text I would have been granted access to them.

The grammar in this text is excellent. I am a Midwesterner so I have my own colloquialisms and idiosyncrasies. I found no grammatical errors, nor did I find distracting terms.

This text avoids the use of ethnocentric names and concepts as far as I can see. Of course, my lens is a bit foggy with bias. I was disappointing to see that Dr. Rosalind Franklin did not get a little more ink and perhaps a photo. My classes are full of women. This is a great chance to show the accomplishments of a brilliant woman. Our young women need more role models in the STEM fields.

This text book is an excellent teaching tool. If the instructor resources, including test bank, projectable images/slides and interactive tools are of the same quality as the text book itself, I fully endorse it.

Reviewed by Raj Nathaniel, Professor, Nicholls State University on 2/8/17

This textbook is mostly suitable for 100 level introductory biology for non-majors. While not in detail, most of the material covered gives the reader a basic understanding of various biological processes. Non-major students who dislike biology because of the very intricate details of glycolysis or the steps in DNA replication would be the best sort of market this book could reach. Nursing students, business majors and arts students would like the easy to read and brief descriptions in this book.

Seeing that is a very basic biology text, the material discussed here is at an introductory level. While the authors have consistently kept descriptions to the minimum, it would be unfair to expect great explanations for the various topics in biology some of which we have entire courses designed for them. For example the authors point out the differences between T-helper cells such as TH1, Th2 and Regulatory T-cells. In this reviewer's opinion, this amount of detail is sufficient for the level of students being targeted. Granted that the texbook is "inaccurate" with respect to T cell subpopulations (at this detail level), but if one wants to know more about T-cells, then perhaps an Immunology textbook would be more appropriate! For the level of students being targeted, there is sufficient focus.

Many of the areas of biology are constantly changing with the ever increasing research being performed. While the authors are currently relevant and up to date. Since this is an online publication, this reviewer envisions that there should be a mechanism to be able to add new information or updates current information on a periodic basis.

The writing style is easy to read and is well written for the freshman/sophomore level. Since several authors are involved in this authorship, the differences in style are perceivable from chapter to chapter. But this is no different than reading a popular magazine that has different articles authored by various writers. It is refreshing to hear from experts in their areas of expertise. It is the opinion of this reviewer that these differences in writing styles are not a hindrance to learning rather an opportunity to prepare students for the real world. In the real world students will not have the luxury of being exposed to monolithic writing styles therefore what better place to prepare students for life than the introductory Biology textbook!

For the most part this textbook is consistent in use of terminology. This reviewer did not notice any jargon being used.

In this reviewer's opinion the modularity followed in this text is very helpful for the intented target student audience ...students who are freshman non-majors. The paragraphs are small enough to be viewed effortlessly on a mobile device such as a phone or tablet with ease. The lengths of the paragraphs are rightly tailored for mobile devices such that continued reading interest is sustained.

The flow and organization is comparable to other texts in the market. Since this is an introductory biology textbook, the topics are rather standardized across textbooks in this market. There is really no other way to deal with this material. The chemistry of life and macromolecules in biology have to be discussed before gene regulation which itself has to precede the various organ systems. In this regard, there is very little room for innovation or variation from standard practice. It is this reviewers opinion that the organization and flow of material is traditional and well served.

There are no issues with images or charts. However, this reviewer feels that there are too few images/charts to explain concepts. The target audience is of a generation that grew up with the internet, Youtube and social media. All of these interfaces are image heavy. Therefore in order to reach this audience effectively (to help them retain material), it is better to have a few more images. Difficult concepts can be presented in image form as supplemental material.

The reviewer has no issues with the grammar used in this textbook.

The major complaint from the students who are non-majors in biology is that the material (at least a large portion of it) has no relevance to their field of study. For example, why does a business major need to know about RNA transcription or the different parts of the translation machinery. In order to overcome this obstacle this reviewer seeks out examples from daily living in order to reinforce biological concepts. This textbook has some such examples which is commendable. However, in order to sustain student interest, it maybe useful to add a few more examples where biological concepts are applied to daily living making this subject more interesting to the reader.

Very good easy to read book. I would definitely consider adopting this textbook for a non-majors introductory class at the freshman level.

Reviewed by Theresa Spradling, Professor, University of Northern Iowa on 2/8/17

This book is on par in scope with the commonly used Campbell Biology. The table of contents and index are useful, and the PDF is searchable. My students who use the PDF and iBook versions report that they like being able to search for topics. read more

As with any textbook, minor errors have made their way into the book. However, unlike most textbooks, it is simple for anyone to submit a correction, so these errors are corrected more efficiently than can be done for most textbooks. To submit a correction, 1. Navigate to openstax.org/subjects, 2. Click on the cover of the book for which you would like to submit a correction., 3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Suggest a correction" link., 4. Complete the following page as thoroughly as possible. It is possible to see the resolution of every correction suggested over the entire history of the book when it was initially published in 2012 at: https://www.openstaxcollege.org/textbooks/biology/errata.

Every summer, a new PDF of Biology is released and print stock is updated for the following Fall. Release notes, available to instructors only, indicates all changes and corrections from the most recent release.

This book covers the fundamental concepts of biology well and asks appropriate questions at the ends of chapters, and therefore has staying power. It also is relatively current, and includes some relatively recent knowledge, but the time for a major update is approaching. For example, at the time of this review in December 2016, statistics and citations in the book date primarily to 2012 and earlier, and some recently hot topics like CRISPR are not yet covered. The book takes a historical approach to dealing with protists and is, in that respect, in need of modernization. While other recent textbooks also have taken this approach, it is important that we move forward and write textbooks that are consistent with what is well known now about evolutionary history. Certainly from the perspective of an instructor, maintaining some consistency from one semester to another is helpful, but I am hoping that future updates will not be limited to errata.

This book is written at a level that is very accessible to my college freshmen and sophomores.

The text is clear and illustrations are helpful.

Sections are numbered within chapters, which makes it easier to assign parts of chapters.

Organization is logical and clear.

This textbook is available in a variety of formats, and each is easy to use.

The text contains few grammatical errors. It was initially well-written, and has benefitted from additional suggestions and corrections by users.

The book is perfectly appropriate and not offensive. It is as culturally relevant as would be expected for an introductory biology textbook.

The answer guide available to verified instructors (verification is simple and takes about a day or two) is useful. The PowerPoint presentations are attractive and well organized.

Reviewed by Shalini Upadhyaya, Associate Professor , Reynolds Community College on 2/8/17

After having used the book for major’s biology course for the last 4 semester, I have pleased to say that I content is simple yet efficient and effective. It is provides a baseline for the essential content for a Biology course. However to meet the learning outcomes for each and individual institution extra supplement must be provided. After chapter questions give a start to learning to take the assessment but various levels of blooms taxonomy questions can be added to promote / advance the critical thinking skills. Also- for the physiology section- inclusion of various disorders based on different races and genders can be beneficial to the students. Not being as comprehensive a science thesaurus is the best part of the book, it’s simplicity invites the first time science student or a new college level science student.

Book content is accurate and reliable. For my own satisfaction- I would have liked to see the citations but lack of it does not make the book any less effective.

Text Book is relevant to the western standards. Mention of the various topics relating to the globalization of science may benefit the students coming from outside of US. Ex-Chinese use of various techniques to treat physical ailments, Syrian environmental migrants and disease they may endure as a result of their conditions.

Content is laid out in a clear and concise manner. Colored images work better for the students since I emphasize that is publisher is paying more for the color – it must be important.

Content is consistent with any basic entrance level Biology course. Due to its ease of use- chapters can be assigned out of order to tailor the individual needs. Occasionally a link to a video is not available but that is the nature of any online content and instructor should prepare to handle it accordingly.

First half of the book fits seamlessly with any generalized schedule. Second half an easily be taught out of order while keeping the integrity of the textbook order. If assigning page number it is important to remember that view online page number may not match with PDF version.

As stated in the previous sections, book is well laid out to fit the needs of any entrance level biology course.

There are no issues with the download at any time and website does reminder the reader to use the chrome or any other web browser than IE.

Book reads like an easy nonfiction science read. My audience rate it highly.

Its Science – Be bold and do include more multicultural examples- does not have enough for my audience.

Reviewed by John Lepri, Professor (Biology), University of North Carolina at Greensboro on 12/5/16

Spanning 47 chapters, the OpenStax "Biology" production is as comprehensive as its competitors. The contents list expands readily, and the names of the chapters mirrors those in the competitor texts. Each chapter has a number of small photographs,... read more

The topics that travel into an introductory biology text are topics that are rarely controversial or inadequately supported by scientific vetting.

The questions that are offered for student review of what they've learned are generally shallow and do not offer much access to ways that a student might learn more about the topics.

As an older reader, the small artwork was a challenge for me to work out, but expanding the magnification of what I see on the screen certainly helped. The written text is straightforward and easy to read, albeit sometimes disjointed, like more than one author wrote the chapter.

As noted earlier, the many authors involved in this effort makes it challenging to recognize the same "voice" presenting the background and logic of a biological concept.

With the thorough index, it should be easy for instructors and students to track sections and subsections.

The text follows the many models of material sequence available in this market.

The questions offered for students to self-test were few and under-developed. The graphics were small and not at all rich. Many more instructor resources are offered with just about any text on the market.

Easy to read. Scientists are not ones to dress up language, aiming instead to say things as precisely as possible. Some of the language is loose: "Need for osmoregulation" implies that osmoregulation happens because it needs to happen, instead of correctly stating that "osmoregulation happens" because of all the partnering proteins, the membranes, the solutes, the pumps, etc. are responsible for osmoregulation happening.,

Science is usually pretty straightforward in attempting to describe phenomena without too much interpretation or cultural "spin," and this text meets expectations in that regard.

The major textbooks in Biology offer numerous, diverse learning resources, including audience response programs, test banks, adaptive learning software, etc. This market is challenging to break into, in spite of the appeal of a "free" text. It is likely that an instructor adopting this text, seeking the best possible learning environment for her students, will use many resources from other publishers, in effect, shifting the financial backing for resources to publishers who charge considerably prices to access their products.

Reviewed by Pat Boleyn, Adjunct Faculty, Lane Community College on 8/21/16

The text is comprehensive in its coverage of the typical materials for a non-majors introductory biology course at the 100 level. It has a good online index that is searchable. read more

The text is comprehensive in its coverage of the typical materials for a non-majors introductory biology course at the 100 level. It has a good online index that is searchable.

The content of the text does have some inaccurate sections. For example, the terrestrial biomes section on temperate forests has some information that is omitted and therefore is misleading.

The content appears up to date, especially in the genetics section which changes so rapidly. It does not however include the latest information on gene editing. The online format should make it easy to update.There are no peer reviewed references for each chapter so there is no way to know that the material is scientifically accurate. The student can use references to look up additional material. Also, the glossary has terms that are not fully defined.

The text is written well, but covers some of the more complex topics too quickly and with too few examples for the introductory student. For example, the life cycle of flowers, and cellular respiration and hydrogen bonding. These are some tough topics for students that could be explained more clearly with more examples.

The text is mostly consistent however, they have provided the square for accessing videos, and also provide a link to videos, but sometimes the link to the videos is not available on a pc computer. Also, some of the links to learning don’t work, such as for the second part of glycolysis link. Finally, some chapters have abstracts and other chapter don’t. The abstracts are a good concise summary of what the chapter intends

The text is easily divisible into smaller reading sections just by including the link to the text in a syllabus and specifiying which sections need to be read. The only issue is that the chapter numbers and pages differ between the pdf and the read online versions.

The book is very well organized, with all of the typical topics for non-majors biology classes present. There is consistency with the presentation in each of the chapters with the art inserts and the glossary and test questions.

The book downloads easily, and can be viewed and searched online easily. The art is well done and has clear images that are well labeled. The figures have a hyperlink in the text that the student can click on. Some of the videos for the pc computer, cannot be accessed however. Sometimes a link will bring the reader to a website, and not directly to the learning video or animation. That is confusing.

The book's grammar seems to be good. I did not detect any major errors.

The only part of the text that could be offensive are in the links to the advertisements that are part of the videos links to concepts covered in the text. Some of these are laced with ads that might indicate endorsement by a school or faculty and could be offensive to a student. There could be more cultural references in the examples of careers sections.

Yes, my other comments are as follows: 1. There are no citations within the text to reference where the facts in the text were researched. 2. There is no list of references at the end of each chapter to the literature. 3. Their art connections have good diagrams 4. It is good to be able to search the documents easily because they are online. 5. The links to learning videos are often from utube with no evidence that they come from scientific peer reviewed sources. Also, many of the videos are laced with advertisements that a faculty or a student could find offensive. The ads might indicate endorsement by a faculty or school for certain corporations for example. 6. Some of the figures credit the authors, yet the authors are not listed in the reference section of the text, so there is no way to confirm their credibility or to look them up. 7. The career connections are good sections that help students relate what they are learning to the job market. 8. Good to have a glossary at the end of each chapter but the definitions could have more depth and research. 9. The chemistry chapter and many others have animations to help teach concepts that are better learned through visualizations, but some chapters do not have interactive animations that are very helpful in learning tough concepts like chemical bonding, building a molecule or diffusion and osmosis. These concepts are best taught with interactive animations that allow the student to try different responses and then get immediate feedback on whether they were correct or not. Also, some of these basic concepts are essential to build upon as the student reads through the text. 10. They have provided the square for accessing videos, and also provide a link to videos, but sometimes the link to the videos is not available on a pc computer. 11. Some of the links to learning don’t work, such as for the second part of glycolysis link. 12. Some chapters have abstracts and other chapter don’t. The abstracts are a good concise summary of what the chapter intends. 13. Some of the sources for the videos are Wikimedia which may not be produced or edited by scientifically credible authors or creators. 14. The section on the terrestrial biomes discusses only the temperate forests of the eastern part of the U.S. There is no discussion of the temperate forests on the west coast. The section on temperate forests is actually inaccurate in spots, stating that deciduous trees are dominant in this biome, and omitting the fact that coniferous forest are also dominant in these forests.

Reviewed by Ken Carloni, Assoc. Professor, Science Dept. Chair, Umpqua Community College on 8/21/16

Content Depth: A- The depth of content is largely appropriate for a 200-level Biology class. All texts tend to emphasize some areas over others, and this is no exception. Joint and body movement illustrations and descriptions are very detailed... read more

Content Depth: A-

The depth of content is largely appropriate for a 200-level Biology class. All texts tend to emphasize some areas over others, and this is no exception. Joint and body movement illustrations and descriptions are very detailed while important concepts like “trophic cascade” are not included at all. Fick’s Law is missing, but pgs. 1171-2 are covered with weakly explained equations and values in mm Hg. I would like to see that section on gas pressure and respiration simplified to its principles with some better (and correctly labeled) graphics. Ecosystem concepts range from excellent to shallow (or none). Nitrogen fixation and plant defenses are not well explained, and “deamination” and “cation exchange” don’t come up in a search. But most other areas well-done -- but i will be looking for supplemental material for those concepts.

Accuracy: A-

Only issues I've found are in the accuracy of illustrations -- several are mis-labeled.

Relevance: A-

"Connection" sections (except for "Art") were for the most part excellent and bridged concepts with real-world issues.

Mostly written in a clear efficient style, but some chapters had organizational problems (see above).

I never noticed any obvious inconsistencies in terminology that affected understanding.

Continuity: B

Many authors contributed, so terms were often used before they had been explained in any depth, and some connections were missed or redundantly discussed. For example the term “collagen” appears well before it is described in any detail, and viruses were presented before chapters on molecular genetics. This is inevitable to some extent in any text, but the editors have some smoothing out to do.

Organization: B+

This text was broken into subjects similar to other textbooks, so converting my study guides to match OpenStax was usually fairly straightforward. I’m used to seeing A&P chapters laid out from an evolutionary perspective (e.g. organisms with simple diffusion through countercurrent flow) and then using human systems as examples. Some chapters were confusing when there were brief intros to some clades, then human A&P, and then more animal systems. Ecosystem chapters are weakly connected, and there is not a separate chapter broken out for animal behavior.

Interface rating: 1

Graphics: C

Fairly clunky art program. My students do a lot of Google image searching to supplement graphics. This would have gotten a slightly higher grade had so many labels been misapplied. I’m sure labeling will get fixed in the next revision that will be available soon. Art program is adequate but not inspiring.

Ease of Use: A+

Any student who can download Acrobat can search for vocabulary terms I assign. This is a boon to both students looking for a term I've assigned, and to me when I'm re-working my concept study guides.

In my first year of using this OER, I regret to report that I didn’t have time to explore the links embedded in the text. But I applaud the effort and appreciate that they are there to use as I settle in to the new text.

I didn't notice any glaring problems.

Cultural Relevance: A I never came across anything that looked culturally offensive to this white guy. I appreciated the occasional career connection boxes.

Overall Grade: B+

This is a laudable grade for the first iteration of an enormous community project. I used this text for my 3-term majors' sequence, and although one class does not make a trend, my students turned in the highest grades of any class I've taught in my 29 year career.

Reviewed by Jennifer Doherty, Senior Lecturer, University of Washington on 8/21/16

Comprehensiveness rating: 1 see less

This books covers the minimal basics, but not in great detail and isn't comprehensive by any means. There is no theme of how science works or is done. It is mostly a long long list of descriptive paragraphs. I reviewed the book for use in the "Plant Form and Function" aspect of Majors introductory biology and concluded I could not use this book. I was going to also review it for "Animal Form and Function" but the quality was so poor I decided not to spend my time. I did look at the OpenStax A&P book and it looked like it would do for the "Animal Form and Function" aspects of introductory biology.

Topic completely missing from the book or coverage is so poor it is unusable, in my analysis were: From photosynthesis: cyclic reaction in photosynthesis, CAM and C4 photosynthetic adaptations, Fate of triose-P after Calvin Cycle, Any regulation of photosynthesis From nutrient and water uptake transport: root absorption, cation exchange, active transport into root hair From Plant Sensory: Pathogen defense, Herbivory defense, Electrical signalling, Auxin transport, Acid growth hypothesis, Auxin regulated gene expression From Flowering: Circadian rhythm biology, Photoperiod detection, ABC model

Seemed fine.

The examples do not seem modern. Climate change was not well covered. AAAS's Vision and Change concepts and competencies were not a theme in the book.

Seemed good. Very easy to browse and assign in pcs.

Was very standard but very little in the way of main themes

Good, easy to navigate and use Ctrl-F to search a page.

Seemed good.

I really like the model of open and free materials and admire the work, but the quality is really low.

Reviewed by Meagan Harless, instructor, Winona State University on 8/21/16

The text covers essential content in sufficient detail for an introductory and/or non-majors biology survey type course. Many topics are covered at a moderate level of depth with additional links provided to content from other sections of the text in the 'connections' sections. There is coverage of all levels of organization and no bias is evident in coverage of molecular versus ecological topics. A typical concern with introductory texts is a lack of coverage in ecological concepts and this text does well in representing all aspects well. The authors cover the basics of each subject well within each section and unit. Section headings and learning objectives are useful in breaking up the material into smaller, more digestible components. I would not suggest adding more subjects and I appreciate the depth of coverage in the text giving the instructor the option to choose which sections to focus on in their courses. Glossary terms, chapter summaries, and chapter reading questions are a welcome study tool for students. The index is comprehensive yet lists multiple links to many terms in the pdf version. It would be better to list these after a single entry for each term. Also, capitalization of terms is not uniform throughout the index.

Topic coverage on was accurate for the majority of subjects presented. Few minor errors are present in some materials. Sections should be revised to ensure figures link closely to text content and do well in demonstrating important concepts.

Overall, a timely discussion of modern issues is demonstrated well throughout the text. The authors did well in presenting multiple controversial topics within numerous sections throughout the book. These are helpful in linking the topics covered to real world issues. These are presented well with all sides considered. Discussion of modern genetics is appropriate in detail. It is refreshing to see a discussion of epigenetics in detail as this is often missing from upper level genetics text books. Formatting issues are numerous throughout and a uniform layout would be a welcomed addition to each section and should include a link to current events in biology.

The descriptions explanations are well-written at an appropriate level for lower level biology and non-majors courses. The text does a great job of discussing important terms in sufficient detail and avoids extensive jargon. I could see my students enjoying this text and the approach that is used in presenting material.

Chapter and section content is consistent throughout. The sections and chapter headings are well organized throughout and set up an easy to follow format for students. Some minor formatting issues would help in the visual presentation but the framework is easy to follow and constant in each section.

I really enjoy that the learning objectives are broken down by section to facilitate the discussion of one or more sections at a time rather than the entire chapter content. I think students will appreciate this breakdown and it will help to avoid overwhelming them with new material. The information in each unit is well organized and follows the levels of biological organization well. I appreciate the approach in using multiple, short chapters instead of fewer, longer chapters as I find students (particularly in non-majors) courses tend to get overwhelmed with longer reading assignments.

The flow of the text as it begins at lower levels of biological organization and moves up to the highest levels follows a typical format of many introductory texts. This is well done and contributes to student learning as concepts will build upon one another as higher levels of organization are discussed. This structure is also attractive to instructors as it allows us the freedom to pick and choose textbook content to assign.

Images and figures need revision as many are displaying with poor resolution in the pdf version. Figures should be introduced after text throughout each section. The 'Link to Learning' sections would better flow at the end of the section or in a sidebar. Additional colors in the background and/or headings would help break up the material. In the pdf version there were also many blank sections and pages. The format od each section should be consistent across reading platforms.

The text reads well with no blatant grammatical errors.

No culturally insensitive or offensive material was encountered. I appreciate the discussion of controversial topics as well as the career links that introduce students to multiple facets of biology. I enjoyed the broad presentation of biologists of numerous backgrounds as well as inclusion of multiple female scientists.

- Many figures appear blurry in the pdf version of the text. This is distracting in trying to tie the figure into the associated text. - The color scheme throughout should be softened and include different colors for major and minor headings. - Figures (in the pdf version at least) should not be placed directly under new title headings but should be introduced after the reference text has been presented (i.e., figures 1.13 and 1.14). - The 'Link to Learning' sections should be in a footnote or sidebar as they are distracting in the main body of the text. - Figures should not cross multiple pages (i.e., figure 1.16 in pdf version). - Biological levels should begin at the atomic level (Figure 1.16).

Reviewed by Mark Platta, Faculty , Central Lakes College on 1/7/16

Biology was very comprehensive in its covering of general biology topics and the "Link to Learning" feature allows the learner to expand the concept. Often these links provide cutting edge insight into both the research and application to make the... read more

My review of the text found no errors and it appeared in every since to follow the standard for a quality general biology text.

With an online text the capability of providing updates in a timely fashion would appear to be easily accomplished. Often in printed textbooks the material can be outdated by several years.

The text is easy to read and flows nicely. Definitions and examples for terminology are provided by several means; within the body of the text, key terms, tables, examples and through Link to Learning.

The text itself is consistent from chapter to chapter, utilizing the Link to Learning feature within the text however opens up a portal to knowledge that could easily draw the learner off task.

The information of the text is nicely proportioned into manageable sections with allows the reader to pause and contemplate the material just presented.

The topics follow the fairly standard structure of a inclusive general biology text.

I did have a few issues getting back to my starting point when using the Link to Learning feature but after downloading the text as a PDF I could bounce back and forth easily. I found no problems with the links within in the text and I was surprised by this since I myself often have issues year to year with broken links. A few images had some distortion of text.

I did not find any errors with the text.

The text wast not culturally insensitive of offensive and when used examples where cultural diverse throughout the text.

With failing vision reading from a standard text book requires good lighting and magnification. Having a downloadable online text allows me and others the ability to adjust light intensity and size easily on the monitor. For me this could not have come at a better time in my life. I loved the Link to Learning, I have used a number of the linked sites in my courses however it did open up a world of other valuable sites.

Reviewed by Ashley Gramza, Instructor, Colorado State University on 1/7/16

This textbook is extremely comprehensive, almost too comprehensive. However, I now realize that instructors are encouraged to cut irrelevant material and use relevant material to their coursework. Biology is an extremely broad subject area to cover and the authors do a great job of covering topics as diverse as general chemistry to biodiversity conservation. Furthermore, for students who will only be taking one year of biology, I am confident that using this textbook will give them a broad overview of the field and introduce them to more specific topics that could help them in any major or career.

I thought that the authors did a great job of providing unbiased scientifically based information in this textbook. Furthermore, authors did not avoid controversial topics, but instead try to present all sides of scientific debates or discussions, distilling information in a way that is easy to understand for students just starting college. I did not find any inaccuracies or errors in my review of this textbook.

This textbook did a great job of presenting seminal, historical research as well as using examples and illustrations from today to explain biological concepts and theories. It's hard to say how quickly these current examples will become obsolete, but this would be a problem with any textbook that uses current examples. Most of the current research examples just serve to further elaborate or explain a concept and thus many examples would still be relevant even if the theories or studies became outdated.

I had absolutely no problem understanding the content in this textbook. Reading this textbook was remarkably easy and smooth which is much different than the textbooks I remember reading for general biology when I was an undergraduate. Authors also do a great job of explaining complex ideas through case studies, diagrams, and videos. I think this question would be more appropriate to ask students after they use this textbook for class.

Each chapter and subsections within each chapter are set up similarly with chapter glossaries, summaries, and questions occurring at the end of each chapter. I did not notice any inconsistencies in this set-up or within terms.

Each chapter and sections within chapters can easily stand alone and be assigned at any point within the semester without much problem. However, the textbook is set up to explain the subject of biology starting from broad (chemistry/building blocks of life) to specific (organ systems) and going from simple (cells) to complex (ecology) and therefore could easily be assigned sequentially as well. I encountered almost no places in the textbook that reference previous or later sections of the textbook. For the most part, large blocks of text are broken up with a plethora of photos, graphs, diagrams, and inset boxes.

The textbook is broadly set-up to explain the subject of biology starting from broad (chemistry/building blocks of life) to specific (organ systems) and going from simple (cells) to complex (ecology) and therefore is structured in a way that inherently builds off of the concepts from previous chapters. Many biology textbooks seem to be set up this way and I think this organization makes the material flow well. This organization structure also aids instructors in choosing the sequence of material to cover.

I had a few problems with the textbook interface while reading it on Adobe Acrobat reader. Some of the charts and photos were a bit pixelated, but it didn't detract too much to the meaning of these photos/charts. Furthermore, some of the links that take readers to additional multimedia features do not work. To fix this, I would recommend that authors periodically check and change these links accordingly. I also found many random blank pages and some font size/style inconsistencies. Further, some comprehension questions at the end of chapters would continue on the next page making it hard to understand what the answer choices were. I would also recommend reminding readers where the answers to the comprehension questions can be found (i.e. at the end of the book). Specifically stating which pages the specific answers could be found would be even better.

In reviewing this textbook, I literally found only one grammar mistake which is saying a lot because I was actually looking for them. This single grammar mistake was found on pg. 1443, after the 2nd word of the last paragraph. There is a second, random "s" after the word success.

I commend authors on their inclusion of the political and cultural issues and ramifications of certain biological concepts such as biodiversity conservation and eugenics. There is even a mention of the importance of integrating social science research into biological research and authors mention how traditional ecological knowledge was used to help biologists understand the sin nombre hantavirus discovery. Authors also mention many ways that biological studies can help society. On a more negative note, a reference was made to "hard" and "soft" sciences with biology being called a "hard" or quantitative science which was identified as different from the more qualitative or "soft" social sciences. Using the terms soft and hard to differentiate between biological and social sciences simply furthers the divide between the two and also imparts a value judgment where "soft" sciences are not viewed as rigorous or quantitative as biological sciences. In truth, both fields are equally rigorous and important, they just study different parts of our world.

I was pleasantly surprised at how interesting and easy this book was to read. I thoroughly enjoyed it! I learned quite a bit myself from reading it, and I look forward to teaching courses where I can use this book's material to help explain concepts in biology.

Reviewed by Lisa Turnbull, Instructor, Lane Community College on 1/7/16

This text is fairly comprehensive. There are a few areas that I am pleasantly surprised by the detail included, but other areas where I am a little surprised to see detail lacking. read more

This text is fairly comprehensive. There are a few areas that I am pleasantly surprised by the detail included, but other areas where I am a little surprised to see detail lacking.

I didn't see any major flaws.

All of the websites mentioned in the text do make me a little nervous. The basic content doesn't seem to be at any more risk of becoming dated that a traditional text.

Better written than some, but I can tell they haven't spent large sums of money on editing. I like that the chapters are fairly short.

This is one of the more consistent open ed resources I've seen.

Modularity is good! Clear subtitles and logically arranged chapters.

I think most reasonably flexible instructors would not find the organization to clash with the organization of their course.

I haven't had issues using the interface. I primarily used PDF copies, but did spend one day using the online version without issues.

I did not find issues.

I didn't see anything that made this book more or less culturally relevant than other texts. I was pleased that key female scientists were mentioned.

Overall, I think it is a good text. The major limitation I see is that there are fewer and lower quality images than with other texts I've used. I could see having to recreate a few key figures to use this textbook.

Reviewed by Irving Allen, Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech on 6/10/15

This is a very comprehensive textbook that provides an appropriate balance between the different fields of biology. The textbook explains very complex topics in a comprehensive manner and appears to be designed for early term biology and associated science majors. The book is well organized and the table of contents is through to allow students the ability to quickly view each topic covered. Overall, this textbook is more comprehensive than other books by the same authors, covers each topic well, and expands upon topics not covered in the “Concepts of Biology” textbook. However, while more topics are covered in the “Biology” textbook, the amount of comprehensiveness for each Chapter is only minimally expanded from the “Concepts of Biology” textbook. The key terms and review questions for each chapter are excellent and the answers to the review questions are provided. However, the answers are difficult to quickly locate as they are listed in paragraph format, rather than organized as a list. The textbook also offers access to a variety of “Learning Resources” and various real world “Connection” sub-topics that are highly useful and complemented the material provided in each chapter.

Overall, the text is accurate. There are several instances of subtle inaccuracies, which is expected in any textbook. Thus, this textbook is comparable to the majority of its peer “traditional” books. In many cases, the book is written in very simplistic terms, which is likely designed to hold the readers interest. In some cases, the inconsistencies appear to be associated with oversimplification. The Figures in the textbook are also generally accurate. However, some have low resolution, which makes their interpretation difficult.

The textbook contains current information and up-dated material. As with any science textbook, periodic revisions will be necessary for many of the units. The textbook also has an assortment of web links that will need to be maintained.

The writing is well done, with minimal jargon. When jargon is used, it is well defined and the meaning is clear. The material is presented in an engaging manner and should hold the student’s attention. There is a nice, seamless transition between sections contributed by different authors. This is commonly a distraction that is minimized in this textbook.

The textbook is quite consistent from Chapter-to-Chapter. In general, the terminology and nomenclature is consistent throughout the book.

The format of the Textbook is highly modular. In general, each Unit/Chapter could stand alone is independent from the textbook as a whole.

The textbook is well organized and flows in a logical manner. The unit and chapter breakdown was very well done and organized appropriately.

The interfaces were either excellent or poor. The bar codes associated with each “Link to Learning” were fantastic and an excellent addition to the textbook to add additional information. Likewise, the inclusion of the Chapter Summaries and Key Word definitions were highly beneficial. The Review Questions and Critical Thinking questions were excellent and very useful to reinforce the content. However, the “Art Connection” figures, in general, were very low resolution and many appeared blurry and difficult to read. The coloration of these figures should also be improved for contrast.

In general, I did not locate any grammatical errors.

No cultural issues were noted in the textbook.

Overall, this is a well assembled textbook that would be highly appropriate for an introductory biology course for majors. There are a few issues with image resolution; however, this was only a minor concern. This is a very nice textbook.

Reviewed by Robert Sorensen, Professor, Minnesota State University Mankato on 6/10/15

The 8 units this textbook, chemistry through ecology, sufficiently cover the range of topics that would be covered in an Introductory Biology series of courses.The order in which topics are addressed follows the common approach of building from the simplest level of organization up to the highest level. Within each chapter, the fundamental concepts and principles are addressed in a factual manner. At times, it seems too little effort is devoted to explaining the relevance, context, or complexity of the concepts and principles. Having said that, I need to add that a major complaint I have of the most widely used introductory textbooks for Biology majors is that too much attention is focused on trying to provide that context, which makes the essential facts more difficult for some students to grasp. Whereas those books provide too much information, which can overwhelm, I wonder if this book could be a little too scant, which may make the facts feel irrelevant. That being said, a knowledgeable instructor should be able to provide that context and, not having the authors' context in the text, may make the naive students' path through the material less overwhelming.

I found the information presented in this book to be accurate, up-to-date, and consistent with the most widely held scientific opinions on the topics. This was especially noteworthy in the diversity of life chapters, where contemporary taxonomic titles are used rather than the more widely recognized historical names and groups that are currently outdated.

This book is written in a manner that it's content will remain relevant long into the future, although I suspect motivated instructors who adopt this book will quickly adapt it to fit their viewpoint on the relevance of topics. The fact that it is open source textbook, allows it to be readily modified or updated by individual instructors. So long as those instructors follow the expectations of the Creative Commons license of the text, their is great potential for this book or instructor-modified versions of it, to remain relevant indefinitely. The facts that are presented are unlikely to change to an extent that would require a major revision any time soon.

As I mentioned earlier, I have concerns about the "facts only" approach that is used in some of the sections I reviewed. For instance, in the cell reproduction chapter, the metaphase, anaphase, and telophase sections are each described using just 3 sentences. Everything in those sentences is accurate and easy to comprehend, but what seems lacking to me is an explanation of the relevance of the processes that are being described. Reading those sections alone would seem to reinforce memorization of the details rather than an understanding of the relevance process.

Although this book had 6 Senior Contributors and a large number of Faculty Contributors, the editing was done in a manner that kept the framework and terminology consistent throughout the book.

This book has a degree of modularity that should readily accommodate a variety of approaches for covering its topics

This book follow the traditional, and most widely used, manner of organization for the sequence of chapters and topics, which allows for a logical flow of content.

The interface is trouble-free. The links that I clicked to external sites all worked well. Navigation within the digital book was problem-free. Images, tables, and boxes were all presented well and without distortion.

The sentence structure and paragraph flow and logical and easy to follow. The factual context of the writing made for very quick reading.

I found no evidence of cultural insensitivity. In fact in the first chapter, the second image that contained a person, showed researchers excavating a paleontological site in Spain.

I found the illustrations to be very instructive and easy to interpret. They are a strength of this text and, in many places, serve as the focus for the author's discussion of the topic. They aren't just in the book, they are incorporated into the discussion. I also found the external links to be extremely beneficial and well selected. The capacity to have external links embedded within a digital textbook can be a real strength for reinforcing content. Overall, I found this to be an exceptional textbook option for the cost. That being said, I am still on the fence about whether I am ready to adopt this textbook for my introductory biology course base on the brevity of their discussion and strict factual manner in which some key concepts are presented.

Reviewed by Jessalyn Sabin, Instructor, Hibbing Community College on 6/10/15

This textbook was comprehensively organized and populated with topics. It covered all of the subject areas that my current General Biology textbook covers. Some current topics, such as epigenetics and biotechnology, were covered very well and will be easily updateable. In some instances, I felt that certain topics, such as stem cell research, were not given much coverage, but the overall coverage was excellent. It would be easy for the instructor to build off the foundation that was laid out in the text.

The online version has additional organizational features that connect glossary terms with each subsection, rather than an entire chapter or even at the end of the book. With the downloaded pdf or (I am assuming) the printed text version, the glossary comes at the end of the chapter. I personally prefer the section-by-section glossary, as students can immediately look up terms, rather than flipping back and forth. Additionally, with the online version, students could see what unit, chapter, and subsection they were within, as it becomes highlighted in the table of contents at the top.

One aspect of this book that I feel was done very well was the coverage of the scientific method and the manner in which this was tied into subsequent chapters again and again. I don't think that can be stressed enough; science is a way of thinking and approaching problems. The small text-box presentations of examples of the scientific method throughout the book were well executed.

There were a variety of small errors in content matter, which included some small mislabeling and repetition of images. Some terms were utilized in strange ways, and I felt some of the definitions could be altered a little to be more precise. I did not notice any bias towards or against historical studies, current topics, research, or ideas made apparent. Some other errors included some minor semantics issues within a few of the chapters, including the genetics and immune system chapters. I personally do not find those to be too distracting since this book would be utilized in a beginning course, although I do feel they should be addressed to avoid misinformation.

Content is very up-to-date, and I did check out how frequently the content was altered (it mentions this at the bottom of the online version). The content is changed very frequently- my one concern would be if these changes were major, how would that influence the ease-of-use for those students that download and print or order a text copy? I also think that the links to external resources may be difficult to maintain, although I did spot-check those and the links were all good. These included sites such as Khan Academy.

Small changes to update the Evolution Connection and Everyday Connection sections would be simple enough to do, and these small boxed-in sections contain some of the current events and applications to each chapter. The Career Connections sections are a nice addition that students will be able to explore when considering career possibilities in science.

This text was written in a more straight-forward manner than my current text that I am using. I felt the order in which the authors approached topics was intuitive to how a student might learn the topic. Much of the time, the text took on a more conversational tone than I was expecting, which I feel will appeal to readers. There was also links to videos and tutorials which more fully explained some of the more difficult topics in a visual and/or audio dimension. These were accessible with a QR reader for the offline versions. The online version also linked the figures to the text itself, so students could click the referenced figure and have it appear as they were reading.

I only felt that the jargon got to be a little technical in some of the genetics unit, especially within Genes and Proteins and Gene Expression. That is where students struggle anyway, and it would have been nice to have a little more clarity at that point. The terms sometimes can be used before they are fully defined, and some of the figures appeared before the text, which can be confusing to students as they pace through the book.

The tone of the book seems fairly consistent across chapters. There is not a clear transition of voice from author to author, which is good. There is little consistency in the images- some ar every nicely edited and some are difficult to see. If you enter into a new tab, you can see the images better in some cases, but this may not be the case for those that print out the book.

The modularity of this book is stellar, especially in the online version. Each unit contains chapters that have subsections that are easy to find and pull apart. The instructor will easily be able to present topics in the order in which they prefer. The text is very self-definitive, and it would be easy to read a section on its own, save for perhaps the genetics sections, which are a little trickier. However, the likelihood of an instructor assigning those subsections at random is very low, so I don't think it would be a problem. Intermittently, the text refers to itself, which could be an issue if one has not read the previous information, but this is not frequent.

In general, the topics in the text are presented in a logical order, with more basic ideas coming before more complex ones. Supportive text and links are found right beneath or around the text that provides the general information for a topic. There were a few times that a figure came before some of the text that would have explained certain aspects of that figure a little more, but this was infrequent. At the end of the text, it would have been nice to pair Plant Structure and Function with the plant diversity chapters in the previous unit, and likewise for the Animal Structure and Function. This is fairly common in most textbooks, but many General Biology courses will cover the plant unit and the animal unit in two distinct parts of the course.

The links within the text are all good, as well as the images, which can by sized-up for ease of reading. Some of the online-version images seemed small at first, so they did need to be opened in a new tab, but that was easily accomplished and did not disrupt or confuse me as the reader. As I have mentioned in a previous section, the online version has a table of contents above the text that highlights where you are in the book: by unit, chapter, and subsection. Links are clearly visible yet subtle, and the small Evolution Connection boxes and the like are small enough to not disrupt the flow of the regular text.

The images themselves could use some work, in a few instances. There were also some chapters that were sparse of images, including the genetics unit - in particular the information about cancer. I would have liked to see more surrounding that topic in the way of images, and even information.

The book did not contain blatant grammatical errors, although sometimes there were words that were defined that perhaps did not need to be. For instance, serendipity is defined right away on page 22, which I thought was odd to define that in a Biology text.

Images in the text included a variety of people from different races and backgrounds. When talking about inherited disorders and conditions, the authors were straight-forward and sensitive with jargon related to those topics, which can read as offensive if done thoughtlessly. Within the evolution section, no outwardly offensive material was presented that would make conversations difficult with students of a variety of belief systems.

I was surprised by how easy-to-use and thorough this text was. I am seriously considering transitioning to this text from my much more expensive versions that I currently require. This text will get a General Biology student through just fine, and I think that students will appreciate how accessible the links and external content is.

Reviewed by Kristyn VanderWaal, Faculty, Anoka Technical College on 6/10/15

If you are looking for a majors level textbook that covers all the content covered in the vast majority of first semester biology course, this will work for you. The content, as least in the chapters I cover, is extremely similar to my current majors level text (Campbell Biology 10th Ed., Reece et. al.). A few differences I would like to highlight. One, the figures are sometimes bare-bones. While the content is there, they are not as “elegant” as one would find from a mainstream publisher (for example, the illustrations of the cell are 2-dimensional). This may actually help students, as the “elegant” figures are sometimes distracting for students anyhow. Two, some chapters simplify explanations. In some cases this is good. For example, in the photosynthesis chapter, the explanation of the light reactions is much more straightforward than in my book. I think students would grasp the concept better. But, in the case of mitosis, the lack of a good figure of the mitotic spindle is notable.

I know that several other reviewers commented on errors they found in this textbook. I will not argue with them, as those errors may be within their field of expertise. However, I firmly believe that these small errors are mainly in sections that would not be covered in most one-semester courses, and could easily be clarified by the professor if they were covered. I read the chapters I would cover quite carefully, and did not find any errors of note.

Most of the material taught in introductory biology courses has not changed in the last 15-20 years and this book is certainly up to date. I liked that current research examples were used, such as HPV infected cells in the cell division chapter, and neurons from Huntington’s patients in the Mendelian genetics chapter. I thought the biotechnology chapter was particularly good, and better that my current textbook, which is not the most up to date, even in the newest edition. Plus, the book could easily be updated in this open source format.

As a longtime user of a textbook that is well-respected by biologists and other colleges, but a struggle for many introductory science students to read, this book was a breath of fresh air! I think students will find it easy and straightforward to read. The sentence structure and vocabulary beyond the scientific terms are simple enough that even ESL college students should be able to glean information.

Mostly, the internal text seems consistent. However, they are inconsistent in the quality of the website links. One aspect I really like of the text is all of the website links built right into the chapters. After each section, you can click the link and it brings you to a relevant video, activity, etc. Some are terrific, and worth a student spending time there to better understand the material. Others are not as worthwhile, and may even solidify commonly believed biological myths. (For example, a link to the genetics of human eye-color exercise inaccurately depicts human eye color as a two-gene character).

There is not much to say here. The book is perfectly fine in its modularity and is similar to most other biology textbooks.

I have no special comments for this metric. The organization is on par with other majors level biology texts.

I did not find any issues with the interface, and especially liked the option of reading it online. I think students would also like this option. Any issues present must be pretty minor.

There is no reason to dwell on this metric, as the grammar and English were fine in all the chapters I read.

This is a science textbook, so there are very few places to talk about other cultures and ethnicities. I did not find any obvious examples of insensitive or offensive language.

After comparing this text to my current majors-level textbook, I would strongly recommend this text with a 4 star rating. I do have one other caveat: I had difficulty finding and accessing instructor resources. If you are a competent instructor who tends to use the textbook as a supplemental resource for your students, rather than the main way of obtaining information, this will meet your needs. I tried several times to access the “Instructor Power Points” that are supposedly available, and I could not get the website to work. Before I adopt this text, I would really like to see the quality of these resources. Also, a new professor may find the lack of a test bank of questions tough, as they will end up shouldering the majority of the test-writing job.

Reviewed by Tobili Sam-Yellowe, Professor, Cleveland State University on 1/12/15

The text covers all areas of biology appropriate for first year biology students. Key terms are defined at the end of each chapter. A comprehensive index is provided at the end of the text. Answers to text and chapter questions are also provided. read more

The content of the text is generally accurate but not uniformly. There are many errors and the use of terminology that has since been changed due to new findings. Also newer information is missing in some of the chapters. I have cited a few examples In fig 2.19, human blood should be included in the pH scale. In Fig 3.12 "Hydrophobic lipids" is redundant. In Fig 5.4 a new illustration of bilayer is needed because the current diagram is not very clear. In Fig 5.11 the diagram depicting osmosis is misleading due to the depiction of the height of water following its movement across the membrane. On pg. 91 indicate that majority of enzymes are proteins and also include a discussion of ribozymes; specify that enzymes are biological catalysts and affect the rate of reactions by increasing the rate of reaction. In chapter 42, both B and T cells play significant roles in immune responses. The concept of T suppressor subsets has been changed and regulatory T, B, DC and NK populations have been described and shown to have immune suppressive and regulatory functions. It is not clear what the authors mean by the subheading "Cytokine Release Affect". Chemokines are not discussed. They should be discussed along with cytokines. In the complement pathway, the lectin pathway is missing. In chapter 34, there is no discussion of phytonutrients. The majority of "Art Connection Figures" throughout the text are difficult to read, labeling is poor and the font used either has shadows or is extremely blurry. The relevance of the opening figures to the chapter content is not always obvious. Among the three domains, the archaea are not given adequate treatment. There is very little discussion of this domain in the text. These and many more errors and omissions can be corrected by a revision of the text and replacement of figures.

The text content is generally relevant and up-to-date. Material is presented in an engaging way with practical examples that students can easily relate to. However, because of the errors and the use of terms that no longer apply, students may become easily confused and this could affect the longevity of the text. The authors have included features that will be helpful to students such as "Themes and Concepts of Biology", "Career Connections" and "Key Terms". The lay out of the text may not allow easy updates. Sections will need to be fully revised to provide updates of text and figures. Inclusion of new landmark scientific discoveries will be useful.

Overall the writing is clear. However, each of the chapters could use a clearer transition from the opening of the chapter to the main chapter content. There is unevenness in accessibility across chapters. The units on evolutionary processes (unit 4), biological diversity (unit 5) and ecology (unit 8), are hard to follow and may confuse students. Chapter introductions need to be specific on what will be covered. The introductory material needs to provide recall or review of previously covered material so that students are not constantly referring back to previous chapters in order to comprehend the new material. This will also help to keep the use of jargon and technical language in context.

Terminology and organization is consistent. More review and recall of key terminology and concepts should be provided in each chapter. Also the writing style needs to be kept the same throughout the text.

Text modularity is good. Sections can be used individually. However, as the text reads currently, some "self-referencing" will be necessary to maintain connections among chapters and between sections within chapters.

Overall the topics are presented logically and students can follow. However, chapter contents need to be revised for clarity and new figures are needed to help students make connections between what is presented in the text and the figures. Due to the challenging nature of the subject, figures can help students understand concepts better when the figures are clear and unambiguous. The structure of the text is similar to most text books for this level of biology and the units are divided appropriately.

Majority of the figures and charts in the "Art Connection Figures" are very difficult to read. The labeling is not clear in many figures, the font type is distracting, labels have shadows, and they are distorted or blurry. Also, some figures are too crowded, the choice of colors is distracting and the figures have no depth. For example, Figs. 4.8, 5.4, 5.19, 33.21, 33.23, 34.19, 40.17, 38.38, 41.13, 41,13, 42.11, 43.15, 43.17, 46.6, 46.10; there are many more examples like these.

The text reads well and has no grammatical errors. There are typographical errors that can be easily corrected during a revision.

There are no cultural insensitivities or biases in the text.

Reviewed by Kate Pettem, Instructor, Biology, Camosun College on 10/9/13

The text is well-written and easy to read and understand. read more

The text is well-written and easy to read and understand.

The textbook is aimed to provide fundamental knowledge at a general reading level. The content is up to date with no glaring and serious mistakes. However, there are several mistakes that do need to be corrected. For instance, in Figure 40.15/Page 1178, the branch after the Thoracic aorta is named the Abdominal aorta; its branches include the Celiac trunk, Superior Mesenteric artery (mistakenly labeled as Gastric artery)…, and it becomes the Common Iliac artery (mistakenly labeled as Iliac artery) …

The textbook has taken good advantage of the use of figures in describing concepts and structures. I would agree that the relevance is one of the strengths of the textbook.

The textbook may need some improvements with clarity. For instance, in Figure 41.5/page 1194, the major and minor calyces are introduced unclearly in the description and there are no labels provided to follow.

The terminology and framework are consistent throughout the whole text.

The textbook is divisible into smaller reading sections and it is self-referential.

It is acceptable for a general reading level.

The interface is acceptable. It would definitely improve the interface if there were a softer color scheme. The contrast of the colors is too strong which detracts the reader from the content.

I found there are no issues.

The majority of the photos in this textbook are images adopted from American-based resources. It may be more suitable for Canadian students if there were more images from Canada-based resources.

The content and organization of the textbook have great potential to be a popular textbook if the clarity and interface were improved. I still would not recommend my students this current version as it may not be easy to follow and is at times confusing.

Reviewed by Joan Sharp, Senior Lecturer, Simon Fraser University on 10/9/13

The text covers most necessary areas, but not always with clarity or accuracy. The index and glossary are fine. In Chapter 18, the text only includes the biological species concept, with no discussion of its weaknesses or limitations. Other... read more

The text covers most necessary areas, but not always with clarity or accuracy. The index and glossary are fine.

In Chapter 18, the text only includes the biological species concept, with no discussion of its weaknesses or limitations. Other species concepts should be included and the pros and cons of each should be discussed.

Content Accuracy rating: 2

There are a number of concepts or topics that are very poorly explained. In some cases, it appears that the authors do not fully understand them. Here are some examples; I’m sure there are many more. • On page 52, the text states, “Like hydrogen bonds, van der Waals interactions are weak attractions or interactions between molecules. Van der Waals attractions can occur between any two or more molecules and are dependent on slight fluctuations of the electron densities, which are not always symmetrical around an atom. For these attractions to happen, the molecules need to be very close to one another. These bonds, along with hydrogen bonds, help form the three-dimensional structure of the proteins in our cells that is necessary for their proper function.” In fact, interactions between R-groups on amino acids are more important than Van der Waals attractions in stabilizing 3D structure in proteins. • In Figure 5.12 and throughout the text and chapter questions, the terms hypertonic, isotonic, and hypotonic are used to describe single solutions. You cannot refer to solutions as hypertonic, isotonic, and hypotonic except in comparison to other solutions. The text and figure reinforce a common and significant student error that prevents clear understanding of this key concept. • On page 749, the text says, “In the following Cenozoic Era, mammals radiated into terrestrial and aquatic niches once occupied by dinosaurs.” No, the aquatic reptiles of the Mesozoic were not dinosaurs. Many seven-year-olds could correct the authors on this one. • On page 1304, the text states, “Animals faced with temperature fluctuations may respond with adaptations, such as migration, in order to survive.” This reinforces a common and deeply rooted student misconception that organisms adapt in order to survive. Frankly, I was surprised and appalled to see this sentence in a university level textbook. • On page 1360, the explanation of keystone species is very weak and insufficient to answer the critical thinking question at the end of the chapter. • The very brief discussion of sociobiology on page 1372 is biased, sketchy, and inaccurate: “Sociobiology also links genes with behaviors and has been associated with biological determinism, the belief that all behaviors are hardwired into our genes.” • The text generally takes a traditional approach to behavior, with insufficient discussion of behavioral ecology.

I noted quite a few examples of out of date terminology and concepts. I’m sure there are many more. • Archaea get very short shrift in this textbook. On page 30, the text says, “Many organisms belonging to the Archaea domain live under extreme conditions and are called extremophiles.” This would be fine if the text then went on to explain that we now realize that Archaea are far more widespread than previously thought, but the discussion ends there. In fact, throughout the textbook, bacteria are mentioned in contexts where bacteria and archaea should both be included. Students are generally not familiar with archaea and it seems the authors of this textbook share this lack of understanding. • On page 479, the text states that “Natural selection [is] also known as “survival of the fittest.” This outdated phrase is not challenged or revised. • The terms “warm-blooded” and “cold-blooded” are used throughout the text, e.g., page 749: “The mostly cold-blooded dinosaurs ceded their dominance of the landscape to more warm-blooded mammals.” These terms are highly inaccurate. Terrestrial vertebrates differ in the source of body heat and in the variation in temperature they experience and can tolerate, not in the temperature of their blood. The biologically accurate terms are ectothermic and endothermic. Again, this seems to reflect a lack of understanding on the part of the authors, as the inaccurate terms are used consistently. • The terms higher and lower organisms are used throughout the text. This is outdated terminology that has no place in a general biology textbook. • There are many cases in which the authors refer to plants and animals, rather than including all relevant taxa. Again, this reinforces student misconceptions and lack of familiarity with fungi, protists, and prokaryotes. Examples are found on page 27: “A community is the sum of populations inhabiting a particular area. For instance, all of the trees, flowers, insects, and other populations in a forest form the forest’s community;” in Figure 6.3: “Both plants and animals use cellular respiration to derive energy from the organic molecules originally produced by plants;” and on page 228: “Photosynthesis is essential to all life on earth; both plants and animals depend on it.” • On page 804, the text states, “The notochord, however, is not found in the postnatal stage of vertebrates.” On page 807, it says, “In adult vertebrates, the vertebral column replaces the notochord, which is only seen in the embryonic stage.” Not so! Consider extinct vertebrate taxa (e.g., ostracoderms and Placoderms) and extant taxa (e.g., lungfishes) that have unconstricted notochords. • On page 807, the text states, “Based on molecular analysis, vertebrates appear to be more closely related to lancelets (cephalochordates) than to tunicates (urochordates) among the invertebrate chordates. This evidence suggests that the cephalochordates diverged from Urochordata and the vertebrates subsequently diverged from the cephalochordates.” Nope, that’s out of date. More recent genomic analysis has identified cephalochordates as the most basal chordates. Tunicates and vertebrates are sister taxa that diverged more recently. Urochordate and vertebrate embryos share a novel embryonic tissue layer: migratory neural crest cells. • On page 808, the text states, “We will consider hagfishes and lampreys together as jawless fishes, the agnathans, although emerging classification schemes separate them into chordate jawless fishes (the hagfishes) and vertebrate jawless fishes (the lampreys).” This is incorrect and out-of-date. In fact, recent genomic evidence shows that hagfishes and lampreys form a clade, the cyclostomes: Hagfishes and lampreys share four unique miDNA families. The term Agnatha was abandoned long ago, as jawless fishes include cyclostomes and ostracoderms and are not a clade.

Clarity rating: 2

There are a number of examples of complex terms or concepts that are not clearly explained. Here are some examples: • In Chapter 3, the Evolution Connection on cytochrome C is not well explained: “When human and rhesus monkey sequences were compared, the single difference found was in one amino acid. In another comparison, human to yeast sequencing shows a difference in the 44th position.” This suggests that humans and yeast are as closely related as humans and rhesus monkeys. And why specify the position of the one change? The significance of these comparisons is not explained. • On page 94, the term homology is used but not clearly defined or explained. • Figure 3.32 is not helpful and does not show H-bonding or antiparallel arrangement clearly. • Unless I missed it, the R in Figure 2.27 is undefined. • On page 54, this sentence requires a fuller explanation: “Cells can only survive freezing if the water in them is temporarily replaced by another liquid like glycerol.” • This explanation on page 58 is overly simplified: “So how do the cells of the stomach survive in such an acidic environment? How do they homeostatically maintain the near neutral pH inside them? The answer is that they cannot do it and are constantly dying. New stomach cells are constantly produced to replace dead ones, which are digested by the stomach acids.” • On page 154, the text states, “For example, think about someone opening a bottle of ammonia in a room filled with people. The ammonia gas is at its highest concentration in the bottle; its lowest concentration is at the edges of the room. The ammonia vapor will diffuse, or spread away, from the bottle, and gradually, more and more people will smell the ammonia as it spreads.” No! This is an example of convection, NOT diffusion. Diffusion plays a key role in the movement of molecules across plasma membranes, which are only 8 nm thick. Many students imagine that diffusion explains the spread of molecules of dye in a beaker of water or the movement of molecules of scent in a room and this example feeds this misconception. It is also important to emphasize to students that diffusion is an effective and important process for transport of molecules over small distances but is completely irrelevant at macrocopic scales. See Vogel (1994) Dealing honestly with diffusion. American Biology Teacher 56:7, 405-407. • On page 242, the discussion of CAM and C4 photosynthesis is far too brief. • On page 285, the text states, “Cells in G0 phase are not actively preparing to divide. The cell is in a quiescent (inactive) stage that occurs when cells exit the cell cycle.” A G0 cell is far from quiescent metabolically and this term will mislead students. • On page 313, the explanation of The Red Queen Hypothesis in the Evolution Connection is very weak and unclear. • On page 481, the text fails to explain why a mutation may be neutral. • On page 496, the explanation of punctuated equilibrium is very weak. • On page 518, the term linkage disequilibrium is very poorly explained. • In Chapter 19, the discussion of some evolutionary mechanisms, e.g., nonrandom and assortative mating, is very sketchy.

Chapter 20 shows a very weak understanding of a key topic: phylogeny. Students struggle with “tree-thinking”, a necessary skill for anyone who plans to continue in biology. Phylogenetic trees are poorly explained in this chapter and the discussion on how to construct them is confusing. I honestly do not think that the author has a clear understanding of this important topic. Some examples: • On page 524, phylogeny is very poorly defined: “Phylogeny describes the relationships of an organism, such as from which organisms it is thought to have evolved, to which species it is most closely related, and so forth.” Ouch! • On the same page, “ Scientists consider phylogenetic trees to be a hypothesis of the evolutionary past since one cannot go back to confirm the proposed relationships.” Yes, phylogenetic trees represent hypotheses about evolutionary relationships, but not because these hypotheses cannot be tested! • In Figure 20.7: “For example, the bones in the wings of bats and birds have homologous structures.” This is a poor example, since these wings are both homologous as vertebrate forelimbs and analogous as wings. Later, the text (page 530) says, “Some structures are both analogous and homologous: the wings of a bird and the wings of a bat are both homologous and analogous.” True, but the author does not explain why these structures are both homologous and analogous! • The chapter appears confused about how time is represented in phylogenetic trees, saying both that trees do and do not have a time axis. • On page 534, the text states, “The vertebrate in Figure 20.10 is a shared ancestral character.” Huh? • The discussion of horizontal gene transfer is very lengthy but very poorly written. For example, the discussion of Lake’s work would not be accessible to general biology students. It’s not clear that the author understands it, frankly.

Many terms are used before they are defined. I noted several examples and I am sure that there are many more. • On page 24, the term “germline cells” is used but is not clearly defined. • In Figure 1.16, just before three domains are introduced, many tax

The text is fine in this regard.

I noted several examples in which material is explained clearly in one part of the text, with inaccurate or inconsistent information in other places. I’m sure there were many others. • On page 188, the text states, “Due to this jigsaw puzzle-like match between an enzyme and its substrates (which adapts to find the best fit between the transition state and the active site), enzymes are known for their specificity.” No, it’s not like a jigsaw puzzle. This will confuse students, many of whom have trouble grasping induced fit, which is introduced on the next page. • On page 482, the text states, “Although natural selection may work in a single generation on an individual, it can take thousands or even millions of years for the genotype of an entire species to evolve.” The idea that evolution and speciation require millennia is included as a misconception later in the chapter! • On page 676, the text confounds green algae and charophytes, referring to all green algae as charophytes. The distinction between charophytes and the other taxon within the green algae was made clearly in Chapter 23. The distinction is also clear on page 682.

I did not note any problems with the interface.

The text contains few grammatical and spelling errors. Here are a few errors that I noted: • On page 54: Unites States • In Figure 4.6: “Relatives sizes on a log scale” • On page 123: “… proteins synthesis is an essential function of all cells” • On page 176, this sentence is very poorly written, with a full and confusing sentence in brackets: “Photosynthesis is the primary pathway in which photosynthetic organisms like plants (the majority of global synthesis is done by planktonic algae) harvest the sun’s energy and convert it into carbohydrates.” • Gene and allele names/letters and variables in equations should be italicized, but are not. This is a problem throughout the text. • On page 486, this sentence is incomplete: “Define species and describe how species are identified as different”

The text is not culturally insensitive and uses a wide variety of examples.

There are many examples (e.g., government regulations such as the FDA, examples of careers) that are American and explicitly not Canadian.

American spelling is used throughout, which is fine with me.

The text has some good features. • Learning outcomes are specified throughout and are clear and complete. • The Career Connection sections are good, although they are definitely American and not Canadian. • The critical thinking questions are generally pretty good. Do students have access to answers to these questions and to the others included in some figures? If so, how? • One of the best features is the Everyday Connection sections, which are imaginative and will be interesting to students. • The introduction to scientific approach and the culture of science is generally good.

One very serious weakness of this text is the art: the figures, the animations, and the Art Connection features. They are very basic and do little to help students visualize biological concepts and structures. Some of them (Figure 5.11, Figure 18.6) are truly awful.

Currently available textbooks have made huge strides in producing carefully rendered and accurate illustrations and animations that are produced by talented teams of artists and animators. I realize that it is impossible to provide this quality of artwork in an open source textbook, but I think it is also important to recognize how important such features are for students attempting to visualize complex structures and to master difficult concepts. It is a false savings to provide a free textbook that lacks features that are crucial and necessary to student understanding of what is, frankly, very challenging material.

Reviewed by Kuo-Hsing Kuo, Associate Professor, University of Northern British Columbia on 10/9/13

• The text appears to be very comprehensive. The index at the start of the text is very useful for navigation. • The glossary appears comprehensive, however, many duplicates (ie. hydrophobic and Hydrophobic) were noted in the index. Furthermore, these duplicates appear to reference different pages. • The listing of key words with definitions at the end of each chapter is a useful feature, since students can reference key words for that specific chapter easily and quickly. • Yes it is but a lack of internal referencing is evident.

• Diagrams and written content both appeared to be accurate. • One exception: it appears that there is an error on page 150 in the image labeling frontal and transverse planes in the goat (at least the image doesn’t seem to match the description in the text). • The reviewers did not notice any bias in the text. Any ethical issues (for example, reproductive technologies) were handled carefully but with technical accuracy. • Error page 371. Paternal leakage means that not every mitochondrial DNA is from the female. • Error p. 322 color is spelled with the American spelling. • Error p.375 I was unaware that Rosalyn Franklin was considered for the Nobel prize…should have been. • Typo in bicarbonate image in Ch.2 • p.214 error (again) in the equations/arrows.

• Content seemed very up-to-date. • The reviewers noticed that care was taken to include recent findings (for example, neurogenesis and BrdU labeling; epigenetics; personalized medicine). • The basics / foundations were covered in an appropriate manner so that the text will not become out of date very quickly. • The sections on anatomy and physiology of the human body had a nice mix of explaining structures and functions, and linking these with disorders to make the content more relevant and interesting. • I have no impression that it will be quickly out of date.

• Text was written clearly and was fairly engaging to read. Overall text was a good mix between technical / scientific jargon and everyday language. • Many examples and connections were included to help students stay interested (for example, links in the macromolecules section to “low carb” diets and Celiac disease). • Learning objectives presented at the start of each section are also very useful for students to focus their reading. Learning objectives were phrased in a clear way using verbs to help students understand exactly what is expected of them. • End of chapter questions are also a nice addition for students to practice (especially since answers are provided at end of text). • The depth at which material is covered seems appropriate for a first year majors biology course. • I found real problems with chapters 12-15 and 17. I found them very densely written. Concepts did not flow one into another. Lack references to previous text sections to review basic concepts, like meiosis. • P.375 PCR is introduced before it is explained. • P. 451 How can student “get” cDNA in one sentence? • P.451 Probes must be explained much more completely. • P.459 I think linkage maps belong elsewhere. • P.464 I think a microarray image is very important here. • I think the entire first paragraph of chapter 7 needs a do over.

• Overall most of the text reads as if a single author were involved; no major differences in writing style were noted between chapters. • The layout and flow of the text (intro paragraph, learning objectives, text, etc) was consistent throughout. • I fe

• Use of bolded key words helps readers pick out important terms. • The number and placement of headings and sub-headings seemed appropriate – not too many that the flow of text was disrupted, but not too few that readers would have to stretch on and on with simple text. • Headings and subheadings are clearly labeled so sections can be found easily. • Text didn’t self-reference too much, which is very useful for classes that only cover part of the text. • I thought this was very poor. I could not image how to part of a chapter to cover the basics of a topic. Very evident in Cellular respiration chapter • p.401 A very odd experiment to throw in. • Jumping to the electron transport system is an odd way to start in 7.1.

• Overall, topics seem to flow nicely within individual chapters and also are appropriately ordered within the larger Units. • Complex topics are built up slowly and in a logical way. • Rather good in Chapters 1,2,16,18 and 19. • Rather poor in 7, 12-15 and 17.

• Interface is overall clearly laid out, but is not particularly engaging visually • The margins are very large, resulting in a proportionately small text size. Images in the text also do not make a very good use of space. A two-column format may be more appropriate. • Poor use of page space / too much white space also makes this text a poor fit for reading online, particularly on devices such as iPad, tablet, eReaders where screen size is smaller and the text /content is intended to fill the entire screen space. • Overall figures / images were good and clearly demonstrated the concepts, although occasionally they look somewhat unprofessional when compared to other similar texts. Occasionally figures also look grainy / blurry or as if they are low-resolution images (ex. Page 149). • The “Art Connection” headings seem unnecessary. These images are similar or complimentary to others displayed in the main text, and labeling them as “Art” seems strange. • Would it be possible to move the image credits to an Appendix at the end of the text? They create unnecessary clutter on the page / in the figure caption. • Use of tables was appropriate and any information in tables was presented in a clear and organized manner, without extraneous details. • I thought many images had a random quality. For example 14.3, a dead mouse image was unhelpful in understanding this classic experiment. • Especially in the first image for the chapter. 12.1, 15.1,16.1,17.1 all were poor choices. 18.1 too dark. 12.7 needed to show red, white and pink phenotypes. • p.356 Where is the phenotype associated with the G/C phenotype? • p.358 Please show the McClintock strategy as well. • p.359 Why show a karyotype where the colours don’t match up for the homologues? Ie #21’s and #10’s • Show more water molecules in shell of hydration image fig. 2.15 • Include blood in pH figure 2.19

• No grammatical errors were noted. • Exception: Noted unnecessary use of ( ) on pg. 122 – an entire sentence was inside the parentheses.

Cultural Relevance rating: 2

• Content did not seem culturally insensitive or offensive. • I noticed nothing culturally insentitive.

• Career Connections are great throughout, but some appear to be written from an American perspective. Special interest topics also fail to mention Canadian content (for example, laws governing reproductive technologies and “designer babies”). • Links to online content varied in quality and ability to engage students in a dynamic way. Some videos were very good and modern, while some animations seemed overly simplistic. • Nothing caught my attention regarding Canadian content. (other than the colour/color thing) • I think you need to hire someone to give the text a consistent voice and internal refences.

1. The Chemistry of Life

2. The Cell

3. Genetics

4. Evolutionary Processes

5. Biological Diversity

6. Plant Structure and Function

7. Animal Structure and Function

The Periodic Table of Elements

Geological Time

Measurements and the Metric System

Ancillary Material

About the book.

Biology 2e is designed to cover the scope and sequence requirements of a typical two-semester biology course for science majors. The text provides comprehensive coverage of foundational research and core biology concepts through an evolutionary lens. Biology includes rich features that engage students in scientific inquiry, highlight careers in the biological sciences, and offer everyday applications. The book also includes various types of practice and homework questions that help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

The 2nd edition has been revised to incorporate clearer, more current, and more dynamic explanations, while maintaining the same organization as the first edition. Art and illustrations have been substantially improved, and the textbook features additional assessments and related resources.

About the Contributors

Mary Ann Clark , Texas Wesleyan University

Jung Choi , Georgia Polytechnic University

Matthew Douglas , Grand Rapids Community College

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Free Biology Books
This is the updated list of biology books available for free download or online reading. These books and papers cover all the areas of biolgy and other life sciences: botany, zoology, evolutionary biology, genetics, bioinformatics, neuroscience, cell biology, biochemistry, astrobiology, as well as bioengineering and some popular books.
Biology books online
Biogeography: a brief introduction. Cognitive Science of Religion and Belief Systems. Biological Signal Analysis. Measurements of Body Composition by Bioimpedance. Pharmacokinetics. Spine and Tissue Biomechanics. Engineering Mathematics: YouTube Workbook. Learn Calculus 2 on Your Mobile Device. Kinetics for Bioscientist.
Estrella Mountain Community College
Estrella Mountain Community College