The primary author and coordinator of the project is Roger D. Cousens, an Emeritus Professor at The University of Melbourne, Australia with over 40 years specialising in agricultural weeds and invasive species. His approaches have featured strong components of field research, population modelling and statistical analysis, while he has initiated collaborative projects with quantitative geneticists, molecular ecologists, geomorphologists and social scientists. For the last decade his passion has been unravelling the dynamics of two invasive sea-rockets, their hybridisation and the role of their pollinators. Throughout his career, he has been an outspoken communicator on research practices. This book is a direct outcome of his 12 years as the convenor of the Andina international workshops, developing approaches to effective debate and in which the role of early-career researchers has been central. He has been lead author on two previous academic books: Population Dynamics of Weeds (Cambridge University Press, 1995 with Martin Mortimer); and Dispersal in Plants: A Population Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2008 with Calvin Dytham and Richard Law). He is an Honorary Fellow of the Weed Science Society of America.

1. Why a hard science needs strong critique 2. The evolution of ecology 3. What sort of a science is ecology? 4. Rigorous ecology needs rigorous statistics 5. Ecological scale and context dependence 6. Assembling the ecological puzzle 7. Respecting the known unknowns 8. Theory, prediction and application 9. From pattern to process in the search for generality 10. Effective ecology