This is a college-level introductory course in biology, meant as a foundation strong enough for the student to go on to other biology courses, other science programs, or many health fields.

Since this textbook has been written for a particular course, it does not have the breadth of "hard" texts that must be applicable to the various priorities of a hundred different freshman courses.  If you're using this text as an online supplement to a course whose text is difficult to read, you are certainly welcome, but everything probably won't be here.  Something that will be here, that regular texts can't supply, is, whenever possible, updates with the latest of ideas and developments that one person, trying desperately to keep up with the literature, can digest and apply to the very basics of the subject.  Printed textbooks have to be at least a couple of years behind on new information, but any major new developments can go up here as soon as they have been published.

Still, this is science, and any textbook is going to have shortcomings - information that has changed, or is regarded differently by different "experts," or, in some cases, has been oversimplified to keep freshmen's heads from exploding.  That's the nature of Nature.

The text of the online book will follow the class material, expanding on it somewhat and connecting it to links from around the internet - information sources, further information, sometimes just pictures, anything that should help explain and expand what is being covered.  Think of the links as substitutes for the pictures, diagrams, and tables of a regular textbook (with the addition of animation in some cases).  Please report any "dead" links (but keep in mind that not all dead links are permanently gone - what's not there today may be available tomorrow) to the e-mail link at the bottom of each page.  Links are double-checked just prior to each semester, but the internet can be a transitory source.

To repeat, the links are meant to take the place of what would be captioned pictures, charts, graphs, and tables in a bound book (as well as providing other "slants" on the text material)  - the links are there to help you understand the text!  Go take a look - they will open in separate windows, so you won't lose your place in the text by exploring them.  You may have already discovered that the saving grace of bound textbooks are the pictures and captions - that may be true here as well.

This may be difficult for you to adapt to, but just think - years from now, when your children or grandchildren are reading their online texts, you can tell them that you helped develop one of the first basic-information textbooks ever written!  It won't quite be like having ridden with the Wright Brothers, but it might be a fun fact to tell.