Reviews

• This book is an excellent addition to the Naturalists' Handbooks series and a testament to the author's ability to explain the complexity of fresh waters to a non-specialist audience. It introduces all of the key elements needed to understand ponds and small lakes, including physics and chemistry in addition to biology and ecology, in a straightforward manner, and is interspersed with realistic practical experiments that can be carried out without the need for a laboratory or complex equipment.
  
  However, despite the wealth of information it packs into a compact space, it is the simple, practical and copiously illustrated identification keys that are undoubtedly destined to become its most compelling feature. Those for micro-organisms will be particularly welcomed and I suspect that it will be instrumental in making this component of pond life accessible to a wide audience.
  —Mike Dobson, ex-Director of the Freshwater Biological Association
• There can be few of us who have not dabbled with a pond net during the course of childhood; this excellent new work bridges the gap between the highly commendable leisure activity of getting wet and muddy whilst looking for a huge range of aquatic animals and plants and the serious scientific study of aquatic ecology. Identification keys are provided to all living things likely to be encountered, but stop short, deliberately, of naming taxa to species level. The aim is to interest and stimulate the reader who might then progress to a more serious involvement. —Colin W. Plant, Entomologists' Record
• This is a fascinating book, and one that makes the reader work hard to get the best from it, though the rewards are numerous; most importantly it is a fitting swan-song that encapsulates the author’s ability to synthesise ideas from a wide range of sources and to make new links, the sign of a true polymath. —Peter Barnard, Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine
• I find this book does a great job of bridging the gap between an ecology text book (that can feel a little dry and isolated, and is aimed at helping the student pass a module rather that rolling up their sleeves and getting into nature) and the field guide that helps the naturalist identify what they have found but only provides limited understanding of the ecosystem as a whole. —Andy Chick, Amateur Entomologists' Society Bulletin
• It is a brief modern insight into freshwater ecology and limnology aimed at a wide non-specialist audience. I am convinced that this handbook will prove to be an extremely helpful source of information, not only for people with an interest in water microorganisms and ecology, but also students dealing with different groups of freshwater macro organisms (e.g., especially students of the biology and ecology of water insects) and also a useful source of inspiration for biology teachers. —European Journal of Entomology
• ...this is an excellent guide to its subject from an expert sadly no longer with us. Professor Moss has left us many excellent works on freshwater ecology and this one will be a worthy addition.—Ian Lancaster, School Science Review