Biology 2e — Part 1

Welcome to Biology 2e (2nd edition), an OpenStax resource. This textbook was written to increase student access to high-quality learning materials, maintaining highest standards of academic rigor at little to no cost.

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Biology 2e (2nd edition) 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.

Biology was one of the first textbooks published by OpenStax and has been used by hundreds of faculty and thousands of students since 2012. We mined our adopters’ extensive and helpful feedback to identify the most significant revision needs while maintaining the organization that many instructors had incorporated into their courses. Specific surveys, focus groups, and pre-revision reviews, as well as data from OpenStax users, all aided in planning the revision.