David M. Wilkinson is an ecologist with very wide interests, having published research on organisms ranging from bacteria to sauropod dinosaurs, but he has a particular interest in testate amoebae. He was a Reader in environmental science at Liverpool John Moores University, where he taught for almost a quarter of a century. He is now Honorary Professor in ecology at the University of Lincoln, and an honorary research fellow in archaeology at the University of Nottingham. His book Fundamental Processes in Ecology; An Earth Systems Approach won the British Ecological Society’s Marsh Book of the Year Award in 2007; a second edition of this book was published in 2023. This is his second book for the New Naturalist series.