Anatomy and Physiology is a dynamic textbook for the two-semester human anatomy and physiology course for life science and allied health majors. The book is organized by body system and covers standard scope and sequence requirements. Its lucid text, strategically constructed art, career features, and links to external learning tools address the critical teaching and learning challenges in the course. The web-based version of Anatomy and Physiology also features links to surgical videos, histology, and interactive diagrams.

Veterinary nurses need to have a firm grasp of the normal structure of an animal’s body and how it functions before they can understand the effect diseases and injuries have and the best ways to treat them. This book describes the structure of the animal body and the way in which it works. Animals encountered in normal veterinary practice are used as examples where possible.

OER | Biology Overview:

On this webpage you will find OER Biology textbooks along with supplemental materials and a few lecture videos.
The purpose of these discipline-specific webpages is to display content that might be of interest to faculty who are considering adopting open educational resources for use in their classes. This list of content is by no means exhaustive. The nature of open educational resources is very collaborative and it is in that spirit that we encourage any comments about the content featured on this page or recommendations of content that are not already listed here.

Our goal is to present the key observations and unifying concepts upon which modern biology is based; it is not a survey of all biology! Once understood, these foundational observations and concepts should enable you to approach any biological process, from disease to kindness, from a scientific perspective. To understand biological systems we need to consider them from two complementary perspectives; how they came to be (the historic, that is, evolutionary) and how their structures, traits, and behaviors are produced (the mechanistic, that is, the physicochemical)

This 23-minute video provides an introduction to viruses. [Biology playlist: Lesson 19 of 71].

Concepts of Biology is designed for the introductory biology course for nonmajors taught at most two- and four-year colleges. The scope, sequence, and level of the program are designed to match typical course syllabi in the market. Concepts of Biology includes interesting applications, features a rich art program, and conveys the major themes of biology.

Physiology The word physiology is from the Ancient Greek φυσιολογία (phusiología, "natural philosophy") and it is the study of how organisms perform their vital functions. An example is the study of how a muscle contracts or the force contracting muscles exert on the skeleton. It was introduced by French physician Jean Fernery in 1552. Physiology is built upon a tripod of sciences: physics, chemistry, and anatomy.

This laboratory manual was developed for a microbiology laboratory course designed to give students in the health care professions basic knowledge and skills of the techniques used to study microbes. The course is taken by first-time college students in the 6-year medical program and by prepharmacy undergraduates. Because this is the only microbiology laboratory course these students take, the laboratory experiments are essential to illustrate microbiological principles and methods presented in lecture companion course. The laboratory exercises demonstrate basic concepts of microbiology with emphasis on infectious diseases and host defenses.

Throughout the course, students gain competency in the following areas:

Safe handling of microbes
Knowledge of the techniques and media used to subculture microbes
Use of the light microscope
Staining techniques
Quantitative methods
Identification of microbes using biochemical tests and/or immunological techniques
Interpretation of experimental results

In the past, I supplemented a commercially published lab manual with detailed weekly instructions posted to the course website. My instructions summarized the theory presented, pointing out the important concepts. Based on past experience, I made changes to the lab procedure accommodating organisms that work well in the UMKC teaching lab. In addition, the instructions gave students clarification on the post lab questions, encouraging critical thinking and evaluation of their actual experimental results. Students were required to use both the manual and my handouts to fully understand the exercise. As much as I tried to make each week’s activities clear, there was often confusion about the procedure, observations and/or expectations on the post-lab questions. This work aims to put it all together in one place for the student. For this project, I have built upon much of my original supplementary material using several open educational resources, most notably, OpenStax Microbiology. I appreciate the funding and support from the UM-system and the UMKC Libraries. I am grateful to my students who make teaching fun and interesting and will be unwitting editors and evaluators of this work. Sincerely,

Loretta Sanderson Klamm

This course is designed to be an introduction to the biology of microorganism. The emphasis is on the

specific properties of microorganisms and their relation to disease.

Microbiology covers the scope and sequence requirements for a single-semester microbiology course for non-majors. The book presents the core concepts of microbiology with a focus on applications for careers in allied health. The pedagogical features of the text make the material interesting and accessible while maintaining the career-application focus and scientific rigor inherent in the subject matter. Microbiology’s art program enhances students’ understanding of concepts through clear and effective illustrations, diagrams, and photographs.

Quantitative Ecology introduces and discusses the principles of ecology from populations to ecosystems including human populations, disease, exotic organisms, habitat fragmentation, biodiversity and global dynamics. The book also reformulates and unifies ecological equations making them more accessible to the reader and easier to teach.

A Student’s Guide to Tropical Marine Biology is written entirely by students enrolled in the Keene State College Tropical Marine Biology course taught by Dr. Karen Cangialosi. Our goal was to investigate three main aspects of tropical marine biology: understanding the system, identifying problems, and evaluating solutions. Each of the sections contains chapters that utilize openly licensed material and images, and are rich with hyperlinks to other sources. Some of the most pressing tropical marine ecosystem issues are broken up into five sections: Coral Reefs and Diversity, Common Fishes to the Coral Reef, Environmental Threats, Reef Conservation, and Major Marine Phyla. These sections are not mutually exclusive; repetition in some content between chapters is intentional as we expect that users may not read the whole book. This work represents a unique collaborative process with many students across semesters authoring and editing, and therefore reflects the interests and intentions of a broad range of students, not one person’s ideas. This collaboration began with contributions from KSC students in the 2017 semester and includes work from the 2019 class, as well as new content and editorial work from 2017 & 2019 alumni. We look forward to future editions of this book. Enjoy exploring the rainforests of the sea through our collaborative project and please share with those who care!