This volume presents the proceedings of the eighth Colloquium Crustacea Decapoda Mediterranea. It reflects recent advances in decapod crustacean research. The book covers up-to-date issues in decapod crustacean research including genetics, morphology, reproduction, ecology, behavior and fisheries. It is primarily aimed at scientists interested in decapod crustacean research, but other scientists and decision-makers working on marine ecology and fisheries will also find up-to-date information on relevant issues.
About 90 per cent of the 10,000 known species of the Crustacea Decapoda live in oceans and adjacent coastal and estuarine regions, and most of them pass through a complex life history comprising a benthic (juvenile-adult) and a planktonic (larval) phase. The larvae show a wide array of adaptations to the pelagic environment, including modifications in their functional morphology, anatomy, the molting cycle, nutrition, growth, chemical composition, metabolism, energy partitioning, ecology and behaviour.;All these traits are reviewed in this volume, attempting to promote an integrated, multidisciplinary view of the biology of larval Decapoda and other crustacean taxa. Emphasis is placed on the lesser-known anatomical, bioenergetic and ecophysiological aspects of larval life, as morphology has already been extensively documented. Changes in biological parameters (for example, rates of feeding, growth, metabolism) are shown in successive developmental stages, within individual stages, and as responses to environmental factors. Particular attention is paid to interrelationships between intrinsic phenomena (molting cycle, organogenesis, growth) and the overlaying effects of extrinsic factors (for example, food, temperature, salinity, pollution). Concluding from the available data, major bias and gaps in present knowledge of larval biology are identified and discussed as to their potential significance in future research.
Crustaceans adapt to a wide variety of habitats and ways of life. They have a complex physiological structure particularly with regard to the processes of growth (molting), metabolic regulation, and reproduction. Crustaceans are ideal as model organisms for the study of endocrine disruption and stress physiology in aquatic invertebrates. This book
Decapod crustaceans are of tremendous interest and importance evolutionarily, ecologically, and economically. There is no shortage of publications reflecting the wide variety of ideas and hypotheses concerning decapod phylogeny, but until recently, the world's leading decapodologists had never assembled to elucidate and discuss relationships among
This volume presents the proceedings of the eighth Colloquium Crustacea Decapoda Mediterranea. It reflects recent advances in decapod crustacean research. The book covers up-to-date issues in decapod crustacean research including genetics, morphology, reproduction, ecology, behavior and fisheries. It is primarily aimed at scientists interested in decapod crustacean research, but other scientists and decision-makers working on marine ecology and fisheries will also find up-to-date information on relevant issues.
Interest in land crabs has burgeoned as biologists have increasingly focused on the evolution of terrestriality. Before the publication of this volume in 1988, there had been no single comprehensive source of information to serve biologists interested in the diverse aspects of terrestrial decapod crustacean. Biology of the Land Crabs was the first synthesis of recent and long-established findings on brachyuran and anomuran crustaceans that have evolved varying degrees of adaptation for life on land. Chapters by leading researchers take a coordinated evolutionary and comparative approach to systematics and evolution, ecology, behaviour, reproduction, growth and molting, ion and water balance, respiration and circulation, and energetics and locomotion. Each discusses how terrestrial species have become adapted from ancestral freshwater or marine forms. With its extensive bibliography and comprehensive index, including the natural history of nearly eighty species of brachyuran and anomuran crabs, Biology of the Land Crabs will continue to be an invaluable reference for researchers and advanced students.
This volume, 9A, contains the material on the euphausiaceans, amphionidaceans, and many of the decapods (dendrobranchiates, carideans, stenopodideans, astacidans, and palinurans).
The crustaceans are ecologically and economically important organisms. They constitute one of the dominant invertebrate groups on earth, particularly within the aquatic realm. Crustaceans include some of the preferred scientific model organism, profitable aquaculture specimen, but also invasive nuisance species threatening native animal communities throughout the world. Chemoreception is the most important sensory modality of crustaceans, acquiring important information about their environment and picking up the chemical signals that mediate communication with conspecifics. Significant advances have been made in our understanding of crustacean chemical communication during the past decade. This includes knowledge about the identity, production, transfer, reception and behavioral function of chemical signals in selected crustacean groups. While it is well known that chemical communication is an integral part of the behavioral ecology of most living organisms, the intricate ways in which organisms allocate chemicals in communication remains enigmatic. How does the environment influence the evolution of chemical communication? What are the environmental cues that induce production or release of chemicals? How do individuals economize production and utilization of chemicals? What is the importance of molecule specificity or mix of a molecule cocktail in chemical communication? What is the role of chemical cues in multimodal communication? How does the ontogenetic stage, the sex or the physiological status of an individual affect its reaction to chemical cues? Many of these questions still represent important challenges to biologists.
