Horseshoe crabs, those mysterious ancient mariners, lured me into the sea as a child along the beaches of New Jersey. Drawn to their shiny domed shells and spiked tails, I could not resist picking them up, turning them over and watching the wondrous mechanical movement of their glistening legs, articulating with one another as smoothly as the inner working of a clock. What was it like to be a horseshoe crab, I wondered? What did they eat? Did they always move around together? Why were some so large and others much smaller? How old were they, anyway? What must it feel like to live underwater? What else was out there, down there, in the cool, green depths that gave rise to such intriguing creatures? The only way to find out, I reasoned, would be to go into the ocean and see for myself, and so I did, and more than 60 years later, I still do.

Traveling from the Delaware Bay to the Florida Panhandle, this examination is a quest through the natural history and science behind one of nature's oldest and oddest survivors--the horseshoe crab. With ten eyes, five pairs of walking legs, a heart half the length of their bodies, and blood that can save a person's life, horseshoe crabs have been on this planet for 445 million years--since long before the dinosaurs arrived. This book explores their unique biology and sex life, explains their importance to medical science and migratory shorebirds, and introduces readers to the people who are working to study and protect them.

This book brings together 20 scientists who have worked on all aspects of horseshoe crab biology to compile the first fully detailed, comprehensive view of Limulus polyphemus. An indispensable resource, the volume describes behavior, natural history, and ecology; anatomy, physiology, distribution, development, and life cycle.

Surviving almost unmolested for 300 million years, the horseshoe crab is now the object of an intense legal and ethical struggle involving marine biologists, environmentalists, US government officials, biotechnologists, and international corporations. The source of this friction is the discovery 25 years ago that the blood of these ancient creatures serves as the basis for the most reliable test for the deadly and ubiquitous gram-negative bacteria. These bacteria are responsible for life-threatening diseases like menengitis, typhoid, E. coli, Legionnaire's Disease and toxic shock syndrome. Because every drug certified by the FDA must be tested using the horseshoe crab derivative known as Limulus lysate, a multimillion dollar industry has emerged involving the license to "bleed" horseshoe crabs and the rights to their breeding grounds. Since his youthful fascination with these ancient creatures, William Sargent has spent much of his life observing, studying, and collecting horseshoe crabs. As a result, he presents a thoroughly accessible insider's guide to the discovery of the lysate test, the exploitation of the crabs at the hands of multinational pharmaceutical conglomerates, local fishing interests, and the legal and governmental wrangling over the creatures' ultimate fate. In the end, the story of the horseshoe crab is a sobering reflection on the unintended consequences of scientific progress and the danger of self-regulated industries controlling a limited natural resource.

Ancestors of horseshoe crabs date back over 450 million years. That’s before dinosaurs walked Earth! Readers will find out more about these intriguing arthropods—which aren’t even crabs!—and theories about why they survived while dinosaurs became extinct. They’ll learn about horseshoe crabs’ unique behaviors, how they’ve adapted over the years, and gain an overall appreciation for these magnificent marine creatures.

From one of the world’s leading natural scientists and the acclaimed author of Trilobite!, Life: A Natural History of Four Billion Years of Life on Earth and Dry Storeroom No. 1 comes a fascinating chronicle of life’s history told not through the fossil record but through the stories of organisms that have survived, almost unchanged, throughout time. Evolution, it seems, has not completely obliterated its tracks as more advanced organisms have evolved; the history of life on earth is far older—and odder—than many of us realize. Scattered across the globe, these remarkable plants and animals continue to mark seminal events in geological time. From a moonlit beach in Delaware, where the hardy horseshoe crab shuffles its way to a frenzy of mass mating just as it did 450 million years ago, to the dense rainforests of New Zealand, where the elusive, unprepossessing velvet worm has burrowed deep into rotting timber since before the breakup of the ancient supercontinent, to a stretch of Australian coastline with stromatolite formations that bear witness to the Precambrian dawn, the existence of these survivors offers us a tantalizing glimpse of pivotal points in evolutionary history. These are not “living fossils” but rather a handful of tenacious creatures of days long gone. Written in buoyant, sparkling prose, Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms is a marvelously captivating exploration of the world’s old-timers combining the very best of science writing with an explorer’s sense of adventure and wonder.

This book reports significant progress of scientific research on horseshoe crabs, including aspects of evolution, genetics, ecology, population dynamics, general biology and physiology, within the recent 10 years. It also highlights the emerging issues related to world-wide conservation threats, status and needs. The contributions in this book represent part of an ongoing global effort to increase data and concept sharing to support basic research and advance conservation for horseshoe crabs.

The Evolution of the Immune System: Conservation and Diversification is the first book of its kind that prompts a new perspective when describing and considering the evolution of the immune system. Its unique approach summarizes, updates, and provides new insights on the different immune receptors, soluble factors, and immune cell effectors. - Helps the reader gain a modern idea of the evolution of the immune systems in pluricellular organisms - Provides a complete overview of the most studied and hot topics in comparative and evolutionary immunology - Reflects the organisation of the immune system (cell-based, humoral [innate], humoral [adaptive]) without introducing further and misleading levels of organization - Brings concepts and ideas on the evolution of the immune system to a wide readership