Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Coelenterate Biology 1989

Coelenterate Biology: Reviews and New Perspectives highlights research areas in which coelenterates are exceptionally useful and interesting experimental animals. It outlines the state of knowledge in coelenterate research and draws attention to some of the challenging problems that are amenable for study. Coelenterates offer valuable material for many levels of inquiry—from the population and organismic to the cellular, subcellular, and molecular levels. They are especially attractive animals for studies in developmental biology and behavior. The book begins by discussing cnidarians histology, focusing on the light and electron microscopy of cnidarian tissues. There are separate chapters on the skeletal system of cnidarians; the morphology, functions, and chemistry of nematocytes; and a few aspects of the enormous subject of cnidarian development. The subsequent chapters deal with cnidarian neurobiology, behavior, locomotion, flotation, and dispersal; experimental studies on algae-cnidarian symbioses; and coelenterate bioluminescence. The book concludes with a discussion of the systems of coordination and nervous system of ctenophores.

This volume, the proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Coelenterate Biology, is organized as the meeting was around six topics. Because several sessions of ICCB7 constituted the 2003 North American meeting of the International Society for Reef Studies, the subject of coral reefs is strongly represented in the section on Ecology. The other themes are Neurobiology; Reproduction, Development, and Life Cycles; Pioneers in Coelenterate Biology; Cnidae; and Taxonomy and Systematics. Ctenophores, as well as representatives of all four classes of cnidarians are among the study subjects of the research reported in this volume. The theme of variability runs through the volume – be it in cnidae, morphology, behavior, neurobiology, ecology, colony form, or reproduction, variability is a major reason these animals are so interesting and challenging to study! This is a must-read resource for anyone doing research – or planning to do research – on cnidarians and ctenophores.

The study of coelenterates is now one of the most active fields of invertebrate zoology. There are many reasons for this, and not everyone would agree on them, but certain facts stand out fairly clearly. One of them is that many of the people who study coelenterates do so simply because they are interested in the animals for their own sake. This, however, would be true for other invertebrate groups and cannot by itself explain the current boom in coelenterate work. The main reasons for all this activity seem to lie in the considerable concentration of research effort and funding into three broad, general areas of biology: marine ecology, cellular-developmental biology and neurobiology, in all of which coelenterates have a key role to play. They are the dominant organisms, or are involved in an important way, in a variety of marine habitats, of which coral reefs are only one, and this automatically ensures their claims on the attention of ecologists and marine scientists. Secondly, the convenience of hydra and some other hydroids as experimental animals has long made them a natural choice for a variety of studies on growth, nutrition, symbiosis, morphogenesis and sundry aspects of cell biology. Finally, the phylogenetic position of the coelenterates as the lowest metazoans having a nervous system makes them uniquely interesting to those neurobiologists and behaviorists who hope to gain insights into the functioning of higher nervous systems by working up from the lowest level.