This work provides a user-friendly, species level taxonomic key based on morphology, current nomenclature, and modern taxonomy using molecular tools which fulfill the most pressing needs of both researchers and environmental managers. This key arms the reader with the tools necessary to improve their species identification abilities. This book resolves another issue as well: the mix of female and male characters used in keys to the calanoid copepods. Often, during the identification process, both calanoid copepod sexes are not available, and the user of such a key is stuck with an uncertain identification. Here, separate male and female keys to the calanoid copepods are provided for both the genera and species levels.

This book reviews the latest research and developments concerning the biodiversity and biocontamination assessment of aquatic ecosystems in Poland. The authors present expert analyses of the current biological status of Polish surface waters, and examine a broad range of elements related to aquatic ecosystems, including macrophytes, phytoplankton, zooplankton and macroinvertebrates, microorganisms, fish, and selected invasive aquatic species. A set of conservation and restoration practices, and a review of protected sites within the Polish basins and catchment areas, are also provided. This book and the companion volume Polish River Basins and Lakes – Part I: Hydrology and Hydrochemistry offer valuable resources for students, environmental chemists, biologists, geologists, hydrologists and surface waters managers interested in the environmental conditions of Poland’s surface waters.

This book includes over three hundred and seventy-five short papers presented during the second EMCEI, which was held in Sousse, Tunisia in October 2019. After the success of the first EMCEI in 2017, the second installment tackled emerging environmental issues together with new challenges, e.g. by focusing on innovative approaches that contribute to achieving a sustainable environment in the Mediterranean and surrounding regions and by highlighting to decision makers from related sectors the environmental considerations that should be integrated into their respective activities. Presenting a wide range of environmental topics and new findings relevant to a variety of problems in these regions, this volume will appeal to anyone working in the subject area and particularly to students interested in learning more about new advances in environmental research initiatives in view of the worsening environmental degradation of the Mediterranean and surrounding regions, which has made environmental and resource protection into an increasingly important issue hampering sustainable development and social welfare.

Identification and Ecology of Freshwater Arthropods in the Mediterranean Basin covers the entire Mediterranean basin, including parts of Europe, Asia, Africa and the Mediterranean islands, but excluding other biogeographic locations with Mediterranean climates located outside the region. The book provides an extensive description of the taxonomy and ecology of aquatic arthropods encountered in lentic and lotic habitats, as well as in less studied underground and estuarine habitats. It offers expanded taxonomic identification keys to major groups of arthropods with a description of their ecology and distribution. Keys for insects include aquatic larval stages and water-dwelling adults of Coleoptera and Heteroptera. Additional sections focus on taxa that can be encountered in adjacent brackish and estuary ecosystems as long as the taxon primarily occurs in freshwaters. This is a much-needed, comprehensive resource on the taxonomy and ecology of freshwater arthropods with an introduction to recent molecular tools for identifications. It will be particularly useful for freshwater ecologists, limnologists, environmentalists and students in the ecological sciences. - Presents taxonomic keys to genera and species to the majority of aquatic arthropod families - Provides coverage of all freshwater ecosystems of the Mediterranean basin, with case studies and examples - Includes numerous photographs of the aquatic arthropods described in the chapters - Covers the ecology and taxonomy of organisms living in more traditionally studied lakes and streams as well as in less studied underground and estuarine habitats

The three main missions of any organism--growing, reproducing, and surviving--depend on encounters with food and mates, and on avoiding encounters with predators. Through natural selection, the behavior and ecology of plankton organisms have evolved to optimize these tasks. This book offers a mechanistic approach to the study of ocean ecology by exploring biological interactions in plankton at the individual level. The book focuses on encounter mechanisms, since the pace of life in the ocean intimately relates to the rate at which encounters happen. Thomas Kiørboe examines the life and interactions of plankton organisms with the larger aim of understanding marine pelagic food webs. He looks at plankton ecology and behavior in the context of the organisms' immediate physical and chemical habitats. He shows that the nutrient uptake, feeding rates, motility patterns, signal transmissions, and perception of plankton are all constrained by nonintuitive interactions between organism biology and small-scale physical and chemical characteristics of the three-dimensional fluid environment. Most of the book's chapters consist of a theoretical introduction followed by examples of how the theory might be applied to real-world problems. In the final chapters, mechanistic insights of individual-level processes help to describe broader population dynamics and pelagic food web structure and function.

Researchers, instructors, and students will appreciate this compilation of detailed information on the crustacean zooplankton of the Great Lakes. The authors have gathered data from more than three hundred sources and organized into a useful laboratory manual. The taxonomic keys are easy to use, suitable for both classroom and laboratory identifications. Detailed line drawings are provided to help confirm the identification of the major species. Zoologists, limnologists, hydrobiologists, fish ecologists, and those who study or monitor water quality will welcome this dependable new identification tool. A concise summary of pertinent information on the ecology of these zooplankton is provided in the main body of the text. A check-list of all species reported from each of the Great Lakes and notes on the distribution and abundance of more than a hundred species were compiled from an extensive search of existing literature. In addition, the authors collected samples from several locations on Lake Superior, in order to provide information on the abundance and life histories of the major crustacean species.