Explains what fish are and how they differ from other animals, discussing freshwater fish, sea fish, deep-sea fish, shallow-water fish, and sharks, among others.

Nineteenth-century scientist David Starr Jordan built one of the most important fish specimen collections ever seen, until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shattered his life's work.

Nearly a decade ago I began planning this book with the goal of summarizing the existing body of knowledge on ecology of freshwater fishes in a way similar to that of H. B. N. Hynes' comprehensive treatise Ecology of Running Waters for streams. The time seemed appropriate, as there had been several recent volumes that synthesized much information on a range of topics important in fish ecology, from biogeographic to local scales. For example, the "Fish Atlas" (Lee et aI. , 1980) had provided range maps and basic entry to the original literature for all freshwater fishes in North America, and in 1986 Hocutt and Wiley's Zoogeography of North American Fishes provided a detailed synthesis of virtually everything known about distributional ecology of fishes on that continent. Tim Berra (1981) had summarized in convenient map form the worldwide distribution of all freshwater fish families, and Joe Nelson's 1976 and 1984 editions of Fishes of the World had appeared. To complement these "big picture" views of fish distributions, the volume on Community and Evolutionary Ecology of North American Freshwater Fishes, edited by David Heins and myself (Matthews and Heins, 1987), had provided an opportunity for more than 30 individuals or groups to summarize their work on stream fishes (albeit mostly for warmwater systems).

Did you know that half of all the animals in the world that have backbones are fish? There are more kinds of fishes than there are amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals added together. And scientists are discovering more species of fish almost weekly. Brilliantly colored or camouflaged, as big as a whale or smaller than a little fingernail, fishes are found almost everywhere there is water. The Fish Classes explores the origins of the first fishes, with a glimpse of some of the extraordinary varieties that became extinct long ago. The book also examines the five classes of modern fishes, surveys their physical features, habitats, and ways of life, as well as some of the threats they face today. Book jacket.

Original ed. published as: Classifying birds.

Explains what mammals are and how they differ from other animals, with an overview of the life cycle of a variety of mammals, including pouched mammals, sea mammals, flying mammals, and humans.

Explains what insects are and how they differ from other animals, with an overview of the life cycle of a variety of insects, including ants, bees, cockroaches, grasshoppers, dragonflies, and butterflies.

Describes how invertebrates are grouped into orders and how each one is different from the rest.

Understanding the world we live in involves understanding the links between living things. This series explains the concept and need for classification. Each book provides key features of each classification group by providing examples of animal and plant classes. All books explain how behavior, life cycle, appearance, and structure link living things within a classification group, such as kingdoms and phyla.

Explains what reptiles are and how they differ from other animals, offering an overview of the life cycle of a variety of reptiles, including snakes, turtles, lizards, and crocodiles.