This book presents a comprehensive and critical review of recent developments in Invertebrate Zoology. It summarises the results of diverse worldwide research and investigation into all classes of Invertebrates from Protozoa to Echiodermata except insects, and brings together information from scattered and even inaccessible journals and periodicals. Among the Arthropoda, only Crustacea are dealt with. The central concept in this book is that regardless of structural diversity, life is the same everywhere on the earth. While not a textbook in the strict sense of the term, this book should prove indispensable to teachers, students and researchers in colleges and universities.

This account of the relationships between invertebrate phyla and the phylogenetic pattern of the animal kingdom serves as a meaningful introduction to the field of invertebrate phylogeny.

This textbook is the most concise and readable invertebrates book in terms of detail and pedagogy (other texts do not offer boxed readings, a second color, end of chapter questions, or pronunciation guides). All phyla of invertebrates are covered (comprehensive) with an emphasis on unifying characteristics of each group.

Invertebrate Zoology: A Tree of Life Approach is a comprehensive and authoritative textbook adopting an explicitly phylogenetic organization. Most of the classical anatomical and morphological work has not been changed – it established the foundation of Invertebrate Zoology. With the explosion of Next-Generation Sequencing approaches, there has been a sea-change in the recognized phylogenetic relationships among and between invertebrate lineages. In addition, the merger of evolutionary and developmental biology (evo-devo) has dramatically contributed to changes in the understanding of invertebrate biology. Synthesizing these three approaches (classical morphology, sequencing data, and evo-devo studies) offers students an entirely unique perspective of invertebrate diversity. Key Features One of the first textbooks to combine classical morphological approaches and newer evo-devo and Next-Generation Sequencing approaches to address Invertebrate Zoology Organized along taxonomic lines in accord with the latest understanding of invertebrate phylogeny Will provide background in basic systematic analysis useful within any study of biodiversity A wealth of ancillary materials for students and teachers, including downloadable figures, lecture slides, web links, and phylogenetic data matrices

More than two thirds of all living organisms described to date belong to the phylum Arthropoda. But their diversity, as measured in terms of species number, is also accompanied by an amazing disparity in terms of body form, developmental processes, and adaptations to every inhabitable place on Earth, from the deepest marine abysses to the earth surface and the air. The Arthropoda also include one of the most fashionable and extensively studied of all model organisms, the fruit-fly, whose name is not only linked forever to Mendelian and population genetics, but has more recently come back to centre stage as one of the most important and more extensively investigated models in developmental genetics. This approach has completely changed our appreciation of some of the most characteristic traits of arthropods as are the origin and evolution of segments, their regional and individual specialization, and the origin and evolution of the appendages. At approximately the same time as developmental genetics was eventually turning into the major agent in the birth of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), molecular phylogenetics was challenging the traditional views on arthropod phylogeny, including the relationships among the four major groups: insects, crustaceans, myriapods, and chelicerates. In the meantime, palaeontology was revealing an amazing number of extinct forms that on the one side have contributed to a radical revisitation of arthropod phylogeny, but on the other have provided evidence of a previously unexpected disparity of arthropod and arthropod-like forms that often challenge a clear-cut delimitation of the phylum.

Inland waters, lakes, rivers, and their connected wetlands are the most important and the most vulnerable sources of freshwater on the planet. The ecology of these systems includes biology as well as human populations and civilization. Inland waters and wetlands are highly susceptible to chemical and biological pollutants from natural or human sources, changes in watershed dynamics due to the establishment of dams and reservoirs, and land use changes from agriculture and industry. This book provides a comprehensive review of issues involving inland waters and discusses many worldwide inland water systems. The main topics of this text are water quality investigation, analyses of the ecology of inland water systems, remote sensing observation and numerical modeling methods, and biodiversity investigations.

The most up-to-date book on invertebrates, providing a new framework for understanding their place in the tree of life In The Invertebrate Tree of Life, Gonzalo Giribet and Gregory Edgecombe, leading authorities on invertebrate biology and paleontology, utilize phylogenetics to trace the evolution of animals from their origins in the Proterozoic to today. Phylogenetic relationships between and within the major animal groups are based on the latest molecular analyses, which are increasingly genomic in scale and draw on the soundest methods of tree reconstruction. Giribet and Edgecombe evaluate the evolution of animal organ systems, exploring how current debates about phylogenetic relationships affect the ways in which aspects of invertebrate nervous systems, reproductive biology, and other key features are inferred to have developed. The authors review the systematics, natural history, anatomy, development, and fossil records of all major animal groups, employing seminal historical works and cutting-edge research in evolutionary developmental biology, genomics, and advanced imaging techniques. Overall, they provide a synthetic treatment of all animal phyla and discuss their relationships via an integrative approach to invertebrate systematics, anatomy, paleontology, and genomics. With numerous detailed illustrations and phylogenetic trees, The Invertebrate Tree of Life is a must-have reference for biologists and anyone interested in invertebrates, and will be an ideal text for courses in invertebrate biology. A must-have and up-to-date book on invertebrate biology Ideal as both a textbook and reference Suitable for courses in invertebrate biology Richly illustrated with black-and-white and color images and abundant tree diagrams Written by authorities on invertebrate evolution and phylogeny Factors in the latest understanding of animal genomics and original fossil material

This laboratory manual supports a one-semester course in invertebrate zoology. Exercises in this manual focus on an approach where you observe specimens, draw them, write down your own observations about them, and then pose questions based on what you observed. This pattern of observing and asking is the same approach zoologists often take when they develop new lines research about what animals do and how their bodies work. The manual includes introductions to microscopy and phylogenetic analysis, and hands-on exercises focusing on representatives from the following animal taxa: Symplasma - syncytial sponges; Cellularia - cellular sponges; Cnidaria - Hydrozoa, Scyphozoa, Cubozoa, and Anthozoa; Platyhelminthes - Turbellaria, Neodermata (Monogenea, Digenea, and Cestoda); Mollusca - Polyplacophora, Gastropoda, Cephalopoda, and Bivalvia; Annelida - Sipuncula, Errantia, Sedentaria; Brachiopoda (articulate and inarticulate); Nematoda; Panarthropoda - Lobopodia, Tardigrada, Arthropoda (Trilobilomorpha, Chelicerata, Arachnida, Crustacea, Myriapoda, Hexapoda); Echinodermata - Asteroidea, Echinoidea, Holothuroidea, echinoderm development; Hemichordata - Enteropneusta; and Chordata - Tunicata, Cephalochordata. I produced these exercises because the prices of textbooks and laboratory manuals have become extremely expensive over the past 20+ years. Students today sometimes have to spend over $90 for a new copy of a laboratory manual in invertebrate zoology. I'm sorry, but in my opinion that's just too much. I field-tested these exercises in my invertebrate zoology course over the past five years, and I just completed a comprehensive review of this material. I hope this lab manual will now help provide at least a little financial relief when it's time for today's invertebrate zoology students to buy books.