The Fourth Edition of The Light and Smith Manual continues a sixty-five-year tradition of providing to both students and professionals an indispensable, comprehensive, and authoritative guide to Pacific coast marine invertebrates of coastal waters, rocky shores, sandy beaches, tidal mud flats, salt marshes, and floats and docks. This classic and unparalleled reference has been newly expanded to include all common and many rare species from Point Conception, California, to the Columbia River, one of the most studied areas in the world for marine invertebrates. In addition, although focused on the central and northern California and Oregon coasts, this encyclopedic source is useful for anyone working in North American coastal ecosystems, from Alaska to Mexico. More than one hundred scholars have provided new keys, illustrations, and annotated species lists for over 3,500 species of intertidal and many shallow water marine organisms ranging from protozoans to sea squirts. This expanded volume covers sponges, sea anemones, hydroids, jellyfish, flatworms, polychaetes, amphipods, crabs, insects, snails, clams, chitons, and scores of other important groups. The Fourth Edition also features introductory chapters on marine habitats and biogeography, interstitial marine life, and intertidal parasites, as well as expanded treatments of common planktonic organisms likely to be encountered in near-to-shore shallow waters.

Here, eminent marine scientists and local researchers who have attended the workshops express their views on the many changes in Hong Kong's surrounding waters.

This landmark scientific reference for scientists, researchers, and students of marine biology tackles the monumental task of taking a complete biodiversity inventory of the Gulf of Mexico with full biotic and biogeographic information. Presenting a comprehensive summary of knowledge of Gulf biota through 2004, the book includes seventy-seven chapters, which list more than fifteen thousand species in thirty-eight phyla or divisions and were written by 138 authors from seventy-one institutions in fourteen countries.This first volume of Gulf of Mexico Origin, Waters, and Biota, a multivolumed set edited by John W. Tunnell Jr., Darryl L. Felder, and Sylvia A. Earle, provides information on each species' habitat, biology, and geographic range, along with full references and a narrative introduction to the group, which opens each chapter.

From 6-25 April 1998, the Tenth International Workshop on the Marine Flora and Fauna of Hong Kong and South China was convened at the Swire Institute of Marine Science of the University of Hong Kong. Thirteen scientists from six countries and twenty-two scientists and students from Hong Kong investigated aspects of the marine flora and fauna of the Cape d'Aguilar Marine Reserve and the southeastern waters of Hong Kong. This was to obtain more information about the newly-established reserve (the only one in Hong Kong) and the changes that had taken place on the seabed in the southern waters since they were dredged between 1992-1995, respectively, and, in the latter case, to see if there had been any subsequent benthic recovery. The Proceedings of the workshop contains thirty-six original research papers dealing with aspects of the taxonomy and anatomy, behaviour and physiology of marine life in Hong Kong and Southern China. Papers also explore aspects of Hong Kong's marine parks and reserves, including the pollution of Hong Kong's marine life with particular reference to the Cape d'Aguilar Marine Reserve, established only in 1996, and the fauna of its territorial southern waters. The Workshop was sponsored by the University of Hong Kong, the Croucher Foundation and the K.C. Wong Foundation so as to bring eminent overseas scientists to Hong Kong to work with their local colleagues and students. The success of the workshop concept is self-evident in the contents and scope of these proceedings. This was the eighth workshop convened in Hong Kong since 1977 and these proceedings have become the single-most important body of information on the long-term changes that have taken place in its marine environment over an extended time-frame. The volumes are also the largest regional repository of information on the marine life of the territorial waters of Hong Kong and the northern rim of the South China Sea. For those with any interest in Hong Kong's marine environment, therefore, this proceedings and its predecessors are essential reading.

Life began in the sea, and even today most of the deep diversity of the planet is marine. This is often forgotten, especially in tropical countries like Costa Rica, renowned for their rain forests and the multitude of life forms found therein. Thus this book focusing on marine diversity of Costa Rica is particularly welcome. How many marine species are there in Costa Rica? The authors report a total of 6,777 species, or 3. 5% of the world’s total. Yet the vast majority of marine species have yet to be formally described. Recent estimates of the numbers of species on coral reefs range from 1–9 million, so that the true number of marine species in Costa Rica is certainly far higher. In some groups the numbers are likely to be vastly higher because to date they have been so little studied. Only one species of nematode is reported, despite the fact that it has been said that nematodes are the most diverse of all marine groups. In better studied groups such as mollusks and crustaceans, reported numbers are in the thousands, but even in these groups many species remain to be described. Indeed the task of describing marine species is daunting – if there really are about 9 million marine species and Costa Rica has 3. 5% of them, then the total number would be over 300,000. Clearly, so much remains to be done that new approaches are needed. Genetic methods have en- mous promise in this regard.

This is the sixth volume of a ten-volume series on The Natural History of the Crustacea. The volume synthesizes in nineteen chapters our current understanding of diverse topics in crustacean reproductive biology. In the first part of this book, the chapters address allocation strategies to reproduction, gamete production, brooding behavior, and other components of parental care in crustaceans. The second part of the volume centers on sexual systems in crustaceans. The third section of the volume covers crustacean mating systems and sexual selection. Reproductive Biology ends with three chapters covering diverse topics including reproductive rhythms, crustacean personality research, and record breaking crustaceans with respect to reproductive characters.

Rickey Cothran and Martin Thiel explore the reproductive biology of crustaceans from allocation strategies at the individual level to the ecology of mating systems.