Explores the functional morphology of crustaceans, which cover the main body parts and systems.

This is the seventh volume of a ten-volume series on The Natural History of the Crustacea. Chapters in this volume synthesize our current understanding of early crustacean development from the egg through the embryonic and larval phase. The first part of this book focuses on the elemental aspects of crustacean embryonic development. The second part of the book provides an account of the larval phase of crustaceans and describes processes that influence the development from hatching to an adult-like juvenile. The third and final part of the book explores ecological interactions during the planktonic phase and how crustacean larvae manage to find food, navigate the dynamic water column, and avoid predators in a medium that offers few refuges.

This is the eighth volume of a ten-volume series on The Natural History of the Crustacea. The volume examines Evolution and Biogeography, and the first part of this volume is entirely dedicated to the explanation of the origins and successful establishment of the Crustacea in the oceans. In the second part of the book, the biogeography of the Crustacea is explored in order to infer how they conquered different biomes globally while adapting to a wide range of aquatic and terrestrial conditions. The final section examines more general patterns and processes, and the chapters offer useful insight into the future of crustaceans.

This second volume in the Natural History of the Crustacea series examines how crustaceans-the different body shapes and adaptations of which are described in volume 1-make a living in the wide range of environments they inhabit, and how they exploit food sources. The contributions in the volume give synthetic overviews of particular lifestyles and feeding mechanisms, and offer a fresh look at crustacean life styles through the technological tools that have been applied to recent crustacean research. These include SEM (scanning electron microscope) techniques, micro-optics, and long-term video recordings that have been used for a variety of behavioral studies. The audience will include not only crustacean biologists but evolutionary ecologists who want to understand the diversification of particular life styles, ecologists who follow the succession of communities, biogeochemists who estimate the role of crustaceans in geochemical fluxes, and biologists with a general interest in crustaceans.

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.

Crustaceans are increasingly being used as model organisms in all fields of biology, including neurobiology, developmental biology, animal physiology, evolutionary ecology, biogeography, and resource management. Crustaceans have a very wide range of phenotypes and inhabit a diverse array of environments, ranging from the deep sea to high mountain lakes and even deserts. The evolution of their life histories has permitted crustaceans to successfully colonize this variety of habitats. Few other taxa exhibit such a variety of life histories and behavior. A comprehensive overview of their life histories is essential to the understanding of many aspects of their success in marine and terrestrial environments. This volume provides a general overview of crustacean life histories. Crustaceans have particular life history adaptations that have permitted them to conquer all environments on earth. Crustacean life cycles have evolved to maximize fecundity, growth, and ageing, in a wide range of environmental conditions. Individual contributions contrast benefits and costs of different life histories including sexual versus asexual production, semelparity versus iteroparity, and planktonic larvae versus direct development. Important aspects of particular behaviors are presented (e.g. migrations, defense and territorial behaviors, anti-predator behavior, symbiosis).

Compared to other arthropods, crustaceans are characterized by an unparalleled disparity of body plans. Traditionally, the specialization of arthropod segments and appendages into distinct body regions has served as a convenient basis for higher classification; however, many relationships within the phylum Arthropoda still remain controversial.