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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.
List of contents
1. Introduction
2. Ecology of Mediterranean freshwater ecosystems
3. Introduction to Arthropoda
4. Class Branchiopoda
5. Class Ostracoda
6. Classes Copepoda and Ichthyostraca
7. Class Malacostraca (Subclass Eumalacostraca)
8. Class Hexapoda: General introduction
9. Order Ephemeroptera
10. Order Plecoptera
11. Order Odonata
12. Order Hemiptera
13. Order Coleoptera
14. Order Trichoptera
15. Order Diptera
About the author
Dr. Alain Maasri is a freshwater ecologist at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (Berlin, Germany) and a research associate at The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (Philadelphia, United States). He obtained his Bachelor’s degree from the Université Saint Joseph in Lebanon and his Masters and PhD degrees from Aix-Marseille Université in France where he examined the ecology and functioning of Mediterranean streams. His research interests include freshwater biodiversity, community ecology, and functional ecology of stream macroinvertebrates. Dr. Maasri has been researching freshwater ecosystems and communities for over 15 years across the Mediterranean basin, Mongolia, and the United States of America.
Dr. James H. Thorp is a professor and senior scientist at the University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS, United States). Prior to 2001, he was a distinguished professor and dean at Clarkson University, department chair and professor at the University of Louisville, associate professor and director of the Calder Ecology Center at Fordham University, and research ecologist at Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. He received his Baccalaureate from the University of Kansas and Masters and PhD degrees from North Carolina State. Prof. Thorp has been on the editorial board of three freshwater journals and is a former president of the International Society for River Science. His research interests run the gamut from organismal biology to community, ecosystem, and macrosystem ecology. While his research emphasizes aquatic invertebrates, he also studies fish ecology, especially food webs related. He has published more than 150 research articles and 10 books, including five volumes so far in the fourth edition of Thorp and Covich’s Freshwater Invertebrates.
