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Richly illustrated,
Oar Feet and Opal Teeth by Charles B. Miller introduces readers to free-living copepods. Copepods are small crustaceans found only in water. Although they play a critical role in maintaining ecological balance in lakes and oceans, most people are unfamiliar with them. In
Oar Feet and Opal Teeth, Miller characterizes their shape, oar-like feet for escaping predators, and stone-like teeth. He also discusses copepods' internal anatomy, life cycle variations, and how they capture food and avoid predators. In addition,
Oar Feet and Opal Teeth features profiles of several leading copepodologists, providing insight into how scientists study these complex and fascinating animals.
Sommario
- Preface
- Chapter 1. Planktonic Copepods Have Those Oar Feet
- Biographical Sketch: Russ Hopcroft
- Chapter 2. The Front End: Sensory Systems, Feeding Limbs, Opal Teeth
- Biographical Sketch: Barbara Sullivan
- Chapter 3. Let's Go Inside
- Biographical Sketches: Esther Lowe and Tai Soo Park
- Chapter 4. Alpha Taxonomy I
- Biographical Sketch: Bruce Frost
- Chapter 5. Alpha Taxonomy II
- Biographical Sketches: Janet Bradford-Grieve and Taisoo Park (again)
- Chapter 6. Feeding I: Various Modes
- Biographical Sketch: Jeannette Yen
- Chapter 7. Feeding II: More about Eating
- Biographical Sketch: Rudi Stricker
- Chapter 8. Not Being Eaten I: Diel Vertical Migration
- Biographical Sketches: Mark Ohman and Steve Bollens
- Chapter 9. Not Being Eaten II: More Strategies
- Chapter 10. Meeting and Mating: Sex in Wide-Open Water
- Biographical Sketches: Atsushi Tsuda and Jeanette Yen (again)
- Chapter 11. Reproduction, Free vs. Sac-Spawners
- Biographical Sketches: Jeffery Runge, Barbara Niehoff, Thomas Kiørboe, and Marina
- Sabatini
- Chapter 12. Development
- Biographical Sketch: Catherine Johnson
- Chapter 13. Sex Determination in Copepods
- Biographical Sketches: Roger Harris, Xabier Irigoien, and Tran The Do
- Chapter 14. Chromatin Diminution: Marvelous Mitoses
- Biographical Sketch: Grace Wyngaard
- Chapter 15. Copepodite Diapause: Atlantic
- Biographical Sketches: Sheina Marshall, A.P. Orr, Mark Baumgartner, and Ann Tarrant
- Chapter 16. Copepodite Diapause: Pacific and Indian
- Biographical Sketch: Sharon Smith
- Chapter 17. Egg Diapause
- Biographical Sketches: Edward Zillioux and J. Kenneth Johnson
- Chapter 18. Molecular Genetics Applied to Copepods
- Biographical Sketch: Ann Bucklin
- Chapter 19. Beta Taxonomy I: Copepod Sprigs on the Tree of Life
- Biographical Sketches: Abraham Fleminger and Erica Goetze
- Chapter 20. Beta Taxonomy II: Copepods in the Stream of Time
- Biographical Sketches: Geoffrey Boxshall and Rony Huys
- Chapter 21. Copepod Phylogenies from Mitochondrial DNA Sequences
- Biographical Sketch: Diego Figueroa
- Index
Info autore
Charles B. Miller is Professor Emeritus of Oceanography in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. He co-authored Biological
Oceanography with Patricia Wheeler (in its second edition as of 2012). Professor Miller is a member of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.
Riassunto
Oar Feet and Opal Teeth is about free-living copepods and the copepodologists who study them. Copepods are a subclass of the arthropod class Crustacea. They act as dominant herbivores and small predators in the planktonic ecosystems of oceans, estuaries, and lakes. Copepods are likely the largest assemblage of complex animals on earth. These strikingly beautiful small crustaceans are of wide ecological significance and as complex and precisely adapted as insects. Yet few biologists and others interested in animals are familiar with them. In Oar Feet and Opal Teeth, Charles B. Miller introduces these small crustaceans and the scientists devoting their careers to revealing their biology.
In twenty-one chapters, Miller details the defining features and general biology of copepods. They typically have four or five pairs of oar-like feet to drive escape jumps. Teeth on mandible extensions are formed with siliceous minerals akin to opal. The first two chapters of the book closely examine the oar feet and mouth parts. Subsequent chapters describe internal anatomy, taxonomy, and many aspects of copepod natural history. Recent evolutionary insights about them are reviewed; those are based on molecular genetics and reach back to the Cambrian explosion.
Oar Feet and Opal Teeth includes over twenty biographical sketches of copepodologists from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Among them, Russell Hopcroft, a premier photographer of plankton, has full-color copepod images featured throughout the book. Jeannette Yen learned how Euchaeta marina detects prey and studies how ready-for-mating copepods find each other. Shinichi Uye of Hiroshima University studied the production by copepods of resting eggs and their delayed development. Grace Wyngaard is studying the special embryonic cell-divisions of some lake copepods for eliminating "junk DNA." Miller based most of the profiles featured in the book on personal interviews he conducted.
