Coastal plankton

AuszugThis book was written for persons with a special interest in the plankton organisms of the ocean, or for those who are searching for small animals in sea water. It is part of a series of books on marine science, edited by the Biologische Anstalt Helgoland, AWI, which endeavour to bridge the knowledge and communication gap between the expert and lay person with scientific interests. Thus, it neither requires the reader to be an expert nor does it exclude the expert. Indeed, from the first edition on Coastal Plankton it became clear that apart from the students, experts actually also took a great interest in this book. In particular, zooplankton experts from all over the world used the first edition widely as supplementary material in their student courses, as it is often rather difficult for students to deal with drawn taxonomic illustrations without a good quality photographic image at their side. Photos of zooplankton enlargements through the microscope have rarely been published as a group of images for specific regions. However, as we know from the number of clicks image websites get, collections of images can be extremely helpful as a start up for the newcomer working on a particular water body. This book is a visual add-on to the classical and non-dispensable keys and taxonomic literature currently available. In the first edition already many images of micro- and meso-zooplankton and some examples of phytoplankton (see also separate phytoplankton book in this series) were collated mainly from North Sea species. This new edition is substantially thicker, with many more crustaceans, as well as trematodes, sipunculides, holothuria and enteropneusta. In accordance with the increased numbers of organisms of southern warm water origin in the North Sea many Mediterranean species have been added. These additions reflect the fact that the Authors and Editors continually discuss the needs of persons interested in finding out which animals are present in European waters and how to go about visualising them on paper. The choices made by the authors reflect over 30 years of experience in identifying sea creatures and in particular in investigating seawater under the microscope. The book is laid out so that the user is encouraged and supported in an investigation and so that it can be placed beside the light microscope easily. The book in particular reflects the great enjoyment, and sense of science one can have when seeing what a plankton haul can produce in terms of microscopic life in the oceans.