Records of parasitism in crocodilians date back to the early 1800s, distributed among various types of published and unpublished materials. Analyzing parasite-host specificity, geographic distribution, and taxonomy can provide otherwise cryptic details about crocodilian ecology and evolution, as well as their local food web dynamics. This information is critical for improved conservation tactics for both crocodilians and their habitat. As climate change, anthropogenic conflict, and environmental pollution endanger crocodilian ecosystems, there is a need for organized information on crocodile, alligator, caiman, and gharial infectious diseases. This volume meets this need by delivering the first checklist of crocodilians and their parasites for researchers and scholars in biology, herpetology, and ecology in order to further the knowledge and study of crocodilian-parasite dynamics and improve our understanding of human impacts on ecosystems.

Modern crocodylians—crocodiles, alligators, caiman (Central and South America), and gharials (India)—have evolved over 250 million years from a fully terrestrial, bipedal ancestor. Along with birds, crocodylians are the only living members of Archosauria, the group including nonavian dinosaurs. Ruling Reptiles features contributions on a broad range of topics surrounding crocodylian evolution and biology including osteology, osteohistology, developmental biology, myology, odontology, functional morphology, allometry, body size estimation, taphonomy, parasitology, ecology, thermophysiology, and ichnology. It demonstrates how the wide variety of these studies can also provide crucial insights into dinosaurian biology and evolution. Featuring the latest findings and interpretations, Ruling Reptiles: Crocodylian Biology and Archosaur Paleobiology is an essential resource for zoologists, biologists, and paleontologists.

The Biology and Identification of the Coccidia (Apicomplexa) of Marsupials of the World contains the most up-to-date information on the former order marsupial that is now partitioned by mammalogists into seven separate orders that contain 20 families, 86 genera, and 318 species that live on land or in trees in Oceania and the Americas. Marsupials, like other vertebrate animals have many different kinds of parasites (e.g. viruses, protozoa, worms, arthropods, etc.), but there is no definitive text that covers any one of these groups found in all marsupials. Coccidiosis is a serious global problem in most domesticated animals, and under increasing circumstances of loss of habitat and crowding, may also affect some wild animal populations, thus, there is a real need for their identification and control. - Offers line drawings and photomicrograph of each parasite from each hosts species, including methods of identification and treatment - Presents a complete historical rendition of all known publications on coccidia (and their closest relatives) from all marsupials species on Earth, and evaluates the scientific and scholarly merit of each - Provides a complete species analysis of the known biology of every coccidian described from marsupials - Reviews the most current taxonomy of marsupials and their phylogenetic relationships needed to help assess host-specificity and evaluate what little cross-transmission work is available

"Wildlife in a Changing World" presents an analysis of the 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Beginning with an explanation of the IUCN Red List as a key conservation tool, it goes on to discuss the state of the world s species and provides the latest information on the patterns of species facing extinction in some of the most important ecosystems in the world, highlighting the reasons behind their declining status. Areas of focus in the report include: freshwater biodiversity, the status of the world s marine species, species susceptibility to climate change impacts, the Mediterranean biodiversity hot spot, and broadening the coverage of biodiversity assessments."

We first discussed the possibility of organizing a symposium on helminth communities in June, 1986. At that time, we were engaged in writing a joint paper on potential structuring mechanisms in helminth communities; we disagreed on a number of issues. We felt the reason for such debate was because the discipline was in a great state of flux, with many new concepts and approaches being introduced with increasing frequency. After consider able discussion about the need, scope and the inevitable limitations of such a symposium, we decided that the time was ripe to bring other ecologists, engaged in similar research, face-to-face. There were many individuals from whom to choose; we selected those who were actively publishing on helminth communities or those who had expertise in areas which we felt were particularly appropriate. We compiled a list of potential participants, contacted them and received unanimous support to organize such a symposium. Our intent was to cover several broad areas, fully recognizing that breadth negates depth (at least with a publisher's limitation on the number of pages). We felt it important to consider patterns amongst different kinds of hosts because this is where we had disagreed among ourselves.