This book contains 26 contributions dealing with the biology of aquatic oligochaetes and covers a wide range of topics including taxonomy, morphology, ultrastructure, embryology, reproduction, feeding biology, ecotoxicity, community studies, and species distribution. Descriptions of new taxa in tropical areas, including Amazonian forest soils, as well as overviews on the biodiversity of aquatic oligochaetes in Australia and European groundwaters, are presented. New morphological characteristics in both marine and freshwater species are described and interpreted. Laboratory studies contribute to the knowledge of oligochaete feeding biology and reproduction. The use of aquatic oligochaetes in ecological risk assessment is analysed in detail, and standardised experimental designs for studies on bioaccumulation and pollutant transfer by food are included. Finally, a number of papers present the effects of oliogochaetes on the performance of an activated sludge plant, and multivariate approaches to the spatial and/or temporal distribution and composition of oligochaete communities in many different areas of the world, from the scale of a river to the scale of the microhabitat. The broad scope of this volume is a reflection of recent rends, not only in oligochaete research, but also in general applied biological studies.

This volume contains selected papers from the 9th Symposium on Aquatic Oligochaeta, 6–10 October 2003, Wageningen, The Netherlands. 18 contributions deal with the biology of aquatic oligochaetes, and represents a mixture of the fields of taxonomy, anatomy, morphology and physiology, life history, ecology, sludge studies and toxicology. This wide scope is in line with recent trends in oligochaete research, with a special interest in sludge studies.

After some conversations with Professor Dr. H. Caspers and other participants at the triennial congress of the International Association of Theoretical and Applied Limnology (S. I. L. ) held in Copenhagen, Denmark (1977), the senior editor approached the international delegates at the business meeting for approval of the concept of holding the First International Symposium on Aquatic Oligochaete Biology at Sidney (near Victoria) British Columbia on May 1-4, 1979. The S. I. L. agreed to sponsor such a meeting, and this sponsorship in turn led to the provision of space and technical facilities at the Institute of Ocean Sciences Patricia Bay, the Pacific Regional headquarters of the Ocean and Aquatic Sciences component of the federal Fisheri~s and Oceans Department. The National Research Council of Canada provided travel support for a number of non-Canadian participants. Invitations were sent to as many active workers in the field as the senior editor could name, and in addition two representatives of closely allied fields were invited - Dr. V. Standen who works with closely related but terrestrial species, and Dr. J. Grassle who works with polychaetes but especially with Capitella capitata which is much like an oligochaete in some aspects of its biolog- so much so that the senior editor in his salad days succumbed to some ill-founded advice and described Capitella as a new marine tubificid! The addition of these "outside" influences prevented the group from making a number of unfounded assumptions during discussions, and provided valuable cross-linkages.

In aquatic ecosystems, the oligochaetes are often a major component of the community. Their relevance in sediment quality assessment is largely related to their benthic and detritivorous life habit. In this book, we aim to present the state of the art of Pollution Biology using oligochaete worms in laboratory and field studies. Future research will require the combination of a variety of methodological approaches and the integration of the resulting information, avoiding fragmented and often conflicting visions of the relationships of the species with their environment. Current approaches to ecotoxicology and bioaccumulation using ecological risk assessment provide the opportunity to relate community studies with probability of effects. This book addresses three main themes: Ecological and Field Studies using the composition and structure of oligochaete communities, Toxicology and Laboratory Studies, and Bioaccumulation and Trophic Transfer Studies. Two appendices list values of toxicological parameters (LC50, EC50) and several bioaccumulation variables (bioaccumulation factors, biological half-life, toxicokinetic coefficients, and critical body residues) for different oligochaete species. Additional information is provided on Methodological Issues and on the Taxonomy of several oligochaete families, with information on the most recent taxonomic debates. Each chapter includes a critical view, based on the authors’ experience, of a number of current issues which have been raised in the literature.

The book contains papers on the biology of aquatic oligochaetes and some related groups. They cover a wide range of topics including phylogeny, taxonomy, geographic distribution, freshwater and marine ecology, population dynamics, histology and ultrastructure, physiology and behaviour. The wide scope is in line with recent trends in annelid research with less emphasis on pollution studies and faunistics and a renewed interest in experimental biology using new techniques.