Ecomorphology is the comparative study of the influence of morphology on ecological relationships and the evolutionary impact of ecological factors on morphology in different life intervals, populations, species, communities, and evolutionary lineages. The book reviews early attempts at qualitative descriptions of ecomorphological patterns in fishes, especially those of the Russian school. More recent, quantitative studies are emphasised, including multivariate approaches to ecomorphological analysis, the selection of functionally important ecological and morphological variables to analyze, an experimental approach using performance tests to examine specific hypotheses derived from functional morphology, and the evolutionary interpretations of ecomorphological patterns. Six major areas of fish biology are focused on: feeding, sensory systems, locomotion, respiration, reproduction, and phylogenetic relationships. The 18 papers in the volume document: (1) how the morphology of bony fishes constrains ecological patterns and the use of resources; (2) whether ecological constraints can narrow the niche beyond the limits imposed by morphology (fundamental vs. realized niche); (3) how communities of fishes are organized with respect to ecomorphological patterns; and (4) the degree to which evolutionary pressures have produced convergent or divergent morphologies in fishes. A concluding paper summarizes ecomorphological research in fishes and points out taxa that are underrepresented or are especially promising for future research.

As the first four-legged vertebrates, called tetrapods, crept up along the shores of ancient primordial seas, feeding was among the most paramount of their concerns. Looking back into the mists of evolutionary time, fish-like ancestors can be seen transformed by natural selection and other evolutionary pressures into animals with feeding habitats as varied as an anteater and a whale. From frog to pheasant and salamander to snake, every lineage of tetrapods has evolved unique feeding anatomy and behavior.Similarities in widely divergent tetrapods vividly illustrate their shared common ancestry. At the same time, numerous differences between and among tetrapods document the power and majesty that comprises organismal evolutionary history.Feeding is a detailed survey of the varied ways that land vertebrates acquire food. The functional anatomy and the control of complex and dynamic structural components are recurrent themes of this volume. Luminaries in the discipline of feeding biology have joined forces to create a book certain to stimulate future studies of animal anatomy and behavior.

The book is a multi-authored book of 18 chapters comprising the state of the art work of all relevant topics on modern fish histology from 28 authors from ten countries. The topics include Introduction to Histological Techniques, Integument, Fish Skeletal Tissues, Muscular System, Structure and Function of Electric Organs, Digestive System, Glands of the Digestive Tract, Swim Bladder, Kidney, Ovaries and Eggs, Egg Envelopes, Testis Structure, Spermatogenesis, and Spermatozoa in Teleost Fishes, Cardiovascular System and Blood, Immune System of Fish, Gills: Respiration and Ionic-Osmoregulation, Sensory Organs, Morphology and Ecomorphology of the Fish Brain, and Endocrine System. Structural and functional aspects are treated and in a comparative way fish diversity at various taxonomic levels is integrated.

Fish accomplish most of their basic behaviors by swimming. Swimming is fundamental in a vast majority of fish species for avoiding predation, feeding, finding food, mating, migrating and finding optimal physical environments. Fish exhibit a wide variety of swimming patterns and behaviors. This treatise looks at fish swimming from the behavioral and

Centrarchid fishes, also known as freshwater sunfishes, include such prominent species as the Largemouth Bass, Smallmouth Bass and Bluegill. They are endemic to Eastern North America where they form part of a multi-million dollar sports fishing industry, but they have also been widely introduced around the globe by recreational anglers, in aquaculture programs and by government fisheries agencies. Centrarchid Fishes provides comprehensive coverage of all major aspects of this ecologically and commercially important group of fishes. Coverage includes diversity, ecomorphology, phylogeny and genetics, hybridization, reproduction, early life history and recruitment, feeding and growth, ecology, migrations, bioenergetics, physiology, diseases, aquaculture, fisheries management and conservation. Chapters have been written by well-known and respected scientists and the whole has been drawn together by Professors Cooke and Philipp, themselves extremely well respected in the area of fisheries management and conservation. Centrarchid Fishes is an essential purchase for all fish biologists, ecologists, fisheries managers and fish farm personnel who work with centrarchid species across the globe.

Biology of Antarctic Fish presents the most recent findings on the biology of fish in the unique environment of the Antarctic ocean. At present the year-round temperature of the coastal waters is very near -1,87 ° C, the equilibrium temperature of the ice-seawater mixture. This extremely low temperature affects different levels of organization of fish life: individuals, organ systems, cells, organelles, membranes, and molecules. Exploring ecology, evolution, and life history as well as physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology of Antarctic fish the book describes the mechanisms of cold adaptation at all these levels. It provides material for discussion also for fundamental questions in the field of adaptation to an extreme environment and therefore is of particular interest not only to specialized scientists, but also to those involved in basic and evolutionary biology.

Nearly a decade ago I began planning this book with the goal of summarizing the existing body of knowledge on ecology of freshwater fishes in a way similar to that of H. B. N. Hynes' comprehensive treatise Ecology of Running Waters for streams. The time seemed appropriate, as there had been several recent volumes that synthesized much information on a range of topics important in fish ecology, from biogeographic to local scales. For example, the "Fish Atlas" (Lee et aI. , 1980) had provided range maps and basic entry to the original literature for all freshwater fishes in North America, and in 1986 Hocutt and Wiley's Zoogeography of North American Fishes provided a detailed synthesis of virtually everything known about distributional ecology of fishes on that continent. Tim Berra (1981) had summarized in convenient map form the worldwide distribution of all freshwater fish families, and Joe Nelson's 1976 and 1984 editions of Fishes of the World had appeared. To complement these "big picture" views of fish distributions, the volume on Community and Evolutionary Ecology of North American Freshwater Fishes, edited by David Heins and myself (Matthews and Heins, 1987), had provided an opportunity for more than 30 individuals or groups to summarize their work on stream fishes (albeit mostly for warmwater systems).