This Special Issue of Marine Drugs gathers recent investigations on the proteomes, metabolomes, transcriptomes, and the associated microbiomes of marine jellyfish and polyps, including bioactivity studies of their compounds and more generally, on their biotechnological potential, witnessing the increasingly recognized importance of Cnidaria as a largely untapped Blue Growth resource for new drug discovery. These researches evoke the outstanding ecological importance of cnidarians in marine ecosystems worldwide, calling for a global monitoring and conservation of marine biodiversity, so that the biotechnological exploitation of marine living resources will be carried out to conserve and sustainably use the natural capital of the oceans.

This Special Issue of Marine Drugs gathers recent investigations on the proteomes, metabolomes, transcriptomes, and the associated microbiomes of marine jellyfish and polyps, including bioactivity studies of their compounds and more generally, on their biotechnological potential, witnessing the increasingly recognized importance of Cnidaria as a largely untapped Blue Growth resource for new drug discovery. These researches evoke the outstanding ecological importance of cnidarians in marine ecosystems worldwide, calling for a global monitoring and conservation of marine biodiversity, so that the biotechnological exploitation of marine living resources will be carried out to conserve and sustainably use the natural capital of the oceans.

This new volume of Current Topics in Developmental Biology covers developmental timing, with contributions from an international board of authors. The chapters provide a comprehensive set of reviews covering such topics as the timing of developmental programs in Drosophila, temporal patterning of neural progenitors, and environmental modulation of developmental timing.

This book provides new insights into the universality of biological systems in animal reproduction and development by a comparative study of a variety of mechanisms in animals ranging from basal invertebrates to vertebrates, including mammals. Animals accomplish genetic diversity through meiosis and fertilization, and during embryogenesis animals must produce specialized cell types, including germ cells, in accordance with their individual body plan. This series of phenomena is essential to the continuity of life in the animal kingdom, and animals show various reproductive and developmental strategies. This volume, comprising four parts, reviews animal kingdom diversity, including reproductive strategies and germ cell differentiation mechanisms (Part 1), sex determination and differentiation (Part2), the mechanisms of fertilization (Part 3), and body axis formation (Part 4). Readers will find descriptions of the reproduction or development of 180 species, 13 phyla, 35 classes, 74 orders, 117 families, and 151 genera in this book. Of particular interest is the diversity of molecules and mechanisms used to achieve the same biological purpose in different animals. Undergraduates, graduate students, and professional scientists who want a deeper understanding of animal reproductive and developmental mechanisms will find this book to be of great value.

Scyphozoa have attracted the attention of many types of people. Naturalists watch their graceful locomotion. Fishermen may dread the swarms which can prevent fishing or eat larval fish. Bathers retreat from the water if they are stung. People from some Asiatic countries eat the medusae. Comparative physiologists examine them as possibly simple models for the functioning of various systems. This book integrates data from those and other investigations into a functional biology of scyphozoa. It will emphasize the wide range of adaptive responses possible in these morphologically relatively simple animals. The book will concentrate on the research of the last 35 years, partly because there has been a rapid expansion of knowledge during that period, and partly because much of the previous work was summarized by books published between 1961 and 1970. Bibliographies of papers on scyphozoa were included in Mayer (1910) and Kramp (1961). Taxonomic diagnoses are also included in those monographs, as well as in a monograph on the scyphomedusae of the USSR published by Naumov (Naumov, 1961). Most impor tantly, a genenttion of scyphozoan workers has used as its 'bible' the monograph by F.S.Russell (1970) The Medusae of the British Isles. In spite of its restrictive title, his book reviews most of the information on the biology of scyphozoa up to that date.