The Smithsonian Marine Science Symposium was held on 15-16 November 2007 in Washington, D.C. It represented the first major dissemination of marine research results since the establishment of the Smithsonian Marine Science Network (MSN). The 39 papers in this volume represent a wide range of marine research studies that demonstrate the breadth and diversity of science initiatives supported by the MSN. The first section contains an overview of the MSN along with papers describing the multidisciplinary investigations spanning more than 37 years for the four Smithsonian marine facilities that constitute the Network: the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center at the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland; the National Museum of Natural History's Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce, Florida; the Caribbean Coral Reef Ecosystems Program, with its Carrie Bow Marine Field Station in Belize; and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Subsequent papers represent findings by Smithsonian scholars and their collaborators on overarching topics of marine biodiversity, evolution, and speciation; biogeography, invasive species, and marine conservation; and forces of ecological change in marine systems.

This two-volume edited book highlights and reviews the potential of the fossil record to calibrate the origin and evolution of parasitism, and the techniques to understand the development of parasite-host associations and their relationships with environmental and ecological changes. The book deploys a broad and comprehensive approach, aimed at understanding the origins and developments of various parasite groups, in order to provide a wider evolutionary picture of parasitism as part of biodiversity. This is in contrast to most contributions by parasitologists in the literature that focus on circular lines of evidence, such as extrapolating from current host associations or distributions, to estimate constraints on the timing of the origin and evolution of various parasite groups. This approach is narrow and fails to provide the wider evolutionary picture of parasitism on, and as part of, biodiversity. Volume one focuses on identifying parasitism in the fossil record, and sheds light on the distribution and ecological importance of parasite-host interactions over time. In order to better understand the evolutionary history of parasites and their relationship with changes in the environment, emphasis is given to viruses, bacteria, protists and multicellular eukaryotes as parasites. Particular attention is given to fungi and metazoans such as bivalves, cnidarians, crustaceans, gastropods, helminths, insects, mites and ticks as parasites. Researchers, specifically evolutionary (paleo)biologists and parasitologists, interested in the evolutionary history of parasite-host interactions as well as students studying parasitism will find this book appealing.

On of two special issues of Advances in Marine Biology focusing on sponge science it features comprehensive reviews of the latest studies that are advancing our understanding of the fascinating marine phylum Porifera. The selected contributors are internationally renowned researchers in their respective fields and provide a thorough overview of the state-of-the-art of sponge science - This volume will become a reference to marine biologists with interest in benthic ecology and biotic interactions, including symbiosis chemical and molecular ecology systematics, phylogeny, and evolution sponge culture and tissue engineering