This Element reviews the ecologies of skeletal trace-producing interactions on echinoids in Modern ecosystems and the recognition of those biogenic traces in the fossil record. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Sea Urchins: Biology and Ecology, Fourth Edition, Volume 43 expands its coverage to include the entire class of Echinoidea, making this new edition an authoritative reference of the entire class of species. This is a valuable resource that will help readers gain a deep understanding of the basic characteristics of sea urchins, the basis of the great variation that exists in sea urchins, and how sea urchins are important components of marine ecosystems. Updated coverage includes sections on reproduction, metabolism, endocrinology, larval ecology, growth, digestion, carotenoids and disease. - Includes pertinent tables and graphs within chapters to visually summarize information - Provides case studies with research applications to provide potential solutions - Includes the entire class of Echinoidea and the effect of climate change on the biology and ecology of the species

Sea urchins are a major component of the world ocean. They are important ecologically and often greatly affect marine communities. They have an excellent fossil record and consequently are of interest to paleontologists. Research has increased in recent years stimulated first by a recognition of their ecological importance and then because of their economic importance. Scientists around the world are actively investigating their potential for aquaculture. This book is designed to provide a broad understanding of the biology and ecology of sea urchins. Synthetic chapters consider biology of sea urchins as a whole to give a broad view. The topics of these chapters include reproduction, metabolism, endocrinology, larval ecology, growth, digestion, carotenoids, disease and nutrition. Subsequent chapters consider the ecology of individual species that are of major importance ecologically and economically. These include species from Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Europe, North America, South America and Africa. * First comprehensive book devoted to the biology and ecology of sea urchins* NEW chapter on Nutrition of Sea Urchins and Ecology of Diadema* Brand NEW illustrations* Hot NEW topic: Immunology of the Sea Urchin* Chapters written by internationally recognized experts* Each chapter revised and updated from the first edition* Biological chapters include reproduction, endocrinology, carotenoids and disease* Ecological chapters include species of major economic interest for fisheries and aquaculture

The dominant faunal elements in shallow Paleozoic oceans, echinoderms are important to understanding these marine ecosystems. Echinoderms (which include such animals as sea stars, crinoids or sea lilies, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers) have left a rich and, for science, extremely useful fossil record. For various reasons, they provide the ideal source for answers to the questions that will help us develop a more complete understanding of global environmental and biodiversity changes. This volume highlights the modern study of fossil echinoderms and is organized into five parts: echinoderm paleoecology, functional morphology, and paleoecology; evolutionary paleoecology; morphology for refined phylogenetic studies; innovative applications of data encoded in echinoderms; and information on new crinoid data sets.

La 4ème de couverture porte : "Echinoderms are a vast group of spiny-skinned animals including starfish, brittle-stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, feather stars, sea lilies and sea cucumbers. These relatives of chordates and hemichordates have inhabited the world's oceans for more than 500 million years. Modern members of the Echinodermata are, with over 7 000 species, an integral part of marine communities from the intertidal to the deep sea. Echinoderms play a major ecological role in marine habitats and are of economic importance in fisheries, aqaculture and biomedicine.The present volume contains the abstracts of lectures and posters presented during the 7th European Conference on Echinoderms (ECE) as well as excursion guides.This year's conference was held at the northern campus of the Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany, from October 2-9, 2010. More than 100 biologists, palaeontologists and other scientists from 25 countries participated."

The history of life on earth is largely reconstructed from time-averaged accumulations of fossils. A glimpse at ecologic-time attributes and processes is relatively rare. However, the time-sensitive and predictability of echinoderm disarticulation makes them model organisms to determine post-mortem transportation and allows recognition of ecological-time data within paleocommunity accumulations. Unlike many other fossil groups, this has allowed research on many aspects of echinoderms and their paleocommunities, such as the distribution of soft tissues, assessment of the amount of fossil transportation prior to burial, determination of intraspecific variation, paleocommunity composition, estimation of relative abundance of taxa in paleocommunities, determination of attributes of niche differentiation, etc. Crinoids and echinoids have received the most amount of taphonomic research, and the patterns present in these two groups can be used to develop a more thorough understanding of all echinoderm clades.