This work contains the Proceedings of The Crustacean Society Summer Meeting in Tokyo, Japan, in 2009, organized by Carcinological Society of Japan and The Crustacean Society. The presentations by internationally leading carcinologists represent major reviews of all areas of crustacean research.

This book introduces updated information on conservation issues, providing an overview of what is needed to advance the global conservation of freshwater decapods such as freshwater crabs, crayfish, and shrimps. Biodiversity loss in general is highest in organisms that depend on intact freshwater habitats, because freshwater ecosystems worldwide are suffering intense threats from multiple sources. Our understanding of the number and location of threatened species of decapods, and of the nature of their extinction threats has improved greatly in recent years, and has enabled the development of species conservation strategies. This volume focuses on saving threatened species from extinction, and emphasizes the importance of the successful implementation of conservation action plans through cooperation between scientists, conservationists, educators, funding agencies, policy makers, and conservation agencies.

For their great commercial importance as a human food delicacy, crayfish are now becoming of wider interest to molecular biologists, and also to conservationists due to the fact that in some countries many of the native crayfish species are under threat from human activity, disease, and competition from other introduced crayfish species. Helmed by

This second volume in the Natural History of the Crustacea series examines how crustaceans-the different body shapes and adaptations of which are described in volume 1-make a living in the wide range of environments they inhabit, and how they exploit food sources. The contributions in the volume give synthetic overviews of particular lifestyles and feeding mechanisms, and offer a fresh look at crustacean life styles through the technological tools that have been applied to recent crustacean research. These include SEM (scanning electron microscope) techniques, micro-optics, and long-term video recordings that have been used for a variety of behavioral studies. The audience will include not only crustacean biologists but evolutionary ecologists who want to understand the diversification of particular life styles, ecologists who follow the succession of communities, biogeochemists who estimate the role of crustaceans in geochemical fluxes, and biologists with a general interest in crustaceans.

Decapods are the largest, most prominent, and, unfortunately, most threatened freshwater crustaceans. Advances in Freshwater Decapod Systematics and Biology presents a selection of papers by geographical and domain experts, in taxonomy, phylogenetics, biogeography, life history, and conservation. The major groups of freshwater decapods—crabs, crayfish, prawns, and anomurans—are all represented. This volume includes a chapter commemorating Richard Bott’s influence on freshwater crab/decapod biology; descriptions of seven new species (Atyidae, Aeglidae, Pseudothelphusidae, Potamidae, and Sesarmidae); chapters on larval-based phylogenetics and molecular clock calibration; and reviews of longevity and mortality, and of the global conservation status of freshwater decapods. This volume both reflects the current state of research and serves as a primer for future work and more integrative decapod research. Contributors include: Shane T. Ahyong, Klaus Anger, Georgina Bond-Buckup, Ludwig Buckup, Yixiong Cai, Christian Clavijo, Neil Cumberlidge, James M. Furse, Alberto S. Gonçalves, Guillermo Guerao, Alireza Keikhosravi, Sebastian Klaus, Tainã G. Loureiro, Célio Magalhães, Fernando L. Mantelatto, Jose C. E. Mendoza, , Jérôme Prieto, Silke Reuschel, Vitor Q. A. Sanches, Tobias Santl, Sandro Santos, Fabrizio Scarabino, Christoph D. Schubart, Michael Türkay, Ana Verdi, Günter Vogt, and Darren C. J. Yeo

This is the ninth volume of ten in the The Natural History of the Crustacea Series. The chapters in this volume synthesize the diverse topics in fisheries and aquaculture. In the first part of the book, chapters explore worldwide crustacean fisheries. This section comes to a conclusion with two chapters on harvested crustaceans that are usually not within the focus of the mainstream fisheries research, possibly because they are caught by local fishing communities in small-scale operations and sold locally as subsistence activity. In the second part of the book, the authors explore the variety of cultured crustacean species, like shrimps, prawns, lobsters, and crabs. Chapters in the third part of the volume focus on important challenges and opportunities, including diseases and parasitism, the use of crustacean as bioindicators, and their role in biotechnology.

Crustaceans are increasingly used as model organisms in all fields of biology, as few other taxa exhibit such a variety of body shapes and adaptations to particular habitats and environmental conditions. Life Histories is the fifth volume in The Natural History of the Crustacea series. An understanding of life histories is crucial to understanding the biology of this fascinating invertebrate group. Written by internationally recognized experts studying a wide range of crustacean taxa and topics, this volume synthesizes current research in a format that is accessible to a wide scientific audien.