Nematodes are one of the most abundant groups of invertebrates on the face of the earth. Their numbers are estimated to range from 1000 per cm2 in the sand-covered hydrogen sulphide ‘black zone’ beneath the ocean floors to 1.2 billion in a single hectare of soil. Estimates for their species diversity range from 100 000 to 10 million. The past history of nematodes is a mystery, since very few fossils have been discovered. This book establishes a solid base in palaeonematology with descriptions of 66 new fossil species and accounts of all previous fossil and subfossil nematodes from sedimentary deposits, coprolites, amber and mummies. It shows how nematode fossils can be used to establish lineages at various locations and time periods in the earth’s history and when nematodes entered into symbiotic and parasitic associations with plants and animals.

By joining phylogenetics and evolutionary ecology, this book explores the patterns of parasite diversity while revealing diversification processes.

This edited volume on the nematode model Pristionchus pacificus describes an integrative approach to evolutionary biology. It aims for a merger of evolutionary and comparative biology with mechanistic approaches based on genetics and molecular biology. Insight into the function of biological systems obtained from laboratory studies when complemented with ecology, natural variation and natural history of an organism, can provide detailed knowledge of the proximate and ultimate causations of species. Ralf J. Sommer developed P. pacificus as model system for integrative evolutionary biology with case studies in evo-devo and population genetics on La Réunion Island. Similarly, ecological interactions with scarab beetles revealed examples for the evolution of novelty at the morphological and behavioural level and their underlying molecular mechanisms. Contributors include Paul W. Sternberg, Ralf J. Sommer, Jagan Srinivasan, Christian Rödelsperger, Frank C. Schroeder, Robin M. Giblin-Davis, Natsumi Kanzaki, Matthias Herrmann, Angela McGaughran, Katy Morgan, Akira Ogawa, Federico D. Brown, Ray E. Hong, Robbie Rae, Amit Sinha, David Rudel, and Erik J. Ragsdale.

This book is the first complete illustrated compendium of root-knot nematode species from the genus Meloidogyne including 97 species descriptions with comprehensive diagnoses, information on biology, plant-hosts, pathogenicity, symptoms, distribution and biochemical and molecular diagnostics.

This book reviews developments in the molecular biology of plant-nematode interactions that have been driven by the application of genomics tools. The book will be of interest to postgraduate students and to researchers with an interest in plant nematology and/or plant pathology more generally. A series of introductory chapters provide a biological context for the detailed reviews of all areas of plant-nematode interactions that follow and ensure that the bulk of the book is accessible to the non-specialist. A final section aims to show how these fundamental studies have provided outputs of practical relevance.

This well illustrated book provides an historical and unified overview of a century and a half of research on the development, life cycles, transmission and evolution of the nematodes found in vertebrates throughout the world. This second, expanded edition includes relevant data from some 450 new references that have appeared from 1989 to 1999. The volume includes nematode parasites of humans, domestic animals and wildlife including fish. After an introductory chapter outlining general principles, the author systematically describes the biological characteristics of the 27 superfamilies of nematodes, followed by families, subfamilies, genera and species.

Cheap and plentiful genome sequence data is transforming biology, and will surely transform systematics. This volume explores how.