Book Description

The Mollusca, Volume 6: Ecology provides an overview of the state of knowledge in molluscan ecology. It is part of a multivolume treatise that covers the fields of biochemistry, physiology, neurobiology, reproduction and development, evolution, ecology, medical aspects, and structure. The Mollusca is intended to serve a range of disciplines: biological, biochemical, paleontological, and medical. As a source of information on the current status of molluscan research, it should prove useful to researchers of the Mollusca and other phyla, as well as to teachers and qualified graduate students. The book contains 15 chapters, arranged into three levels of ecological perspective: (a) distributional studies; (b) physiological ecology and bioenergetics; and (c) population genetics and dynamics. A discussion of the planetary distribution of and ecological constraints upon the mollusca is followed by separate chapters on the life styles and distribution of mollusks on the deep-sea bottom, in mangroves, and on coral reefs; and the trophic and reproductive ecology of those intrinsically fascinating molluscan groups—the nudibranchs and cephalopods. Subsequent chapters present physiological ecology in land snails and in freshwater bivalves, prosobranchs, and pulmonates, with a survey of the techniques of actuarial bioenergetics as applied to nonmarine molluscs. Other chapters cover population dynamics and biology in an introduced pest species, population genetics of marine molluscs, ecogenetics of land snails, and life-cycle pattems throughout the major molluscan taxa.