A Functional Biology of Scyphozoa

Hardcover – 1996

By M. Needler-Arai

A Functional Biology of Scyphozoa book have attracted the attention of a wide variety of people. Naturalists watch their beautiful movements. Fishermen may fear swarms that may interfere with fishing or eat larval fish. If stung, bathers retreat from the water. People in some Asian countries eat medusae. Comparative physiologists examine them as potentially simple models for the functioning of different systems.

A Functional Biology of Scyphozoa book integrates data from those and other investigations into the functional biology of Scyphozoa. This will emphasize the wide range of adaptive responses possible in these morphologically relatively simple animals. The book will focus on research over the last 35 years, partly because knowledge has expanded rapidly during that period, and partly because much of the previous work was summarized by books published between 1961 and 1970.

A Functional Biology of Scyphozoa book Bibliographies of papers on Scyphozoa were included in Mayr (1910) and Cramp (1961). Taxonomic diagnoses are also included in those monographs, as well as in a monograph on Scyphomedusae of the USSR published by Naumov (Naumov, 1961). Most importantly, a generation of scyphozoan workers used F.S.Russell’s (1970) monograph The Medusae of the British Isles as their ‘bible’. Despite its restrictive title, his book reviews most of the information on the biology of Scyphozoa to that date.