Oar Feet and Opal Teeth About Copepods and Copepodologists

by Miller, Charles B.

• ISBN13: 9780197637326
• ISBN10: 0197637329
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780197637340
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2023-06-21
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

Oar Feet and Opal Teeth is about free-living copepods and the copepodologists who study them. Copepods are a subclass of the arthropod class Crustacea. They act as dominant herbivores and small predators in the planktonic ecosystems of oceans, estuaries, and lakes. Copepods are likely the largest assemblage of complex animals on earth. These strikingly beautiful small crustaceans are of wide ecological significance and as complex and precisely adapted as insects. Yet few biologists and others interested in animals are familiar with them. In Oar Feet and Opal Teeth, Charles B. Miller introduces these small crustaceans and the scientists devoting their careers to revealing their biology.

In twenty-one chapters, Miller details the defining features and general biology of copepods. They typically have four or five pairs of oar-like feet to drive escape jumps. Teeth on mandible extensions are formed with siliceous minerals akin to opal. The first two chapters of the book closely examine the oar feet and mouth parts. Subsequent chapters describe internal anatomy, taxonomy, and many aspects of copepod natural history. Recent evolutionary insights about them are reviewed; those are based on molecular genetics and reach back to the Cambrian explosion.

Oar Feet and Opal Teeth includes over twenty biographical sketches of copepodologists from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Among them, Russell Hopcroft, a premier photographer of plankton, has full-color copepod images featured throughout the book. Jeannette Yen learned how Euchaeta marina detects prey and studies how ready-for-mating copepods find each other. Shinichi Uye of Hiroshima University studied the production by copepods of resting eggs and their delayed development. Grace Wyngaard is studying the special embryonic cell-divisions of some lake copepods for eliminating "junk DNA." Miller based most of the profiles featured in the book on personal interviews he conducted.

Author Biography

Charles B. Miller is Professor Emeritus of Oceanography in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. He co-authored Biological
Oceanography with Patricia Wheeler (in its second edition as of 2012). Professor Miller is a member of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1. Planktonic Copepods Have Those Oar Feet
Biographical Sketch: Russ Hopcroft

Chapter 2. The Front End: Sensory Systems, Feeding Limbs, Opal Teeth
Biographical Sketch: Barbara Sullivan

Chapter 3. Let's Go Inside
Biographical Sketches: Esther Lowe and Tai Soo Park

Chapter 4. Alpha Taxonomy I
Biographical Sketch: Bruce Frost

Chapter 5. Alpha Taxonomy II
Biographical Sketches: Janet Bradford-Grieve and Taisoo Park (again)

Chapter 6. Feeding I: Various Modes
Biographical Sketch: Jeannette Yen

Chapter 7. Feeding II: More about Eating
Biographical Sketch: Rudi Stricker

Chapter 8. Not Being Eaten I: Diel Vertical Migration
Biographical Sketches: Mark Ohman and Steve Bollens

Chapter 9. Not Being Eaten II: More Strategies

Chapter 10. Meeting and Mating: Sex in Wide-Open Water
Biographical Sketches: Atsushi Tsuda and Jeanette Yen (again)

Chapter 11. Reproduction, Free vs. Sac-Spawners
Biographical Sketches: Jeffery Runge, Barbara Niehoff, Thomas Kiørboe, and Marina
Sabatini

Chapter 12. Development
Biographical Sketch: Catherine Johnson

Chapter 13. Sex Determination in Copepods
Biographical Sketches: Roger Harris, Xabier Irigoien, and Tran The Do

Chapter 14. Chromatin Diminution: Marvelous Mitoses
Biographical Sketch: Grace Wyngaard

Chapter 15. Copepodite Diapause: Atlantic
Biographical Sketches: Sheina Marshall, A.P. Orr, Mark Baumgartner, and Ann Tarrant

Chapter 16. Copepodite Diapause: Pacific and Indian
Biographical Sketch: Sharon Smith

Chapter 17. Egg Diapause
Biographical Sketches: Edward Zillioux and J. Kenneth Johnson

Chapter 18. Molecular Genetics Applied to Copepods
Biographical Sketch: Ann Bucklin

Chapter 19. Beta Taxonomy I: Copepod Sprigs on the Tree of Life
Biographical Sketches: Abraham Fleminger and Erica Goetze

Chapter 20. Beta Taxonomy II: Copepods in the Stream of Time
Biographical Sketches: Geoffrey Boxshall and Rony Huys

Chapter 21. Copepod Phylogenies from Mitochondrial DNA Sequences
Biographical Sketch: Diego Figueroa

Index