Richard C. Brusca

Invertebrates is a complete, trusted, and engaging textbook whose comprehensive coverage makes it an invaluable resource for both undergraduate and graduate courses and professional researchers. The 3rd edition has been widely praised for its detailed classifications, high-quality illustrations, and coverage of contemporary debates in the field. The 4th edition will continue to feature recent scholarship and current perspectives, while streamlining the text to improve accessibility for intro-level students. Gonzalo Giribet joins as coauthor, contributing his phylogenomic expertise as an Evolutionary Biologist and Phylogeneticist, and Director of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

In the 1980s, many countries in Latin America were struggling to break free from decades of dictatorial rule by despots propped up by the U.S. government. In the Land of the Feathered Serpent is the story of a bright but na ve young marine biologist, with an outsized libido and a hypersensitive nose, who finds himself on a Homeric journey of discovery in Central America and Mexico during this period. As with Odysseus, Odel Bernini's journey takes place both in the physical terrain and in the landscape of his mind as he travels through the lowland jungles of the Pet n rainforest and the 10,000-foot high sierras of Guatemala's Maya realm. Odel gets caught up with dirty politics and the CIA, is seduced by a dark siren, is nearly killed by a Cyclops, and is swept into the world of Maya mysticism. In the end, Odel finds himself transformed in unexpected ways. An adventure story and mystery, Odel's journey explores themes of truth and deception, trust and love, the dark heart and bright hope of humankind, and personal growth. The facts, places, and most characters in the story are real. Odel Bernini and his close friends are, however, purely fictional. See the Feathered Serpent website for further details www.featheredserpent.online

Published by Sinauer Associates, an imprint of Oxford University Press. In the twelve years since publication of Invertebrates, Second Edition, fundamental shifts have occurred in our understanding of the origins and evolutionary relationships among protists and animals. These changes are largely due to the explosion of molecular phylogenetics and evo-devo research, emergence of the new field of animal genomics, major fossil discoveries in China, Australia, and elsewhere, and important new embryological and ultrastructural studies. As a result: - New phyla have been described (e.g., Micrognathozoa, Xenacoelomorpha). - Old phyla have been collapsed into others (e.g., Sipuncula and Echiura are now placed within Annelida; acanthocephalans are now known to be highly modified, parasitic rotifers). - Phyla once thought to be deuterostomes are now part of the protostome clade (e.g., Chaetognatha, Phoronida, Bryozoa, Brachiopoda). - The Protostomia has been reorganized into two major clades known as Ecdysozoa and Spiralia. For each of the thirty-two currently recognized phyla, Invertebrates, Third Edition, presents detailed classifications, revised taxonomic synopses, updated information on general biology and anatomy, and current phylogenetic hypotheses, organized with boxes and tables, and illustrated with abundant line drawings and new color photos. The chapters are organized around the "new animal phylogeny," while introductory chapters provide basic background information on the general biology of invertebrates. Two new coauthors have been added to the writing team, and twenty-two additional invertebrate zoologists have contributed to chapter revisions. This benchmark volume on our modern views of invertebrate biology should be in every zoologist's library.

Few places in the world can claim such a diversity of species as the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez), with its 6,000 recorded animal species estimated to be half the number actually living in its waters. So rich are the Gulf's water that over a half-million tons of seafood are taken from them annually--and this figure does not count the wasted by-catch, which would triple or quadruple that tonnage. This timely book provides a benchmark for understanding the Gulf's extraordinary diversity, how it is threatened, and in what ways it is--or should be--protected. In spite of its dazzling richness, most of the Gulf's coastline now harbors but a pale shadow of the diversity that existed just a half-century ago. Recommendations based on sound, careful science must guide Mexico in moving forward to protect the Gulf of California. This edited volume contains contributions by twenty-four Gulf of California experts, from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. From the origins of the Gulf to its physical and chemical characteristics, from urgently needed conservation alternatives for fisheries and the entire Gulf ecosystem to information about its invertebrates, fishes, cetaceans, and sea turtles, this thought-provoking book provides new insights and clear paths to achieve sustainable use solidly based on robust science. The interdisciplinary, international cooperation involved in creating this much-needed collection provides a model for achieving success in answering critically important questions about a precious but rapidly disappearing ecological treasure.