Description

Almost everything you wanted to know about appendicularians but were afraid to ask is discussed in this book or in the references herein. These diaphanous creatures are common in all the world's oceans but most people would not recognize them nor understand their roles in marine food webs. Although these free swimming tunicates are the most primitive chordates, having the smallest chordate genome known, they developed one of the most complex external food concentrating mucous structure and using tangential filtration they feed efficiently on sub-micron and micron sized particles. The nearly 7 known species are adapted to all the oceanic environments including the deep sea and make a significant contribution to what is called marine snow: slowly sedimenting marine particles and thus to the carbon cycling. §§Chapter after chapter reviews the latest findings in the fields of phylogenetics, diversity, reproduction, nutritional biology, population dynamics, carbon flux and predator-prey relationships.