CHANGES IN THE SEVENTH EDITION:
A major new feature of the seventh edition is a “Special Report” highlighting several key aspects of global change, including climate change, ocean acidification, the cascade of reactive nitrogen into the global environment, and stratospheric ozone depletion. These topics are by no means new to Marine Biology but, with the torrent of recent research demonstrating the ubiquity and magnitude of the human footprint on earth’s ecosystem processes, we felt it was important to delve more deeply into these issues than in previous editions, in a more integrated way. We are eager to hear from instructors about this new section and hope to highlight other aspects of global change—for example, changing sediment fluxes and how overfishing is altering food webs, in future editions. Most of all we hope that in future editions we will be able to highlight more success stories about humanity’s progress toward a sustainable existence on our home planet.
We have “expanded” the coverage of organismal biology in Part 2, at the suggestion of a number of instructors, to provide more extensive information about the diversity, form, and function of marine life. Some examples of this enhanced material are
- Illustrated tables at the end of each chapter that provide a consolidated review of major taxonomic groups and their characteristics
- Expanded coverage of marine viruses in a new section in Chapter 5
- New or improved figures on the anatomy of cnidarians, hydroids, polychaetes, squids, sea urchins, and tunicates, as well as on the life cycles of hydroids and sponges
Instructors have responded positively to the “Eye on Science” boxes—brief vignettes of major research programs or individual research projects—introduced in the sixth edition of Marine Biology, and we have retained this feature in the seventh edition to highlight new research and update the progress of ongoing initiatives.
In addition to these and other changes we have, as in every edition, revised the text and illustrations, corrected and updated facts and figures, and adjusted the balance and organization of material in response to new research and the suggestions of reviewers, whose inputs we greatly appreciate. As always we have tried to improve the illustrations and photographs and make the design more visually inviting, in the seventh edition emphasizing the central role of an evolutionary perspective in biology. We are deeply appreciative of the both the efforts and dedication of doday’s marine biologists who teach the subject and of the hard work and aspirations of the students who are tomorrow’s citizens and in some cases marine biologists. We sincerely hope that Marine Biology, seventh edition, will continue to support both teacher and student.
ORGANIZATION:
Marine Biology is organized into four parts. Part 1 (Chapters 1 through 4) introduces students to marine biology and the basic sciences that underpin it. Chapter 1 describes the history of marine biology. It also explains the fundamentals of the scientific method. This feature emphasizes that science is a process, an ongoing human endeavor. We think it critical that students understand how and why science works and that science has limitations and that there is still much to be learned. Chapters 2 and 3 are a basic introduction to marine geology, physics, and chemistry. Marine Biology includes more information on these subjects, and places greater stress on their importance to understanding marine ecosystems, than other texts but we have kept Chapters 2 and 3 as short as possible and cover many abiotic aspects of the marine environment in the chapters where they are most relevant to the biology. Wave refraction, for example, is described in conjunction with intertidal communities (Chapter 11) and estuarine circulation is discussed as part of the ecology of estuaries (Chapter 12). This approach emphasizes the importance of the physical and chemical environment to the organisms of the sea throughout the book. At the same time, it provides flexibility for instructors to make best use of the material in light of general education requirements, course prerequisites, and students’ backgrounds. Chapter 4, “Fundamentals of Biology,” briefly reviews some essential biological concepts. In covering basic biology we have tried to balance the needs of a spectrum of students ranging from those with no prior university-level instruction to those who have taken a number of biology courses. Depending on the level of their students, instructors may choose to cover Chapter 4 in class, assign it as review reading, or omit it and rely on the in-text glossary entries in later chapters to remind students of the definitions of key terms.
Part 2 (Chapters 5 through 9) surveys the diversity of marine life from the perspective of organismal biology. As in Part 1, we provide introductory information that is reviewed and expanded upon in later chapters. In discussing the various taxa we emphasize functional morphology, ecological and physiological adaptations, and economic importance or other significance to humanity. Classification and phylogeny are not stressed, though we do present cladograms illustrating widely accepted phylogenetic schemes for invertebrates and vertebrates. As in the rest of the book we have selected organisms from around the world for illustration in photographs, line drawings, and color paintings, but organisms from the coasts of North America are emphasized. Organisms are referred to by their most widely accepted common names. One or two common or important genera are noted in parentheses the first time a group is mentioned in a chapter, but we have not attempted to provide comprehensive lists of genera. Nomenclature follows for the most part the FAO Species Catalog and Species Identification Guides for groups covered by these references.
Part 3 of the book (Chapters 10 through 16) presents an ecological tour of the major environments of the world ocean, commencing with an introduction to some fundamental principles of marine ecology in Chapter 10. As for Chapter 4, important concepts presented here are reviewed elsewhere in the in-text glossary boxes. The remaining six chapters of Part 3 proceed from nearshore to offshore and from shallow to deep water, describing the physical characteristics of each environment and the adaptations and interactions of the organisms that live there. This admittedly arbitrary sequence follows the teaching sequence of the greatest number of our reviewers, but the chapters are designed so that they can be covered in any sequence according to instructors’ preferences and needs. Most chapters include generalized food webs with standardized color coding to indicate the nature of the trophic relationships.
Finally, Part 4 looks at the many ways in which humans interact with the world ocean: our use of and impact on the marine environment and the influence of the ocean on the human experience. The section presents an up-to-date, comprehensive view of issues and concerns shared by many students. The chapter on resource utilization (Chapter 17) looks not only at traditional uses, such as fisheries and mariculture, but also at more modern aspects, such as the pharmacological use of marine natural products and the application of genetic engineering to mariculture. Chapter 18 discusses human-induced degradation of the marine environment, balanced by an examination of marine conservation and habitat restoration. The book closes with an essay on the interactions between the ocean and the human culture (Chapter 19) that we hope will stimulate students to reflect on the past and future significance of the world ocean to all our lives.
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2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education