About 95 per cent of all known animal species are invertebrates. A knowledge of their sexual, reproductive, and development biology is essential for the effective management of species that are economically useful to man or are harmful to him, his crops, and livestock. This treatise is the first to cover all aspects of reproduction and development of the entire spectrum of invertebrates -- terrestrial, marine, freshwater, brackish-water, free-living, and parasitic. The chapters, by leading world experts in their fields, are up-to-date and informative, and suggest a number of problems for future research. Progress in Male Gamete Ultrastructure and Phylogeny (issued in parts A--C) is the ninth volume in the series.
Contents Preface to the Progress Series; Preface to Volume IX, Part A; Contributors; Porifera, N. Boury-Esnault and B.G.M. Jamieson; Cnidaria and Ctenophora, Peter L. Harrison and B.G.M. Jamieson; Platyhelminthes, Nikki A. Watson; Nemertea, ?ke Franzen and Bjorn A. Afzelius; Rotifera, Giulio Melone and Marco Ferraguti; Gastrotricha, Maria Balsamo, Elena Fregni and Marco Ferraguti, Kinorhyncha, Andrey V. Adrianov and Vladimir V. Malakhov; Nematomorpha, Roberto Valvassori, Magda de Eguileor, Annalisa Grimaldi and Giulio Lanzavecchia; Acanthocephala, Marcella Carcupino and Bahram S. Dezfuli; Subject Index; Species Index.

About the Author

DR K.G. ADIYODI, formerly Professor of Reproductive Physiology and Dean, Faculty of Science, Calicut University, Kerala, India and Vice-Chancellor, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kochi, is now Public Service Commissioner to Government of India, New Delhi. A distinguished invertebrate reproductive biologist, who gave the discipline of invertebrate reproductive biology a global distinctiveness and identity of its own, Dr. K.G. Adiyodi is Founder Secretary of the International Society of Invertebrate Reproduction, Founder Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Invertebrate Reproduction and Development, and Founder President of the Indian Society of Invertebrate Reproduction.

DR RITA G ADIYODI, formerly Rhodes Visiting Fellow, Somerville College, Oxford (1976-78), is Professor of Zoology at Calicut University. She served as President of the Crustacean Reprobiology and Aquaculture Bureau of India and as Vice-President of the Indian Society of Invertebrate Reproduction. Dr. Rita Adiyodi represented India on the International Committee of Comparative Endocrinology. The Adiyodis have worked extensively, over the past three decades, on the endocrinology and physiology of growth and reproduction of arthropods, chiefly crustaceans.

BARRIE JAMIESON is Professor of Zoology at the Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of Queensland. He holds a B.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Bristol, England, and a D.Sc. from the University of Queensland. In 1990 he was awarded the Clarke Medal for Research in Natural Sciences, an honour shared with Thomas Henry Huxley. His chief field of research is spermatozoal ultrastructure and its relevance to phylogeny but he is also an authority on the taxonomy of earthworms and has published on bioluminescence, trematode taxonomy and life cycles, and DNA-based phylogenetics. He has published nearly 200 scientific papers and is the author, coauthor or editor of nine books.