Living Seashells Of The Tropical Indo Pacific

Seashell or sea shells are the hard exoskeleton of mollusks such as snails, clams, chitons. For most people, acquaintance with mollusks began with empty shells. These shells often delight the eye with a variety of shapes and colors. Conchology studies the mollusk shells and this science dates back to the 17th century. However, modern science - malacology is the study of mollusks as whole organisms. Today more and more people are interacting with the ocean - divers, snorkelers, beachgoers - all of them often find in the seas not empty shells but live mollusks - living shells, whose appearance is significantly different from museum specimens. This book serves as a tool for identifying such animals. The book covers the region from the Red Sea to Hawaii, the Marshall Islands, and Guam. Inside the book: • Photographs of 1500+ species, including one hundred cowries (Cypraeidae) and more than one hundred twenty allied cowries (Ovulidae) of the region; • Live photo of hundreds of species have never before appeared in field guides or popular books; • 2600 full-color images; • Convenient pictorial guide at the beginning and index at the end of the book. It is designed for divers, underwater photographers, snorkelers, shell collectors, beachcombers, and nature lovers. Photographs, showing color variations are included. The validity of species names was checked with the help of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS).

Marine flatworms are some of the ocean's most beautiful of those creatures that can be encountered by divers, snorkelers or simply lovers of marine life under water or in the intertidal zone. They are relatively simple animals with soft flat bodies. In this book we will focus on the free-living highly diverse marine flatworms of the order Polycladida. Often confused with nudibranchs, they are falling under the completely different phylum platyhelminthes (Platyhelminthes, Greek "platy": flat; "helminth": worm.) The book covers the region from the Red Sea, East and South Africa to Hawaii, Marshall Islands and Guam. Inside the book: •Over 1300 full color photographs of 580+ species; • Particular attention was paid to color variations; • Live photo of hundreds of species have never before appeared in field guides or popular books; • Convenient pictorial guide at the beginning and index at the end of the book. • The book contains photographs of most of the recently described Indo-Pacific flatworms, some of them are represented by holotypes.

This is the most comprehensive photo guide to the starfishes and other tropical Indo-Pacific echinoderms. This book covers the region from the Red Sea to Hawaii, the Marshall Islands, and Guam.Inside the book: • Photographs of 450+ species, including 126 starfish of the region; • 100+ species have never before appeared in field guides or popular books; • Convenient pictorial guide at the beginning and index at the end of the book; • Special attention was given to echinoderm associates and predators, photographs of 60 of them are included; • Every effort was made to reduce disturbance to sea creatures. This book is a field guide, it provides easy identification of commonly encountered starfishes, brittle stars, feather stars, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers that can be found and photographed in depths and regions accessible to recreational diving. It is designed for divers, underwater photographers, snorkelers, beachcombers, and nature lovers. Photographs, showing color variations are included. The validity of species names was checked with the help of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS).

Who among us hasn’t marveled at the diversity and beauty of shells? Or picked one up, held it to our ear, and then gazed in wonder at its shape and hue? Many a lifelong shell collector has cut teeth (and toes) on the beaches of the Jersey Shore, the Outer Banks, or the coasts of Sanibel Island. Some have even dived to the depths of the ocean. But most of us are not familiar with the biological origin of shells, their role in explaining evolutionary history, and the incredible variety of forms in which they come. Shells are the external skeletons of mollusks, an ancient and diverse phylum of invertebrates that are in the earliest fossil record of multicellular life over 500 million years ago. There are over 100,000 kinds of recorded mollusks, and some estimate that there are over amillion more that have yet to be discovered. Some breathe air, others live in fresh water, but most live in the ocean. They range in size from a grain of sand to a beach ball and in weight from a few grams to several hundred pounds. And in this lavishly illustrated volume, they finally get their full due. The Book of Shells offers a visually stunning and scientifically engaging guide to six hundred of the most intriguing mollusk shells, each chosen to convey the range of shapes and sizes that occur across a range of species. Each shell is reproduced here at its actual size, in full color, and is accompanied by an explanation of the shell’s range, distribution, abundance, habitat, and operculum—the piece that protects the mollusk when it’s in the shell. Brief scientific and historical accounts of each shell and related species include fun-filled facts and anecdotes that broaden its portrait. The Matchless Cone, for instance, or Conus cedonulli, was one of the rarest shells collected during the eighteenth century. So much so, in fact, that a specimen in 1796 was sold for more than six times as much as a painting by Vermeer at the same auction. But since the advent of scuba diving, this shell has become far more accessible to collectors—though not without certain risks. Some species of Conus produce venom that has caused more than thirty known human deaths. The Zebra Nerite, the Heart Cockle, the Indian Babylon, the Junonia, the Atlantic Thorny Oyster—shells from habitats spanning the poles and the tropics, from the highest mountains to the ocean’s deepest recesses, are all on display in this definitive work.

A comprehensive guide to molluscs of the Indo/Pacific, fully indexed with over 2,200 full colour photographs and information on major habitats, natural history and zoogeography, and where to find them.