Although the recovery of terrestrial communities shattered by the massive eruption of Krakatau in 1883 has been well chronicled, the fate of marine populations has been largely ignored. We examined patterns of genetic diversity in populations of two coral reef-dwelling mantis shrimp, Haptosquilla pulchella and Haptosquilla glyptocercus (Stomatopoda: Protosquillidae), on the islands of Anak Krak...

The crustacean cardiac ganglion, which is an autonomous nervous system producing regular periodic burst discharges, is a useful preparation for experiments on spontaneity and integrative interaction among neurones. The neurophysiology of the ganglion has been studied by many investigators (for references see Hagiwara, 1961; Bullock & Horridge, 1965). In the lobster intracellular studies have be...

This study is aimed at assessing the effects of multiple stressors (thermal shock, fishing capture, and exposure to air) on the benthic stomatopod Squilla mantis, a burrowing crustacean quite widespread in the Mediterranean Sea. Laboratory analyses were carried out to explore the physiological impairment onset over time, based on emersion and thermal shocks, on farmed individuals. Parallel fiel...

THE effects of an accumulation of carbon dioxide and of a lack of oxygen on the respiratory movements of mammals have been intensively studied (Winterstein, 1923; Gesell, 1925). In the invertebrates, however, although it is known for a number of species that one or both of these two factors are operative, our knowledge of the whole question is fragmentary. Both an accumulation of carbon dioxide...

Stomatopod crustaceans have complex visual systems containing up to 16 different spectral classes of photoreceptors, more than described for any other animal. A previous molecular study of this visual system focusing on the expression of opsin genes found many more transcripts than predicted on the basis of physiology, but was unable to fully document the expressed opsin genes responsible for t...

Eyes and brains have evolved so as to extract from the natural word the sensible order that is crucial for survival. Accordingly, it makes good sense to consider the ecological basis of vision, arguing more or less implicitly for forces shaping visual organisation and processing that act with evolutionary or developmental timescales. Of course, visual systems are not normally blind to many quit...

Coral reef communities can be deleteriously affected by exposure to low levels of anthropogenic contaminants. Sediments in the vicinity of coral reefs serve as a sink (and when resuspended, as a source) for contaminants and provide an integrative measure of low and intermittent exposure. Sediment porewater toxicity tests using gametes and embryos of the sea urchin Arbacia punctulata were employ...