Nice papers on gelatinous zooplankton

An annotated and incomplete list of some books and papers on gelatinous zooplankton that I have liked a lot:

Bone, Quentin, editor. 1998. The Biology of Pelagic Tunicates. Oxford University Press, New York, 340 pp.
This book has 18 chapters written by specialists who work on salps, appendicularia, doliolids and pyrosomes and is full of information that is unavailable anywhere else. (In the typical biology or zoology textbook you cannot even find out enough basic information to figure out what these animals are.) There are lots of illustrations, both photographs and drawings, to help enlighten the reader about this extremely obscure but important group of marine animals.

Harbison, G. Richard, Lawrence P. Madin, and Neil R. Swanberg, 1978. On the natural history and distribution of oceanic ctenophores. Deep-Sea Research 25: 233-256.
From the golden days of open ocean blue-water diving, when scientists were able to get funding to study directly the biology of the fragile animals living near the surface of the high seas- those that don't collect in standard oceanographic nets.

Lalli, Carol M. and Ronald W. Gilmer, 1989. Pelagic Snails - The Biology of Holoplanktonic Gastropod Mollusks. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 259 pp.
This book serves as a nice introduction to and review of the pelagic mollusks, emphasizing the biology of living individuals. It includes a lot of previously unpublished information and has lots of very nice photographs.

Mackie, George O., Philip R. Pugh, and Jennifer E. Purcell, 1987. Siphonophore Biology. Advances in Marine Biology 24: 97-262.
This review article is written by three experts and is nicely illustrated. Another good review of siphonophores was written at about the same time by Claude Carré and Danielle Carré, but only published a couple of years ago in the new and somewhat difficult to find Traité de Zoologie cnidarian volume (in French).

Baker, A.N. 1971. Pyrosoma spinosum Herdman, a giant tunicate new to New Zealand waters. Records of the Dominion Museum, Wellington, 7: 107-117.
This paper has an absolutely memorable photograph of a diver partially inside an enormous pyrosome in oceanic water off the northeast coast of New Zealand. Most pyrosomes encountered by scientists are more on the order of a few inches in length. A similar photograph by Baker is reproduced on p. 2 of Q. Bone's book, above.

Another very long pyrosome can now be seen in a web video at http://divefilm.com/ then select "Films" and look at the film, "Drifters of the Deep Blue Sea", by Bob Gladden, or try clicking here to go more directly without seeing other interesting options (to view the films, you must have a high-speed internet connection: Cable, T-1 or better).

** This page is maintained by C.E. Mills; established March 1998; last updated 19 November 2001 **