Among the fishes, a remarkably wide range of biological adaptations to diverse habitats has evolved. As well as living in the conventional habitats of lakes, ponds, rivers, rock pools and the open sea, fish have solved the problems of life in deserts, in the deep sea, in the cold Antarctic, and in warm waters of high alkalinity or of low oxygen. Along with these adaptations, we find the most impressive specializations of morphology, physiology and behaviour. For example we can marvel at the high-speed swimming of the marlins, sailfish and warm-blooded tunas, air breathing in catfish and...

As one of the most quantitative of ecological subdisciplines, resource competition is an important, central area of ecology. Recently research into this area has increased dramatically and resource competition models have become more complex. The characterisation of this phenomenon is therefore the aim of this book. Resource Competition seeks to identify the unifying principles emerging from experimental and theoretical approaches as well as the differences between organisms, illustrating that greater knowledge of resource competition will benefit human and environmental...

'Data acquisition' is concerned with taking one or more analogue signals and converting them to digital form with sufficient accu racy and speed to be ready for processing by a computer. The increasing use of computers makes this an expanding field, and it is important that the conversion process is done correctly because information lost at this stage can never be regained, no matter how good the computation. The old saying - garbage in, garbage out - is very relevant to data acquisition, and so every part of the book contains a discussion of errors: where do they come from, how large are...

Judged by a dismaying track record and a consequent downturn in the reputation of fisheries scientists, fisheries management is certainly a candidate for calls for reinvention, with many of the world leaders in this area holding the view that no fishery has ever been properly understood or managed. With fisheries science in a state of flux, this extremely important book seeks a new paradigm that will place this flux of ideas in perspective and help us to choose those that will make fisheries management work.
The book was planned at a symposium of over 100 fishery researchers at the...