At a recent meeting of the Society for Invertebrate Pathology, Dr. K. Kanungo of Western Connecticut State University organized a special symposium on the topic of invertebrate circulatory systems with emphasis on hemocytes and their role in internal defense. The contents of this volume of Comparative Pathobiology represent the proceedings of that gathering. As the Editor of the Journal of Invertebrate Pathology, I am intimately aware of the current popularity of research pertaining to invertebrate immune mechanisms of which hemocytes and associated molecules play a central role....

This represents the third volume of the series entitled Comparative PathobioZogy. The chapters included represent the proceedings of a symposium held at Oregon State University, Corvallis, on August 16-22, 1975. The symposium was co-sponsored by the Society for Invertebrate Pathology (SIP) and the American Society of Zoologists (ASZ). In recent years there has been an impressive increase in interest in comparative immunology, i. e., a comparative approach to understanding how animals, both vertebrates and invertebrates, defend themselves against nonself materials. Ever since Metchnikoff's...

The study of parasites and their interactions with hosts continues to represent a challenging area of modern biology. The availability of new techniques and instrumentation, coupled with the development of daring new hypotheses and concepts, has paved the way for the dramatic evolution of parasitology from a static descriptive endeavor to a dynamic one based on biochemistry, immunology, molecular biology, and modern cell biology. Studies of this nature obviously fall within the domain of pathobiology. Consequently, when the contributions included in this volume of Comparative PathobioZogy...

On August 21-26, 1977, two symposia were included in the program of the 10th Annual Meeting of the Society for Invertebrate Pathology held at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. One was entitled "Invertebrate Models for Biomedical Research" organized by Dr. Thomas C. Cheng, and the second, organized by Dr. Robert S. Anderson, was entitled "Cellular and Humoral Reactions to Disease by Invertebrate Animals." When the final manuscripts of the speakers were received, it became apparent that all of the papers were so closely related that the editors decided that they should be...