This book is an introduction to the most important and most common taxa present in the plankton, and it allows the identification of numerous common species. This new edition is substantially thicker than the first (2006), with many more crustaceans, as well as trematodes, sipunculides, holothuria and enteropneusta. In accordance with the increased numbers of organisms of southern warm water origin in the North Sea many Mediterranean species have been added.
The book is excellently suited to be used in such university courses for students of zoology and marine biology as well as for their teachers, but it is certainly also a comprehensible guide for any amateur microscopist and interested layperson.
Prof. Dr. Otto LARINK is a zoologist. He studied morphology and developmental history of insects (PhD 1968 in Kiel, habilitation 1975 in Braunschweig). Later he was the head of a working group on soil zoology at the Technische Universit#t Braunschweig, till 2004. During annual courses at the Biological Station on the isle of Helgoland in the German Bight since 1963 and during various visits at European coasts he observed the diversity of plankton organisms and documented them with many micrographs presented here.
Prof. Dr. Wilfried WESTHEIDE is zoologist as well and focused in his research on systematics and morphology of invertebrates, especially annelids. After his PhD (1966) he was a scientific member of the Biologische Anstalt Helgoland for a short time, got his habilitation at the University of G#ttingen and was head of the department of Systematic Zoology at the University of Osnabr#ck from 1983 to 2003.