Journal of Plankton Research Vol. 26 No. 3 © Oxford University Press 2004; all rights reserved
BOOK REVIEW |
The Brains and Lives of Cephalopods. Nixon M. and Young J. Z. (2003) Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. £75.00. ISBN 0-19-852761-6.
La Garde Freinet, France
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
A Labour of Love
On the front cover of this labour of love is a photograph of a Caribbean Reef squid, Sepioteuthis sepioidea, taken in open water off the Cayman Islands: a reminder that most cephalopods are nektonic, the great majority early in life also planktonic and many vertically migrating as adults. Argonauta feeds on heteropods and pteropods, and there are cephalopods that mimic siphonophores. On the reverse side is a drawing of one of the brains of a squid (Pterygioteuthis) reconstructed from serial silver-stained sections by its second author, the late J. Z. Young. The promise of what lies between the covers—between the reconstructed brain and Roger Hanlon’s hi-fi image that captures the mode of swimming of the Sepioteuthis and the behaviours of its individual chromatophores—is great. In keeping with the times one might well be forgiven for dismissing the promise as so much hype.
The Brains and Lives of