Extract
Copepods are strongly under-rated. As Charles B. Miller points out in the preface of his book “Oar feet and opal teeth,” far too few of us—the planet’s 8 billion humans—know about the 1.347 × 109 trillion copepods that inhabit the oceans and other aquatic habitats (see https://encounteredu.com/cpd/subject-updates/learn-more-what-are-copepods for this and other numbers that you can use to amaze your acquaintances). Nevertheless, since “The biology of calanoid copepods” by J. Mauchline in 1998 and “An Introduction to copepod diversity” by G.A. Boxshall and S.H. Halsey in 2004, no book dedicated to copepods has been published. That is corrected now: this fantastic book with its 500 pages of more or less nerdy details of copepods is what these most abundant, strongest, fastest and most beautiful (ok, up to discussion) animals on earth deserve.
“Oar feet and opal teeth” is a personal recollection of a scientific life with copepods and copepodologists, and a collection of vast amounts of knowledge and experiences gathered through a life-time spent researching copepods. It presents copepod research as it used to be, described by the author as “drilling down on an interesting phenomenon.” Based on the years of publication in the references in the book, this golden age of copepodology seems to have been from 1970s to late 1990s. It is also a demonstration of what important insights can only be gained by “drilling down,” and a reminder of what is lost if we always need to follow the short-sighted research agendas put forward by the funding sources. And, as a bonus, you get to know how Russ Hopcroft and other prominent copepodologists met their spouses (not sure I needed to know).
