Mucchi Editore

When five years ago the concept of a meeting devoted to stomatopods first arose from a conversation with Prof. Helga Schiff, I did not anticipate that it would have resulted in such a book. However our proposal, strengthened by the support of Prof. Raymond B. Manning, made possible this volume defining the present status of research on this important but rather overlooked crustacean taxon. Indeed there has been a need for a meeting since the sixties when stomatopods inreased in popularity as experimental animals in addition to their existing systematic interest as geographically widespread and phylogenetically primitive malacostracan crustaceans. The 1st International Workshop on Stomatopod Biology, held in Trieste in September 1985, had as its main aims to bring together people doing research in this area, to promote international collaborative projects and to further contacts with research groups having a more widespread, comparative interest in crustacean biology. All these requirements have been fulfilled and, in addition, a permanent focus for «stomatopodologists» established with Prof. Manning having taken the initiative and accepted the labour of creating the «Stomatopod Newsletter» which has proven to be an invaluable source of information and a useful means of communication. The newsletter will also help to keep together as a group the future participants in the next Workshop, which hopefully will be organized soon. This volume has its central core in the proceedings of the 1st Int. Workshop, but additional papers are included from non participant contributors, and review papers are provided in order to give a wider approach to the field and to update the literature collected on single subjects. Enrico A. Ferrero