Molecular Approaches to the Study of the Ocean

The intent of this book is to deal with organisms near to the base of the marine food web. It is at this stratum of biological development that molecular techniques originated. The text introduces molecular technology and describes how it can be used to answer the following basic ecological questions: how can names be given to the biomass that is in the environment being studied? How many of these organisms are there? What are they doing? Chapters document the fact that traditional morphological methods sometimes do not provide a clear picture of evolutionary and phylogenetic relationships in many groups of moleclues, not just microbes. The final chapter deals with data repositories (computer data banks) and the process whereby they can be accessed.