Cover image: The pelagic realm encompasses over 99.5% of the earth's livable space, yet is one of its least studied habitats. This is unfortunate, because the species that dwell there have evolved fascinating solutions for buoyancy, navigation, vision, growth, reproduction, camouflage, and many other necessary tasks. Our symposium highlights some of the early steps in understanding these common yet enigmatic animals. This image shows a rough distribution of some of the common species of the open ocean, with a particular emphasis on their depth distribution. Animal images courtesy of Drs. Steven Haddock, Larry Madin, Richard Harbison, Kevin Raskoff, Tamara Frank, Edith Widder, and Kerstin Fritsches. Submitted by Sönke Johnsen, "Does new technology inspire new directions? Examples drawn from pelagic visual ecology."
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