Biology of sharks and their relatives

We developed the content and published Biology of Sharks and Their Relatives (Volume I) because of a need for an updated, timely reference volume on the biology of sharks, skates, rays, and chimaeras. In the Preface to that first volume, we noted that little in the way of comprehensive summaries of chondrichthyan biology had been done since the volumes of research papers produced by Perry Gilbert in 1963 and 1967. Sharks and Survival and Sharks, Skates, and Rays, at that time, pro-vided a comprehensive examination of shark research and served as points of departure for future studies. It was over 20 years after the publication of Dr. Gilbert's edited volumes that Elasmobranchs as Living Resources, edited by Wes Pratt, Sonny Gruber, and Toru Taniuchi, was published in 1990, followed nearly a decade later by Will Hamlett's extensive review (1999) of the anatomy and fine structure of elasmobranch fishes. Much has changed in the world of elasmobranch biology since then. When we first considered developing a modem synthesis of the biology of sharks and their relatives, we were forced to look at what major changes have occurred in our world, how those changes have influenced the worldwide status of sharks and their relatives, and how advances in technology and analyti-cal techniques have changed, not only how we approach problem solving and scientific investigations, but how we formulate questions.