ABSTRACT
Various well illustrated books such as “Damselfishes of the World” (Allen 1991), and “Damselfishes & Anemonefishes” (Scott 2008) have summarized general information contributing towards a better understanding of pomacentrid life history strategies. These books and others are also useful for identifying the numerous species in the family. Nevertheless, pomacentrids have been the subject of an increasing number of studies over the past few decades, covering multiple disciplines. These studies include different aspects of the biology such as diet (or trophic diversity), sound production, habitat description, sexual selection, phylogeny, evolutionary trends, ecomorphology, sex change, hearing, vision, etc. However, data are scattered throughout the literature without any attempt to consolidate a global view of the life history of this interesting group. Consequently, the goal of this book is to gather and consolidate the latest information relevant to the biology of this large and diverse fish family. The contributing authors have kindly accepted the challenge of summarizing and synthesizing their special research areas, and therefore most of the chapters offer the latest information, including previously unpublished data. In this introductory chapter we introduce the damselfishes, first presenting a historical background of the systematics and then providing more specialized chapters covering different aspects of the way of life (biogeography, behavioral diversity, sociology, sexuality, biological life cycle and ontogeny) and other specialized subjects.
