Echinoderm Research 2010 : 7th European Conference on Echinoderms, Göttingen, October 2 - 9, 2010

Echinoderms are a vast group of spiny-skinned animals including starfish, brittle-stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, feather stars, sea lilies and sea cucumbers. These relatives of chordates and hemichordates have inhabited the world's oceans for more than 500 million years. Modern members of the Echinodermata are, with over 7 000 species, an integral part of marine communities from the intertidal to the deep sea. Echinoderms play a major ecological role in marine habitats and are of economic importance in fisheries, aquaculture and biomedicine. The present volume contains the abstracts of lectures and posters presented during the 7th European Conference on Echinoderms (ECE) as well as excursion guides. This year's conference was held at the northern campus of the Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany, from October 2-9, 2010. More than 100 biologists, palaeontologists and other scientists from 25 countries participated.