This book is written for ecologists and protozoologists. Ecologists who study environments and biotic communities in which protozoa are im- portant should find this book especially useful. During the last decade it has become clear that protozoa play important roles in natural eco- systems, but few ecologists have a feeling for the functional properties and the diversity of these organisms. Protozoa pose or exemplify many general problems of population and community ecology, and of evo- lutionary biology. In most respects the general ecological properties of protozoa are not fundamentally different from those of larger organisms; yet, due to their small size, short generation times, and ubiquitous oc- currence they often present ecological phenomena in a new and dif- ferent light. To this should be added that protozoa are well-suited for experimental work. Despite these advantages, the study of protozoa has played a relatively modest role in the development of ecology and ev- olutionary biology, primarily, I believe, because most ecologists are unfamiliar with these organisms. I hope this book will attract more attention to these favorable characteristics of protozoa. I also hope that this book may make protozoologists aware of new aspects of their pet organisms. For a long time (that is, until the fun- damental distinction between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells was rec- ognized) protozoa were believed to represent the simplest form of life. They were therefore extensively used for the experimental study of basic questions of cell biology.
About the Author:

Genoveva Esteban is a Professor of Microbial Ecology at Bournemouth University (UK). She received her PhD from Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) in 1989 and carried out two post-doctoral positions: one at the National Scientific Research Council in Spain (1990-1991), and the second (1992-1995) at the Institute of Freshwater Ecology (The Ferry House, Windermere, UK). She then became employed as a senior scientist at the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC, UK) until 2007. That same year, she moved to the university sector to work at Queen Mary University of London (2007-2011). She has published over 110 original articles and book chapters. Her research expertise is centered on free-living microbial eukaryotes.

Tom Fenchel is Emeritus Professor of Marine Biology at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). He received his Ph.D. in 1965 and became employed at the Marine Biological Laboratory as lecturer. From 1970-1987 he became Full Professor at the University of Aarhus and he returned to the University of Copenhagen in 1987 until formal retirement in 2010. He has published about 200 original papers on microbial ecology and population biology and has authored or co-authored five books.