Introduction 



Beatrice L. Burch 



B. P. Bishop Museum. Honolulu, Hawaii 9681 7 



The organization and coordination of the taxonomic 

 section of this volume was initiated by Dr. Dennis M. 

 Devaney of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum and was com- 

 pleted by Beatrice L. Burch after Dr. Devaney died in a 

 tragic scuba-diving accident on August 13, 1983, as he 

 was investigating shrimp offshore from the Big Island of 

 Hawaii. His great interest in all invertebrates in the tropics 

 was increased when the opportunity arose for him to work 

 at the Mid-Pacific Research Laboratory at Enewetak Atoll. 

 Devaney made his first collecting trip to the atoll in the 

 early 1960s while he was still in graduate school. As the 

 collection grew and taxonomy of the organisms became 

 better known, it was soon apparent that the reference col- 

 lection at Enewetak was becoming increasingly valuable. 

 Devaney was pleased to participate in the Coral Reef 

 Workshop held at the atoll in 1976, because he believed 

 that the scleractinian coral collection was the key for the 

 study of other organisms. The workshop brought together 

 international coral specialists to establish species limits on 

 this important and variable group. After the workshop was 

 held, reference material from Enewetak was deposited in 

 European and American museums for ready reference by a 

 wider audience of scientists. Each year after the Coral 

 Reef Workshop, Devaney went to Enewetak to curate the 

 reference collection and to conduct his own research on 

 echinoderms. At the same time, he encouraged the work 

 of specialists to compile taxonomic and other research 

 from Enewetak for this publication. 



The diversity of the organisms at Enewetak made it 

 difficult to find specialists to study all groups, so Devaney 

 prepared several chapters himself. Unfortunately, most 

 groups were collected in the course of other work such as 

 physiology, toxicity, etc., and were not extensively col- 

 lected by specialists for a particular taxonomic group. 



The number of families, genera, and species reported 

 in this volume either from the literature or from new 

 records determined by the authors of this volume are 

 presented in Table 1. 



References in this volume show that some or much 

 work was done on a particular taxon. Many groups remain 



TABLE 1 

 Taxonomic Groups at Enewetak Atoll 



XVII 



