In the past few years rapid progress has been made regarding our understanding of one of the dominant phytoplankton groups of the world's oceans: the coccolithophores. Among other initiatives, the EU-funded TMR network CODENET (Coccolithophores Evolutionary Biodiversity and Ecology Network) has provided new results and insights. These and many other findings are reviewed and synthesized in a number of individual chapters which focus on coccolithophore biology (molecular to cellular), ecology (experimental and in the ocean), evolutionary phylogeny and its impact on current and past global changes. Coccolithophores are emerging as a prime model for interdisciplinary global change research due to their great abundance, wide distribution and exemplary geological record. The results presented in this book address the fundamental question of the interaction between the biota and the environment at various temporal and spatial scales.

1: Cell Biology and Biochemistry

What is new in coccolithophore biology?
Calcification in coccolithophores: A cellular perspective
Pigment diversity of coccolithophores in relation to taxonomy, phylogeny and ecological preferences
2: Physiology and bloom studies
Emiliania huxleyi: bloom observations and the conditions that induce them
Coccolithophore calcification and the biological pump: response to environmental changes
Dimethyl sulfide production: what is the contribution of the coccolithophores?
Re-evaluation of the physiological ecology of coccolithophores
Structure and morphogenesis of the coccoliths of the CODENET species
The laboratory culture of coccolithophores
3: Molecular phytogeny and evolutionary biodiversity
A review of the phylogeny of the Haptophyta
Super-Species in the calcareous plankton
Coccolithophorid biodiversity: evidence from the cosmopolitan species Calcidiscus leptoporus
Species level variation in coccolithophores
Coccolith contribution to South Atlantic carbonate sedimentation
Biogeography of selected Holocene coccoliths in the Atlantic Ocean
4: Evolutionary development, fluxes and paleoproxies
Why is the land green and the ocean red?
Plankton community behavior on ecological and evolutionary timescales: when models confront evidence
Calcareous nannoplankton evolution and diversity through time
Carbonate fluxes and calcareous nannoplankton
Coccolithophorid-based geochemical paleoproxies
5: Index.