This book deals with chemosensory systems of fishes and covers the well known olfactory and the gustatory senses as well as the less popular solitary chemosensory cells. Chemosenses play an essential role in the life of a fish. They help fish in their search for food, to consume it and digest it. They also help fish to find their conspecifics and to avoid enemies or predators. Fish live in varied and often extreme ecological conditions frequently inhabiting niches such as caves or at great depths in the oceans. The chemosensory organs of such well adapted fish are highly specialized and evolved in contrast to the chemosenses of sight-hunting fish. Fishes have developed diverse strategies to survive within the widely varying water bodies, owing, at least in part, to the highly evolved chemosensory systems. A group of internationally reputed specialists have contributed to this book. It contains six chapters devoted to fish olfaction, one chapter to solitary chemosensory cells and six chapters to the fish taste

In fish, the sense of taste is extraordinarily highly developed and essentially more sensitive than that of mammals. This is due to chemoreception, which offers suf ficient possibilities for animals living in water to orient and maintain themselves suc cessfully in individual and social life. Therefore, at least within the vertebrates the chemical senses have developed to their highest standard in water. Chemoreception is evidently present in land-dwelling mammals and is still dependent on moist surfaces, but the optical sense, in its highest stage of development, takes priority. In contrast, in aquatic animals vision generally plays only a subordinate role (c. f. Grant & Mackie, 1974). Although the high sensitivity of the sense of taste in fish has been extensively shown in physiological experiments, corresponding detailed morphological data are lacking. Due to their similarity the taste organs of fish and mammals have been regard ed equally or rather the results taken from fish have been interpreted on the basis of the known morphology of the mammalian taste bud (TB). However, the high efficien cy of the sense of taste in fish requires a corresponding morphological basis, and mor phological and histochemical particularities can indeed be cited as examples: firstly, TB in fish are not only located in the mouth and throat area, but in many species also in the outer skin of the body."