As evident from the number 4A tagged to this volume, vol. 4 as originally planned had to be split into two fascicles, 4A and 4B, simply because of the numbers of pages covered by the various contributions meant for volume 4.
The present volume, then, comprises the fourth part in the series The Crustacea, i.e., the revised and updated texts from the Traité de Zoologie – Crustacea. The chapters in this book grew out of those in the French edition volume 7(II). The exception is chapter 49, which has been newly conceived; it was never published in French.
Overall, this constitutes the sixth tome published in this English series, viz., preceded by volumes 1 (2004), 2 (2006), 9A (2010), 9B (2012), and 3 (2012). Readers/users should note that we have had to abandon publishing the chapters in the serial sequence as originally conceived by the late Prof. J. Forest, because the various contributions, i.e., both the updates and the entirely new chapters, have become available in a more or less random order.

This fourth volume, part A, of The Crustacea contains chapters on:
• Genetic variability in Crustacea
• Class Cephalocarida
• Class Remipedia
• Subclass Hoplocarida: order Stomatopoda
• Superorder Syncarida