1.
Pygmy marmoset
–
The pygmy marmoset is a small New World monkey native to rainforests of the western Amazon Basin in South America. It is notable for being the smallest monkey and one of the smallest primates in the world at just over 100 grams and it is generally found in evergreen and river edge forests and is a gum-feeding specialist, or a gummivore. About 83% of the pygmy marmoset population lives in troops of two to nine individuals, including a dominant male, a breeding female, and up to four successive litters of offspring. The modal size of a standard stable troop would be 6 individuals, although most groups consist of family members, some may also include 1-2 additional adult members. Members of the group using a complex system including vocal, chemical. There are three main calling signals that depend on the distance the call needs to travel and these monkeys may also make visual displays when threatened or to show dominance. Chemical signaling using secretions from glands on the chest and genital area allow the female to indicate to the male when she is able to reproduce, the female gives birth to twins twice a year and the parental care is shared between the group. It is listed as Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as it is common across its wide range, the biggest threats to the species are habitat loss and the pet trade. There has been debate among primatologists concerning the proper genus in which to place the pygmy marmoset, an examination of the interstitial retinol binding protein nuclear gene in three marmoset species showed that Callithrix as constructed in the 1990s also needed to include C. The evolution of this species diverged in terms of body-mass from typical primates and this involves large decreases in pre-natal and post-natal growth rates, furthering the thought that pro-genesis played a role in the evolution of this animal. The pygmy marmoset is one of the worlds smallest primates, and is the smallest true monkey, with a length ranging from 117 to 152 millimetres. The average adult weight is just over 100 grams with the only sexual dimorphism of females being a little heavier. The fur colour is a mixture of brownish-gold, grey, and black on its back and head and yellow, orange and its tail has black rings and its face has flecks of white on its cheeks and a white vertical line between its eyes. It has many adaptations for living including the ability to rotate its head 180 degrees. Its dental morphology is adapted to feeding on gum, with specialised incisors that are used to gouge trees and its cecum is larger than usual to allow for the greater period of time gum takes to break down in the stomach. The pygmy marmoset walks on all four limbs and can leap up to five meters between branches, the pygmy marmoset can be found in much of the western Amazon Basin, in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. The western pygmy marmoset, Cebuella pygmaea pygmaea, occurs in the state of Amazonas, Brazil, eastern Peru, southern Colombia, and north-eastern Ecuador. The eastern pygmy marmoset, C. p. niveiventris, is found in Amazonas, but also in Acre, Brazil, eastern Peru
2.
Taxonomy (biology)
–
Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy, the broadest meaning of taxonomy is used here. The word taxonomy was introduced in 1813 by Candolle, in his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, the term alpha taxonomy is primarily used today to refer to the discipline of finding, describing, and naming taxa, particularly species. In earlier literature, the term had a different meaning, referring to morphological taxonomy, ideals can, it may be said, never be completely realized. They have, however, a value of acting as permanent stimulants. Some of us please ourselves by thinking we are now groping in a beta taxonomy, turrill thus explicitly excludes from alpha taxonomy various areas of study that he includes within taxonomy as a whole, such as ecology, physiology, genetics, and cytology. He further excludes phylogenetic reconstruction from alpha taxonomy, thus, Ernst Mayr in 1968 defined beta taxonomy as the classification of ranks higher than species. This activity is what the term denotes, it is also referred to as beta taxonomy. How species should be defined in a group of organisms gives rise to practical and theoretical problems that are referred to as the species problem. The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy, by extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at higher taxonomic ranks, from subgenus and above only, than species. While some descriptions of taxonomic history attempt to date taxonomy to ancient civilizations, earlier works were primarily descriptive, and focused on plants that were useful in agriculture or medicine. There are a number of stages in scientific thinking. Early taxonomy was based on criteria, the so-called artificial systems. Later came systems based on a complete consideration of the characteristics of taxa, referred to as natural systems, such as those of de Jussieu, de Candolle and Bentham. The publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species led to new ways of thinking about classification based on evolutionary relationships and this was the concept of phyletic systems, from 1883 onwards. This approach was typified by those of Eichler and Engler, the advent of molecular genetics and statistical methodology allowed the creation of the modern era of phylogenetic systems based on cladistics, rather than morphology alone. Taxonomy has been called the worlds oldest profession, and naming and classifying our surroundings has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate
3.
Animal
–
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia. The animal kingdom emerged as a clade within Apoikozoa as the group to the choanoflagellates. Animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently at some point in their lives and their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs, they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance, most known animal phyla appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years ago. Animals can be divided broadly into vertebrates and invertebrates, vertebrates have a backbone or spine, and amount to less than five percent of all described animal species. They include fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, the remaining animals are the invertebrates, which lack a backbone. These include molluscs, arthropods, annelids, nematodes, flatworms, cnidarians, ctenophores, the study of animals is called zoology. The word animal comes from the Latin animalis, meaning having breath, the biological definition of the word refers to all members of the kingdom Animalia, encompassing creatures as diverse as sponges, jellyfish, insects, and humans. Aristotle divided the world between animals and plants, and this was followed by Carl Linnaeus, in the first hierarchical classification. In Linnaeuss original scheme, the animals were one of three kingdoms, divided into the classes of Vermes, Insecta, Pisces, Amphibia, Aves, and Mammalia. Since then the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, in 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into two subkingdoms, Metazoa and Protozoa. The protozoa were later moved to the kingdom Protista, leaving only the metazoa, thus Metazoa is now considered a synonym of Animalia. Animals have several characteristics that set apart from other living things. Animals are eukaryotic and multicellular, which separates them from bacteria and they are heterotrophic, generally digesting food in an internal chamber, which separates them from plants and algae. They are also distinguished from plants, algae, and fungi by lacking cell walls. All animals are motile, if only at life stages. In most animals, embryos pass through a stage, which is a characteristic exclusive to animals. With a few exceptions, most notably the sponges and Placozoa and these include muscles, which are able to contract and control locomotion, and nerve tissues, which send and process signals
4.
Chordate
–
Chordates are deuterostomes, as during the embryo development stage the anus forms before the mouth. They are also bilaterally symmetric coelomates, in the case of vertebrate chordates, the notochord is usually replaced by a vertebral column during development, and they may have body plans organized via segmentation. There are also additional extinct taxa, the Vertebrata are sometimes considered as a subgroup of the clade Craniata, consisting of chordates with a skull, the Craniata and Tunicata compose the clade Olfactores. Of the more than 65,000 living species of chordates, the worlds largest and fastest animals, the blue whale and peregrine falcon respectively, are chordates, as are humans. Fossil chordates are known from at least as early as the Cambrian explosion, Hemichordata, which includes the acorn worms, has been presented as a fourth chordate subphylum, but it now is usually treated as a separate phylum. The Hemichordata, along with the Echinodermata, form the Ambulacraria, the Chordata and Ambulacraria form the superphylum Deuterostomia, composed of the deuterostomes. Attempts to work out the relationships of the chordates have produced several hypotheses. All of the earliest chordate fossils have found in the Early Cambrian Chengjiang fauna. Because the fossil record of early chordates is poor, only molecular phylogenetics offers a prospect of dating their emergence. However, the use of molecular phylogenetics for dating evolutionary transitions is controversial and it has also proved difficult to produce a detailed classification within the living chordates. Attempts to produce family trees shows that many of the traditional classes are paraphyletic. While this has been known since the 19th century, an insistence on only monophyletic taxa has resulted in vertebrate classification being in a state of flux. Although the name Chordata is attributed to William Bateson, it was already in prevalent use by 1880, ernst Haeckel described a taxon comprising tunicates, cephalochordates, and vertebrates in 1866. Though he used the German vernacular form, it is allowed under the ICZN code because of its subsequent latinization, among the vertebrate sub-group of chordates the notochord develops into the spine, and in wholly aquatic species this helps the animal to swim by flexing its tail. In fish and other vertebrates, this develops into the spinal cord, the pharynx is the part of the throat immediately behind the mouth. In fish, the slits are modified to form gills, a muscular tail that extends backwards behind the anus. This is a groove in the wall of the pharynx. In filter-feeding species it produces mucus to gather food particles, which helps in transporting food to the esophagus and it also stores iodine, and may be a precursor of the vertebrate thyroid gland
5.
Mammal
–
Mammals are any vertebrates within the class Mammalia, a clade of endothermic amniotes distinguished from reptiles by the possession of a neocortex, hair, three middle ear bones and mammary glands. All female mammals nurse their young with milk, secreted from the mammary glands, Mammals include the largest animals on the planet, the great whales. The basic body type is a quadruped, but some mammals are adapted for life at sea, in the air, in trees. The largest group of mammals, the placentals, have a placenta, Mammals range in size from the 30–40 mm bumblebee bat to the 30-meter blue whale. With the exception of the five species of monotreme, all modern mammals give birth to live young, most mammals, including the six most species-rich orders, belong to the placental group. The largest orders are the rodents, bats and Soricomorpha, the next three biggest orders, depending on the biological classification scheme used, are the Primates, the Cetartiodactyla, and the Carnivora. Living mammals are divided into the Yinotheria and Theriiformes There are around 5450 species of mammal, in some classifications, extant mammals are divided into two subclasses, the Prototheria, that is, the order Monotremata, and the Theria, or the infraclasses Metatheria and Eutheria. The marsupials constitute the group of the Metatheria, and include all living metatherians as well as many extinct ones. Much of the changes reflect the advances of cladistic analysis and molecular genetics, findings from molecular genetics, for example, have prompted adopting new groups, such as the Afrotheria, and abandoning traditional groups, such as the Insectivora. The mammals represent the only living Synapsida, which together with the Sauropsida form the Amniota clade, the early synapsid mammalian ancestors were sphenacodont pelycosaurs, a group that produced the non-mammalian Dimetrodon. At the end of the Carboniferous period, this group diverged from the line that led to todays reptiles. Some mammals are intelligent, with some possessing large brains, self-awareness, Mammals can communicate and vocalize in several different ways, including the production of ultrasound, scent-marking, alarm signals, singing, and echolocation. Mammals can organize themselves into fission-fusion societies, harems, and hierarchies, most mammals are polygynous, but some can be monogamous or polyandrous. They provided, and continue to provide, power for transport and agriculture, as well as commodities such as meat, dairy products, wool. Mammals are hunted or raced for sport, and are used as model organisms in science, Mammals have been depicted in art since Palaeolithic times, and appear in literature, film, mythology, and religion. Defaunation of mammals is primarily driven by anthropogenic factors, such as poaching and habitat destruction, Mammal classification has been through several iterations since Carl Linnaeus initially defined the class. No classification system is accepted, McKenna & Bell and Wilson & Reader provide useful recent compendiums. Though field work gradually made Simpsons classification outdated, it remains the closest thing to a classification of mammals
6.
Primate
–
A primate is a mammal of the order Primates. In taxonomy, primates include two distinct lineages, strepsirrhines and haplorhines, Primates arose from ancestors that lived in the trees of tropical forests, many primate characteristics represent adaptations to life in this challenging three-dimensional environment. Most primate species remain at least partly arboreal, with the exception of humans, who inhabit every continent except for Antarctica, most primates live in tropical or subtropical regions of the Americas, Africa and Asia. Based on fossil evidence, the earliest known true primates, represented by the genus Teilhardina, an early close primate relative known from abundant remains is the Late Paleocene Plesiadapis, c. Molecular clock studies suggest that the branch may be even older. The order Primates was traditionally divided into two groupings, prosimians and anthropoids. Prosimians have characteristics more like those of the earliest primates, and include the lemurs of Madagascar, lorisoids, simians include monkeys, apes and hominins. Simians are divided into two groups, catarrhine monkeys and apes of Africa and Southeast Asia and platyrrhine or New World monkeys of South, catarrhines consist of Old World monkeys, gibbons and great apes, New World monkeys include the capuchin, howler and squirrel monkeys. Humans are the only extant catarrhines to have spread successfully outside of Africa, South Asia, New primate species are still being discovered. More than 25 species were described in the decade of the 2000s. Considered generalist mammals, primates exhibit a range of characteristics. Some primates are primarily terrestrial rather than arboreal, but all species possess adaptations for climbing trees, locomotion techniques used include leaping from tree to tree, walking on two or four limbs, knuckle-walking, and swinging between branches of trees. Primates are characterized by large brains relative to other mammals, as well as a reliance on stereoscopic vision at the expense of smell. These features are developed in monkeys and apes and noticeably less so in lorises. Three-color vision has developed in some primates, most also have opposable thumbs and some have prehensile tails. Many species are dimorphic, differences include body mass, canine tooth size. Primates have slower rates of development than other similarly sized mammals and reach maturity later, depending on the species, adults may live in solitude, in mated pairs, or in groups of up to hundreds of members. The relationships among the different groups of primates were not clearly understood until relatively recently, for example, ape has been used either as an alternative for monkey or for any tailless, relatively human-like primate
7.
Arboreal locomotion
–
Arboreal locomotion is the locomotion of animals in trees. In habitats in which trees are present, animals have evolved to move in them, some animals may scale trees only occasionally, but others are exclusively arboreal. Furthermore, many of these principles may be applied to climbing without trees. The earliest known tetrapod with specializations that adapted it for climbing trees was Suminia, some invertebrate animals are exclusively arboreal in habitat, such as the tree snail. Arboreal habitats pose numerous mechanical challenges to animals moving in them and these challenges include moving on narrow branches, moving up and down inclines, balancing, crossing gaps, and dealing with obstructions. Moving along a narrow surface poses special difficulties to animals, additionally, foot placement is constrained by the need to make contact with the narrow branch. This narrowness severely restricts the range of movements and postures an animal can use to move, branches are frequently oriented at an angle to gravity in arboreal habitats, including being vertical, which poses special problems. As an animal moves up a branch, they must fight the force of gravity to raise their body. Conversely, as the animal descends, it must also fight gravity to control its descent and prevent falling, descent can be particularly problematic for many animals, and highly arboreal species often have specialized methods for controlling their descent. Due to the height of many branches and the disastrous consequences of a fall. On horizontal and gently sloped branches, the problem is tipping to the side due to the narrow base of support. The narrower the branch, the greater the difficulty in balancing a given animal faces, on steep and vertical branches, tipping becomes less of an issue, and pitching backwards or slipping downwards becomes the most likely failure. In this case, large-diameter branches pose a challenge, since the animal cannot place its forelimbs closer to the center of the branch than its hindlimbs. Branches are not continuous, and any arboreal animal must be able to move between gaps in the branches, or even between trees and this can be accomplished by reaching across gaps, by leaping across them or gliding between them. Arboreal habitats often contain many obstructions, both in the form of branches emerging from the one being moved on and other branches impinging on the space the animal needs to move through and these obstructions may impede locomotion, or may be used as additional contact points to enhance it. While obstructions tend to impede limbed animals, they benefit snakes by providing anchor points, arboreal organisms display many specializations for dealing with the mechanical challenges of moving through their habitats. Arboreal animals frequently have elongated limbs that help them cross gaps, reach fruit or other resources, test the firmness of support ahead, however, some species of lizard have reduced limb size that helps them avoid limb movement being obstructed by impinging branches. Many arboreal species, such as porcupines, chameleons, silky anteaters, spider monkeys
8.
Common marmoset
–
The common marmoset is a New World monkey. It originally lived on the Northeastern coast of Brazil, in the states of Piaui, Paraiba, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco, Alagoas, the whole-genome sequence of a female common marmoset was published on 20 July 2014. It became the first New World Monkey to have its genome sequenced, common marmosets are very small monkeys with relatively long tails. Males and females are of size with males being slightly larger. Males have a height of 188 mm and females have an average height of 185 mm. Males weigh 256 g on average and females weigh 236 g on average, the pelage of the marmoset is multicolored, being sprinkled with brown, grey, and yellow. It also has white ear tufts and the tail is banded and their faces have black across there nose area skin and have a white blaze on the forehead. The coats of infants are brown and yellow coats with the ear tuft developing later, as with other members of the genus Callithrix, the common marmosets have claw-like nails known as tegulaes on most of their fingers. Only their halluxes have the flat nails or ungulaes that most other primates have, marmosets have an arboreal locomotion similar to squirrels. They can hang on to trees vertically and leap between them, as well as run across branches quadrupedally, tegulaes are an adaptation of this type of locomotion. Other Callithrix traits shared include enlarged, chisel-shaped incisors and specialized cecums for their diet, common marmosets are native only to east-central Brazil. They have been introduced into areas and live within the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. Marmosets can be found in a number of forest habitats and they live in Atlantic coastal forests as well as semi-deciduous forests farther inland. They can also inhabit savanna forests and riverine forests, marmosets are successful in dry secondary forests and edge habitats. The common marmoset’s claw-like nails, incisor shape, and gut specialization reflect their diet which is primarily made of plant exudates. Common marmosets feed on gum, sap, latex, and resin and they use their nails to cling to the side of a tree and, with their long lower incisors, chew a hole in the tree. The marmoset will then lick up the exudates or swoop them with the teeth, 20-70% of the marmoset’s feeding behavior is made of eating exudates. Exudates provide marmosets with a food source in the marmoset’s seasonal habitat
9.
Territory (animal)
–
In ethology, territory is the sociographical area that an animal of a particular species consistently defends against conspecifics. Animals that defend territories in this way are referred to as territorial, territoriality is only shown by a minority of species. More commonly, an individual or a group of animals has an area that it habitually uses but does not necessarily defend, this is called the home range. The home ranges of different groups of animals often overlap, or in the overlap areas, within the home range there may be a core area that no other individual group uses, but, again, this is as a result of avoidance. The ultimate function of animals inhabiting and defending a territory is to increase the fitness or inclusive fitness of the animals expressing the behaviour. Fitness in this biological sense relates to the ability of an animal to survive, the proximate functions of territory defense vary. For some animals, the reason for such behaviour is to acquire and protect food sources, nesting sites, mating areas. Territories have been classified as six types, Type A, An all-purpose territory in which all activities occur, e. g. courtship, mating, nesting and foraging Type B, A mating and nesting territory, not including most of the area used for foraging. Type C, A nesting territory which includes the nest plus an area around it. Type D, A pairing and mating territory, the type of territory defended by males in lekking species. Type F, Winter territory which typically includes foraging areas and roost sites, may be equivalent to the Type A territory, or for a migratory species, may be on the wintering grounds. Reports of territory size can be confused by a lack of distinction between home range and the defended territory, the size and shape of a territory can vary according to its purpose, season, the amount and quality of resources it contains, or the geography. The size is usually a compromise of resource needs, defense costs, predation pressure, some species of squirrels may claim as much as 10 hectares of territory. For European badgers, a home range may be as small as 30 hectares in a rural habitat. On average, a territory may be approximately 50 hectares, with main setts normally at least 500 metres apart. In urban areas, territories can be as small as 5 hectares, if they can obtain food from bird tables. Spotted hyenas have highly variable territory sizes, ranging from less than 4,000 hectares in the Ngorongoro Crater to over 100,000 hectares in the Kalahari, sanderlings forage on beaches and sandflats. When on beaches, they feed either in flocks or individual territories of 10 to 120 metres of shoreline, the time to develop territories varies between animals
10.
Cotton-top tamarin
–
The cotton-top tamarin is a small New World monkey weighing less than 0.5 kg. One of the smallest primates, the cotton-top tamarin is easily recognized by the long, the species is found in tropical forest edges and secondary forests in northwestern Colombia, where it is arboreal and diurnal. Its diet includes insects and plant exudates, and it is an important seed disperser in the tropical ecosystem, the cotton-top tamarin displays a wide variety of social behaviors. In particular, groups form a clear dominance hierarchy where only dominant pairs breed, the female normally gives birth to twins and uses pheromones to prevent other females in the group from breeding. These tamarins have been studied for their high level of cooperative care, as well as altruistic. Communication between cotton-top tamarins is sophisticated and shows evidence of grammatical structure, a feature that must be acquired. Now, the species is at risk due to habitat destruction. It is currently classified as endangered and is one of the rarest primates in the world. S. oedipus has the common names cotton-top tamarin and cotton-headed tamarin in English and its name comes from the white hair that spans its head and flows down past the neck. In Spanish, it is commonly called bichichi, tití pielroja, tití blanco, tití cabeza blanca, in German-speaking areas, the cotton-top tamarin is commonly known as Lisztaffe most likely due to the resemblance of its hairstyle with that of Hungarian composer and piano virtuoso Franz Liszt. The species was first described by Linnaeus in 1758 as Simia oedipus, Linnaeus chose the species name oedipus, which means swollen foot, but as the species does not have particularly large feet, it is unknown why he chose this name. In 1977, Philip Hershkovitz performed an analysis of the species based on fur coloration patterns, cranial and mandibular morphology. He classified Geoffroys tamarin S. geoffroyi as a subspecies of S. oedipus, subsequent analyses by Hernández-Camacho and Cooper, Mittermeier and Coimbra-Filho, and later Grooves consider the S. oedipus and S. geoffroyi types to be separate species. Some researchers, such as Thorington, posit that S. oedipus is more related to the white-footed tamarin than to S. geoffroyi. This species of white-headed tamarin is thought to have diverged from the other Amazonian forms such as S. leucopus and this is supported by morphological considerations of the transition from juvenile to adulthood, during which the fur coloration patterns change significantly and are similar between the two species. Hershkovitz proposed that the separation of the two happened in the Pleistocene at the height of the Atrato River, where it intersected the Cauca-Magdalena. At that time, the area was covered by a sea, today, the two species are principally separated by the Atrato River. The cotton-top tamarin is part of the most diminutive family of monkeys, Callitrichidae and its head–body length is 20. 8–25.9 cm, while its tail—which is not prehensile—is slightly longer at around 33–41 cm
