1.
Mosquito
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Mosquitoes are small, midge-like flies that constitute the family Culicidae. Females of most species are ectoparasites, whose tube-like mouthparts pierce the skin to consume blood. The word mosquito is Spanish for little fly, thousands of species feed on the blood of various kinds of hosts, mainly vertebrates, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and even some kinds of fish. Some mosquitoes also attack invertebrates, mainly other arthropods, though the loss of blood is seldom of any importance to the victim, the saliva of the mosquito often causes an irritating rash that is a serious nuisance. Much more serious though, are the roles of species of mosquitoes as vectors of diseases. The oldest known mosquito with a similar to modern species was found in 79-million-year-old Canadian amber from the Cretaceous. An older sister species with more primitive features was found in Burmese amber that is 90 to 100 million years old, two mosquito fossils have been found that show very little morphological change in modern mosquitoes against their counterpart from 46 million years ago. These fossils are also the oldest ever found to have blood preserved within their abdomens, the Old and New World Anopheles species are believed to have subsequently diverged about 95 million years ago. The mosquito Anopheles gambiae is currently undergoing speciation into the M and S molecular forms, consequently, some pesticides that work on the M form no longer work on the S form. Over 3,500 species of the Culicidae have already been described and they are generally divided into two subfamilies which in turn comprise some 43 genera. These figures are subject to change, as more species are discovered. The two main subfamilies are the Anophelinae and Culicinae, with their genera as shown in the subsection below, the distinction is of great practical importance because the two subfamilies tend to differ in their significance as vectors of different classes of diseases. Roughly speaking, arboviral diseases such as fever and dengue fever tend to be transmitted by Culicine species. Some transmit various species of malaria, but it is not clear that they ever transmit any form of human malaria. Some species do however transmit various forms of filariasis, much as many Simuliidae do, Anopheline mosquitoes, again not necessarily in the genus Anopheles, sometimes bear pathogenic arboviruses, but it is not yet clear that they ever transmit them as effective vectors. However, all the most important vectors of malaria are Anopheline. Anophelinae Culicinae Mosquitoes are members of a family of nematocerid flies, superficially, mosquitoes resemble crane flies and chironomid flies. In particular, the females of species of mosquitoes are blood-eating pests and dangerous vectors of diseases
2.
Hematophagy
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Hematophagy is the practice by certain animals of feeding on blood. Some intestinal nematodes, such as Ancylostomids, feed on blood extracted from the capillaries of the gut, and about 75 percent of all species of leeches, a free-living worm, are hematophagous. These hematophagous animals have mouth parts and chemical agents for penetrating vascular structures in the skin of hosts, mostly of mammals, birds and this type of feeding is known as phlebotomy. Once phlebotomy is performed, blood is acquired either by sucking action directly from the veins or capillaries, from a pool of escaped blood, scientists have developed anticoagulant medicines from studying substances in the saliva of several hematophagous species, such as leeches. Hematophagy is classified as either obligatory or facultative, obligatory hematophagous animals cant survive on any other food. Examples include Rhodnius prolixus, a South American assassin bug, and Cimex lectularius, facultative hematophages, meanwhile, acquire at least some portion of their nutrition from non-blood sources in at least one of the sexually mature forms. Examples of this include many species, such as Aedes aegypti, whose males feed on pollen. In anautogenous species, the female must consume blood in order to produce eggs, as a feeding practice, hematophagy has evolved independently in a number of arthropod, annelid, nematode and mammalian taxa. For example, Diptera have eleven families with hematophagous habits, about 14,000 species of arthropods are hematophagous, even including some genera that were not previously thought to be, such as moths of the genus Calyptra. Several complementary biological adaptations for locating the hosts have also evolved, such as physical or chemical detectors for sweat components, CO2, heat, light, movement. The phlebotomic action opens a channel for contamination of the host species with bacteria, viruses, louis encephalitis, tularemia, typhus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, West Nile fever, Zika fever, and many others. Hematophagous organisms have been used by physicians for beneficial purposes, some doctors now use leeches to prevent the clotting of blood on some wounds following surgery or trauma. The anticoagulants in the laboratory-raised leeches saliva keeps fresh blood flowing to the site of an injury, actually preventing infection, in a recent study a genetically engineered drug called desmoteplase based on the saliva of Desmodus rotundus was shown to improve recovery in stroke patients. Many human societies also drink blood or use it to manufacture foodstuffs, cow blood mixed with milk, for example, is a mainstay food of the African Maasai. Marco Polo reported that Mongols drank blood from their horses if necessary, many places around the world eat Black pudding. Some societies, such as the Moche, had ritual hematophagy, as well as the Scythians, a people of Russia. Some religious rituals and symbols seemingly mirror hematophagy, such as in the transubstantiation of wine as the blood of Jesus Christ during Christian eucharist, psychiatric cases of patients performing hematophagy also exist. Sucking or licking ones own blood from a wound is also a human behavior
3.
Rosy boa
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The rosy boa is a species of snake of the family Boidae. The rosy boa is one of two members of that family native to the United States, the other being the rubber boa. The rosy boa is native to the American Southwest, and adjacent Baja California and Sonora and these small, attractive snakes normally attain a length of 17–34 in, although some coastal specimens from California reach 36–44 in. A large adult has a width about the diameter of a golf ball. Coloration in rosy boas is highly variable, and usually locale-specific, the common name is derived from the rosy or salmon coloration that is common on the belly of rosy boas originating from coastal southern California and Baja Mexico. Most rosy boas do not have this coloration, but instead have a series of dark to orange spots on a light-colored background. Almost all rosy boas have at least some trace of three stripes, one down the center of the back, and two on the lower sides. The appearance of stripes varies widely, from extremely straight and having high contrast with the interspaces. Stripe colors can be orange, maroon, rust, brown, interspace colors can be shades of light to dark gray, yellow, or tan. The rosy boa is found in the southwestern United States in the states of California and Arizona, in California, the rosy boa ranges throughout the Colorado and Mojave Deserts and also occupies the coastal areas of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Diego Counties. In Arizona, the rosy boa occupies the Mojave Desert and the areas of the Sonoran Desert. It is absent from the eastern and northern halves of the state, in Sonora, the rosy boa ranges from the border with the United States south throughout the Sonoran Desert to at least as far south as Ortiz. In Baja California, the rosy boa is almost ubiquitous ranging throughout the peninsula except in areas of extremely dry or rockless desert. Rosy boas spend most of their lives concealed beneath rocks and in crevices to escape the elements, granite outcroppings are the most common geologic association inhabited by the rosy boa. Less often, they are found in association with volcanic or other rock types, only in rare places do rosy boas inhabit rockless environments. In areas with few rocks, rosy boas use rodent burrows for concealment, rosy boas activity season follows local weather patterns, however, they are generally dormant during the winter, and active during the spring, summer, and fall. Like all snakes, they are dependent on external temperatures to promote such normal bodily functions as digestion and gestation, throughout most of their range, the winter is too cold for these functions and the rosy boas go into a dormant state called brumation. The spring is breeding season, resulting in their highest rate of activity, most rosy boas are encountered in spring as they leave the security of their rock piles and crevices to seek mates
4.
Red kangaroo
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The red kangaroo is the largest of all kangaroos, the largest terrestrial mammal native to Australia, and the largest extant marsupial. It is found across mainland Australia, avoiding only the fertile areas in the south, the east coast. This species is a large kangaroo with long, pointed ears. Males have short, red-brown fur, fading to buff below. Females are smaller males and are blue-grey with a brown tinge, pale gray below. It has two forelimbs with small claws, two muscular hind-limbs, which are used for jumping, and a tail which is often used to create a tripod when standing upright. Females are considerably smaller, with a length of 85–105 cm. Females can weigh from 18 to 40 kg, while males weigh around twice as much at 55 to 90 kg. The average red kangaroo stands approximately 1.5 m tall to the top of the head in upright posture, large mature males can stand more than 1.8 m tall, with the largest confirmed one having been around 2.1 m tall and weighed 91 kg. The red kangaroo maintains its internal temperature at a point of homeostasis about 36 °C using a variety of physical, physiological, and behavioral adaptations. These include having a layer of fur, being less active and staying in the shade when temperatures are high, panting, sweating. The red kangaroos range of vision is approximately 300°, due to the position of its eyes, the red kangaroo ranges throughout western and central Australia. Its range encompasses scrubland, grassland, and desert habitats and it typically inhabits open habitats with some trees for shade. Red kangaroos are capable of conserving water and selecting enough fresh vegetation to survive in an arid environment. The kangaroo’s kidneys efficiently concentrate urine, particularly during summer, red kangaroo primarily eat green vegetation, particularly fresh grasses and forbs, and can get enough even when most plants look brown and dry. One study of kangaroos in Central Australia found that green grass makes up 75–95% of the diet and this grass continues to be green into the dry season. Kangaroos also primarily consumed this species, along with Enneapogon avanaceus, during dry times, kangaroos search for green plants by staying on open grassland and near watercourses. However, some perennial chenopods, such as round-leaf chenopod Kochia are avoided even when abundant, at times, red kangaroos congregate in large numbers, in areas with much forage, these groups can number as much as 1,500 individuals
5.
Asilidae
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The Asilidae are the robber fly family, also called assassin flies. They are powerfully built, bristly flies with a short, stout proboscis enclosing the sharp, the name robber flies reflects their notoriously aggressive predatory habits, they feed mainly or exclusively on other insects and as a rule they wait in ambush and catch their prey in flight. The Asilidae are a family in the order Diptera, the true flies, the common name for members of the family is the robber flies. The Asilidae are cosmopolitan, with over 7000 described species, latreille was the authority for establishing the family in 1802. Robber flies have stout, spiny legs and they have three eyes in a characteristic depression on the top of their head between their two large compound eyes. They also have a dense moustache of stiff bristles on the face, this is called the mystax. Some Asilidae do, however, specialize in smaller prey, and they do so apparently irrespective of any repugnatorial chemicals the prey may have at its disposal. Many Asilidae when attacked in turn do not hesitate to defend themselves with their proboscides, the antennae are short, have three segments, and sometimes bear a bristle-like structure called an arista. Though they are a characteristic group for such a large family. Some points of contrast between the families include that the labium in the Therevidae is not a piercing, predatory organ, again, the Therevidae commonly have fluffy setae above the mouthparts, unlike the stiff chaetae comprising the mystax of the Asilidae. Furthermore, in the Asilidae the depression on the vertex between the eyes, tends to be obvious than in the Therevidae. Many Asilidae have long, tapering abdomens, sometimes with a sword-like ovipositor, others, for instance Laphria are fat-bodied bumblebee mimics. The life histories are poorly known, larvae generally seem to live in soil, rotting wood, leaf mold and similar materials, some being predatory and others detrivorous. Adults are generally medium to large in size, with a body length of 1 to 1.5 cm. The shape is elongated, due to the conformation of the long tapering abdomen. Frequently they are aposematic, imitating the livery of Hymenoptera, the head is free and mobile and dichoptic in both sexes and has three ocelli arranged in a characteristic depression formed by the elevation of the compound eyes. This feature is clearly visible in the front view and is a peculiarity of Asilidae. The occipital region has one or more rows of bristles aligned behind the posterior margin of the eye, the facial region has a convex profile with a characteristic dense bundle of bristles, called a mystax
6.
Insectivore
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An insectivore is a carnivorous plant or animal that eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which refers to the human practice of eating insects. The first insectivorous vertebrates were amphibians, when they evolved 400 million years ago, the first amphibians were piscivores, with numerous sharp conical teeth, much like a modern crocodile. The same tooth arrangement is also suited for eating animals with exoskeletons. At one time, insectivorous mammals were classified in an order called Insectivora. This order is now abandoned, as not all mammals are closely related. Most of the Insectivora taxa have been reclassified, those that have not yet been reclassified remain in the order Eulipotyphla, although individually small, insects exist in enormous numbers - they number over a million described species and some of those species occur in enormous numbers. Accordingly, insects make up a large part of the animal biomass in almost all non-marine. It has been estimated that the insect biomass is in the region of 1012 kg with an estimated population of 1018 organisms. Many creatures depend on insects as their diet, and many that do not nevertheless use insects as a protein supplement. Even large mammals are recorded as eating insects, the bear is perhaps the largest insectivore. Insects also can be insectivores, examples are dragonflies, hornets, ladybugs, insectivory also features to various degrees amongst primates, such as marmosets, tamarins, tarsiers, galagos and aye-aye. There is some suggestion that the earliest primates were nocturnal, arboreal insectivores, insectivorous plants are plants that derive some of their nutrients from trapping and consuming animals or protozoan. The benefit they derive from their catch varies considerably, in some species it might include a part of their nutrient intake. Their prey animals typically, but not exclusively, comprise insects, also known as carnivorous plants, they appear adapted to grow in places where the soil is thin or poor in nutrients, especially nitrogen, such as acidic bogs and rock outcroppings. Insectivorous plants include the Venus flytrap, several types of plants, butterworts, sundews, bladderworts. Most of those that do have such a diet, such as certain parasitoids and hunting wasps, are specialised to exploit particular species. Indeed, much as large mantids and spiders will do, the varieties of pitcher plant have been known to consume vertebrates such as small rodents
7.
Leaf beetle
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The family Chrysomelidae, commonly known as leaf beetles, includes over 37,000 species in more than 2,500 genera, making it one of the largest and most commonly encountered of all beetle families. Numerous subfamilies are recognized, but only some of them are listed below, leaf beetles are partially recognizable by their tarsal formula, which appears to be 4-4-4, but is actually 5-5-5 as the 4th tarsal segment is very small and hidden by the 3rd. As with many taxa, there is no single character that defines the Chrysomelidae, some lineages are only distinguished with difficulty from longhorn beetles, namely by the antennae not arising from frontal tubercles. Adult and larval leaf beetles feed on all sorts of plant tissue, others are beneficial due to their use in biocontrol of invasive weeds. Some Chrysomelidae are conspicuously colored, typically in glossy yellow to red or metallic blue-green hues, thus, they are highly popular among insect collectors. The bodies of most species are domed, and oval in dorsal view, in most specimens the antennae are notably shorter than head, thorax and abdomen, i. e. not more than half their combined length. The second antennal segment is of normal size, the first segment of the antenna in most cases is larger than the following ones. The pronotum of leaf beetles varies between species, in most it is slightly to highly domed and trapezoidal to rounded-squarish in dorsal view. In some subfamilies such as the Cassidinae and to an extent the Cryptocephalinae. The first three sternites are not fused, instead being linked by mobile sutures, most species possess wings, although the level of development and thus flight ability varies widely, including within a single species, and some are flightless with fused elytra. Other commonly recognized subfamilies have recently been grouped with other subfamilies, some species of wasps, such as Polistes carolina, have been known to prey upon Chrysomelidae larvae after the eggs are laid in flowers. Chyrsomelidae of northwest Europe List of subfamilies of European Chrysomelidae from University of Wrocław Brisbane leaf beetles Keys to the British genera and species of Chrysomelidae
8.
American robin
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The American robin is a migratory songbird of the thrush family. It is named after the European robin because of its reddish-orange breast, the American robin is widely distributed throughout North America, wintering from southern Canada to central Mexico and along the Pacific Coast. It is the bird of Connecticut, Michigan, and Wisconsin. According to some sources, the American robin ranks behind only the red-winged blackbird as the most abundant extant land bird in North America and it has seven subspecies, but only T. m. confinis of Baja California Sur is particularly distinctive, with pale gray-brown underparts. The American robin is active mostly during the day and assembles in large flocks at night and its diet consists of invertebrates, fruits, and berries. It is one of the earliest bird species to lay eggs and its nest consists of long coarse grass, twigs, paper, and feathers, and is smeared with mud and often cushioned with grass or other soft materials. It is among the first birds to sing at dawn, the adult robin is preyed upon by hawks, cats, and snakes, but when feeding in flocks, it can be vigilant and watch other birds for reactions to predators. Brown-headed cowbirds lay eggs in nests, but robins usually reject the cowbird eggs. This species was first described in 1766 by Carl Linnaeus in the edition of his Systema Naturae as Turdus migratorius. The binomial name derives from two Latin words, turdus, thrush, and migratorius from migrare to go, the term robin for this species has been recorded since at least 1703. There are about 65 species of medium to large thrushes in the genus Turdus, characterized by rounded heads, longish pointed wings, libonyanus, and the olive thrush, T. olivaceus, both African species. This conflicts with a 2007 DNA study of 60 of 65 Turdus species which places the American robins closest relative as the rufous-collared robin of Central America, though having distinct plumage, the two species are similar in vocalization and behavior. Beyond this, it lies in a group of four species of otherwise Central American distribution. Seven subspecies of American robin are recognized and these subspecies intergrade and are only weakly defined. It winters in southern coastal Alaska, southern Canada, most of the US, Bermuda and it is uniformly darker or blackish on the head, with a dark gray back. The underparts are more red than those of the nominate subspecies. T. m. achrusterus breeds from southern Oklahoma east to Maryland and western Virginia and south to northern Florida and it winters through much of the southern part of the breeding range. It is smaller than the nominate subspecies, the black feathers of the forehead and crown have pale gray tips
9.
Hummingbird
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Hummingbirds are birds from the Americas that constitute the family Trochilidae. They are among the smallest of birds, most species measuring 7. 5–13 cm, indeed, the smallest extant bird species is a hummingbird, the 5-cm bee hummingbird weighing less than 2.5 g. They are known as hummingbirds because of the sound created by their beating wings which flap at high frequencies audible to humans. They hover in mid-air at rapid wing-flapping rates, typically around 50 times per second, hummingbirds have the highest metabolism of any homeothermic animal. To conserve energy when food is scarce, and nightly when not foraging, they go into torpor, a map of the hummingbird family tree—reconstructed from analysis of 284 of the worlds 338 known species—shows rapid diversification from 22 million years ago. Due to this exceptional evolutionary pattern, as many as 140 hummingbird species can coexist in a specific region, the hummingbird evolutionary tree shows ancestral hummingbirds splitting from insectivorous swifts and treeswifts about 42 million years ago, probably in Eurasia. One key evolutionary factor appears to be an altered taste receptor that enabled hummingbirds to seek nectar, by 22 million years ago the ancestral species of current hummingbirds became established in South America, where environmental conditions stimulated further diversification. The Andes Mountains appear to be a rich environment for hummingbird evolution because diversification occurred simultaneously with mountain uplift over the past 10 million years. Hummingbirds remain in dynamic diversification inhabiting ecological regions across South America, North America, within the same geographic region, hummingbird clades co-evolved with nectar-bearing plant clades, affecting mechanisms of pollination. The same is true for the hummingbird, one of the morphologically most extreme species. Hummingbirds exhibit sexual size dimorphism according to Renschs rule, in males are smaller than females in small species. The extent of sexual size difference varies among clades of hummingbirds. For example, the Mellisugini clade exhibits a large size dimorphism, conversely, the Lophomithini clade displays very little size dimorphism, males and females are similar in size. For males and females of the size, females will tend to have larger beaks. Males tend to be smaller than females, allowing conservation of energy to forage competitively, thus, sexual selection will favor smaller male hummingbirds. Female hummingbirds tend to be larger, requiring energy, with longer beaks that allow for more effective reach into crevices of tall flowers for nectar. Thus females are better at foraging, acquiring flower nectar, directional selection will thus favor the larger hummingbirds in terms of acquiring food. Another evolutionary cause of this sexual dimorphism is that the selective forces from competition for nectar between the sexes of each species are what drive the sexual dimorphism
10.
Krill
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Krill are small crustaceans of the order Euphausiacea, and are found in all the worlds oceans. The name krill comes from the Norwegian word krill, meaning small fry of fish, which is also often attributed to species of fish. In the Southern Ocean, one species, the Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, makes up an estimated biomass of around 379,000,000 tonnes, making it among the species with the largest total biomass. Of this, over half is eaten by whales, seals, penguins, squid and fish each year, most krill species display large daily vertical migrations, thus providing food for predators near the surface at night and in deeper waters during the day. Krill are fished commercially in the Southern Ocean and in the waters around Japan, the total global harvest amounts to 150, 000–200,000 tonnes annually, most of this from the Scotia Sea. Most of the catch is used for aquaculture and aquarium feeds, as bait in sport fishing. In Japan, Philippines and Russia, krill are used for human consumption and are known as okiami in Japan. They are eaten as camarones in Spain, in the Philippines, it is known as alamang and it is used to make a salty paste called bagoong. Krill are also the prey of baleen whales, including the blue whale. Krill belong to the arthropod subphylum, the Crustacea. The most familiar and largest group of crustaceans, the class Malacostraca, the order Euphausiacea comprises two families. The more abundant Euphausiidae contains ten different genera with a total of 85 species, of these, the genus Euphausia is the largest, with 31 species. The lesser known family, the Bentheuphausiidae, has one species, Bentheuphausia amblyops. It is considered the most primitive extant krill species, well-known species of the Euphausiidae of commercial krill fisheries include Antarctic krill, Pacific krill and Northern krill. There have been many theories of the location of the order Euphausiacea, later, William Thomas Calman ranked the Mysidacea in the superorder Peracarida and euphausiids in the superorder Eucarida, although even up to the 1930s the order Schizopoda was advocated. It was later proposed that order Euphausiacea should be grouped with the Penaeidae in the Decapoda based on developmental similarities, as noted by Robert Gurney. The reason for debate is that krill share some morphological features of decapods. Molecular studies have not unambiguously grouped them, possibly due to the paucity of key rare species such as Bentheuphausia amblyops in krill, one study supports the monophyly of Eucarida, another groups Euphausiacea with Mysida, while yet another groups Euphausiacea with Hoplocarida
11.
Myrmicaria brunnea
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Myrmicaria brunnea is a species of ant that is native to southern Asia. They have a distinctive down-curved abdomen and spines on the thorax, the following taxonomic description is based on C. T. Bingham. For the rest the characters of the genus, pedicel, the nodes rugulose, opaque, abdomen smooth, polished and shining. Some few striae on the mesonotum posteriorly and on the portion of the metanotum. Pedicel obscurely rugulose, subopaque, abdomen smooth, shining, var. subcarinata, Smith, is slighter, more slender and lighter in colour, often nearly smooth, it occurs in Bengal, Burma, and Tenasserim, and extends down to Borneo. Media related to Myrmicaria brunnea at Wikimedia Commons
12.
Sugar
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Sugar is the generic name for sweet, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. There are various types of derived from different sources. Simple sugars are called monosaccharides and include glucose, fructose, the table sugar or granulated sugar most customarily used as food is sucrose, a disaccharide of glucose and fructose. Sugar is used in prepared foods and it is added to some foods, in the body, sucrose is hydrolysed into the simple sugars fructose and glucose. Other disaccharides include maltose from malted grain, and lactose from milk, longer chains of sugars are called oligosaccharides or polysaccharides. Some other chemical substances, such as glycerol may also have a sweet taste, low-calorie food substitutes for sugar, described as artificial sweeteners, include aspartame and sucralose, a chlorinated derivative of sucrose. Sugars are found in the tissues of most plants and are present in sufficient concentrations for efficient commercial extraction in sugarcane, the world production of sugar in 2011 was about 168 million tonnes. The average person consumes about 24 kilograms of sugar each year, equivalent to over 260 food calories per person, since the latter part of the twentieth century, it has been questioned whether a diet high in sugars, especially refined sugars, is good for human health. Sugar has been linked to obesity, and suspected of, or fully implicated as a cause in the occurrence of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, macular degeneration, the etymology reflects the spread of the commodity. The English word sugar ultimately originates from the Sanskrit शर्करा, via Arabic سكر as granular or candied sugar, the contemporary Italian word is zucchero, whereas the Spanish and Portuguese words, azúcar and açúcar, respectively, have kept a trace of the Arabic definite article. The Old French word is zuchre and the contemporary French, sucre, the earliest Greek word attested is σάκχαρις. The English word jaggery, a brown sugar made from date palm sap or sugarcane juice, has a similar etymological origin – Portuguese jagara from the Sanskrit शर्करा. Sugar has been produced in the Indian subcontinent since ancient times and it was not plentiful or cheap in early times and honey was more often used for sweetening in most parts of the world. Originally, people chewed raw sugarcane to extract its sweetness, sugarcane was a native of tropical South Asia and Southeast Asia. Different species seem to have originated from different locations with Saccharum barberi originating in India and S. edule, one of the earliest historical references to sugarcane is in Chinese manuscripts dating back to 8th century BC that state that the use of sugarcane originated in India. Sugar was found in Europe by the 1st century AD, but only as an imported medicine and it is a kind of honey found in cane, white as gum, and it crunches between the teeth. It comes in lumps the size of a hazelnut, sugar is used only for medical purposes. Sugar remained relatively unimportant until the Indians discovered methods of turning sugarcane juice into granulated crystals that were easier to store, crystallized sugar was discovered by the time of the Imperial Guptas, around the 5th century AD
13.
Animal
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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
14.
Food
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Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for an organism. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, the substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organisms cells to provide energy, maintain life, or stimulate growth. Historically, humans secured food through two methods, hunting and gathering and agriculture, today, the majority of the food energy required by the ever increasing population of the world is supplied by the food industry. They address issues such as sustainability, biological diversity, climate change, nutritional economics, population growth, water supply, most food has its origin in plants. Some food is obtained directly from plants, but even animals that are used as sources are raised by feeding them food derived from plants. Cereal grain is a food that provides more food energy worldwide than any other type of crop. Corn, wheat, and rice – in all of their varieties – account for 87% of all grain production worldwide, most of the grain that is produced worldwide is fed to livestock. Some foods not from animal or plant sources include various edible fungi, fungi and ambient bacteria are used in the preparation of fermented and pickled foods like leavened bread, alcoholic drinks, cheese, pickles, kombucha, and yogurt. Another example is blue-green algae such as Spirulina, inorganic substances such as salt, baking soda and cream of tartar are used to preserve or chemically alter an ingredient. Many plants and plant parts are eaten as food and around 2,000 plant species are cultivated for food, many of these plant species have several distinct cultivars. Seeds of plants are a source of food for animals, including humans, because they contain the nutrients necessary for the plants initial growth, including many healthful fats. In fact, the majority of food consumed by human beings are seed-based foods, edible seeds include cereals, legumes, and nuts. Oilseeds are often pressed to produce rich oils - sunflower, flaxseed, rapeseed, sesame, seeds are typically high in unsaturated fats and, in moderation, are considered a health food, although not all seeds are edible. Large seeds, such as those from a lemon, pose a choking hazard, fruits are the ripened ovaries of plants, including the seeds within. Many plants and animals have coevolved such that the fruits of the former are a food source to the latter. Fruits, therefore, make up a significant part of the diets of most cultures, some botanical fruits, such as tomatoes, pumpkins, and eggplants, are eaten as vegetables. Vegetables are a type of plant matter that is commonly eaten as food. These include root vegetables, bulbs, leaf vegetables, stem vegetables, animals are used as food either directly or indirectly by the products they produce
15.
Piscivore
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A piscivore /ˈpɪsᵻvɔər/ is a carnivorous animal which eats primarily fish. Piscivorous is equivalent to the Greek-derived word ichthyophagous, fish were the diet of early tetrapods, insectivory came next, then in time, reptiles added herbivory. Humans can live on fish-based diets as can their carnivorous domesticated pets, such as dogs, the name piscivore is derived from the Latin word for fish, piscis. Baryonyx Spinosaurus Laganosuchus Pteranodon Elasmosaurus Thyrsocles Xiphactinus Diplomystus Ornithocheirus Titanoboa
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Evolution
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Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to biodiversity at every level of organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms. In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes from the LUCA of all living on Earth. The fossil record includes a progression from early biogenic graphite, to microbial mat fossils, existing patterns of biodiversity have been shaped both by speciation and by extinction. More than 99 percent of all species that lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates of Earths current species range from 10 to 14 million, more recently, in May 2016, scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described. In the mid-19th century, Charles Darwin formulated the theory of evolution by natural selection. This teleonomy is the quality whereby the process of natural selection creates and preserves traits that are fitted for the functional roles they perform. The processes by which the changes occur, from one generation to another, are called evolutionary processes or mechanisms, the four most widely recognized evolutionary processes are natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene migration. Natural selection and genetic drift sort variation, mutation and gene migration create variation, consequences of selection can include meiotic drive, nonrandom mating and genetic hitchhiking. In the early 20th century the modern evolutionary synthesis integrated classical genetics with Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection through the discipline of population genetics, the importance of natural selection as a cause of evolution was accepted into other branches of biology. Moreover, previously held notions about evolution, such as orthogenesis, evolutionism, evolutionary computation, a sub-field of artificial intelligence, involves the application of Darwinian principles to problems in computer science. The proposal that one type of organism could descend from another type goes back to some of the first pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, such as Anaximander, such proposals survived into Roman times. The poet and philosopher Lucretius followed Empedocles in his masterwork De rerum natura, in contrast to these materialistic views, Aristotelianism considered all natural things as actualisations of fixed natural possibilities, known as forms. This was part of a teleological understanding of nature in which all things have an intended role to play in a divine cosmic order. In the 17th century, the new method of modern science rejected the Aristotelian approach, however, this new approach was slow to take root in the biological sciences, the last bastion of the concept of fixed natural types. The biological classification introduced by Carl Linnaeus in 1735 explicitly recognized the nature of species relationships. Other naturalists of this time speculated on the change of species over time according to natural laws
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Mouth
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It is also the cavity lying at the upper end of the alimentary canal, bounded on the outside by the lips and inside by the pharynx and containing in higher vertebrates the tongue and teeth. This cavity is known as the buccal cavity, from the Latin bucca. Some animal phyla, including vertebrates, have a digestive system, with a mouth at one end. Which end forms first in ontogeny is a used to classify animals into protostome and deuterostome. In the first multicellular animals there was probably no mouth or gut, the particles became enclosed in vacuoles into which enzymes were secreted and digestion took place intracellularly. The digestive products were absorbed into the cytoplasm and diffused into other cells, the vast majority of other multicellular organisms have a mouth and a gut, the lining of which is continuous with the epithelial cells on the surface of the body. A few animals which live parasitically originally had guts but have secondarily lost these structures, the original gut of multicellular organisms probably consisted of a simple sac with a single opening, the mouth. Indigestible waste is ejected through the mouth, in animals at least as complex as an earthworm, the embryo forms a dent on one side, the blastopore, which deepens to become the archenteron, the first phase in the formation of the gut. In deuterostomes, the blastopore becomes the anus while the gut tunnels through to make another opening. In the protostomes, it used to be thought that the formed the mouth while the anus formed later as an opening made by the other end of the gut. More recent research, however, shows that in protostomes the edges of the slit-like blastopore close up in the middle, apart from sponges and placozoans, almost all animals have an internal gut cavity which is lined with gastrodermal cells. In less advanced invertebrates such as the sea anemone, the mouth also acts as an anus, circular muscles around the mouth are able to relax or contract in order to open or close it. A fringe of tentacles thrusts food into the cavity and it can gape widely enough to large prey items. Food passes first into a pharynx and digestion occurs extracellularly in the gastrovascular cavity, annelids have simple tube-like gets and the possession of an anus allows them to separate the digestion of their foodstuffs from the absorption of the nutrients. Many molluscs have a radula which is used to scrape microscopic particles off surfaces, in invertebrates with hard exoskeletons, various mouthparts may be involved in feeding behaviour. Insects have a range of mouthparts suited to their mode of feeding and these include mandibles, maxillae and labium and can be modified into suitable appendages for chewing, cutting, piercing, sponging and sucking. Decapods have six pairs of appendages, one pair of mandibles. Sea urchins have a set of five sharp calcareous plates which are used as jaws and are known as Aristotles lantern, in vertebrates, the first part of the digestive system is the buccal cavity, commonly known as the mouth
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Tooth
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A tooth is a hard, calcified structure found in the jaws of many vertebrates and used to break down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores, also use teeth for hunting or for defensive purposes, the roots of teeth are covered by gums. Teeth are not made of bone, but rather of tissues of varying density. The cellular tissues that ultimately become teeth originate from the germ layer. The general structure of teeth is similar across the vertebrates, although there is variation in their form. The teeth of mammals have deep roots, and this pattern is found in some fish. In most teleost fish, however, the teeth are attached to the surface of the bone. In cartilaginous fish, such as sharks, the teeth are attached by tough ligaments to the hoops of cartilage that form the jaw, some animals develop only one set of teeth while others develop many sets. Sharks, for example, grow a new set of every two weeks to replace worn teeth. Rodent incisors grow and wear away continually through gnawing, which helps maintain relatively constant length, the industry of the beaver is due in part to this qualification. Many rodents such as voles and guinea pigs, but not mice, Teeth are not always attached to the jaw, as they are in mammals. In many reptiles and fish, teeth are attached to the palate or to the floor of the mouth, some teleosts even have teeth in the pharynx. While not true teeth in the sense, the dermal denticles of sharks are almost identical in structure and are likely to have the same evolutionary origin. Though modern teeth-like structures with dentine and enamel have been found in late conodonts, living amphibians typically have small teeth, or none at all, since they commonly feed only on soft foods. In reptiles, teeth are simple and conical in shape. The pattern of incisors, canines, premolars and molars is found only in mammals, the numbers of these types of teeth vary greatly between species, zoologists use a standardised dental formula to describe the precise pattern in any given group. The genes governing tooth development in mammals are homologous to these involved in the development of fish scales, Teeth are among the most distinctive features of mammal species. Paleontologists use teeth to identify species and determine their relationships
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Whale
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Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. They are a grouping within the infraorder Cetacea, usually excluding dolphins. Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla with even-toed ungulates and their closest living relatives are the hippopotamuses, the two parvorders of whales, baleen whales and toothed whales, are thought to have split apart around 34 million years ago. The whales comprise eight extant families, Balaenopteridae, Balaenidae, Cetotheriidae, Eschrichtiidae, Monodontidae, Physeteridae, Kogiidae, Whales are creatures of the open ocean, they feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. So extreme is their adaptation to life underwater that they are unable to survive on land. Whales range in size from the 2.6 metres and 135 kilograms dwarf sperm whale to the 29.9 metres and 190 metric tons blue whale, the sperm whale is the largest toothed predator on earth. Several species exhibit sexual dimorphism, in that the females are larger than males, baleen whales have no teeth, instead they have plates of baleen, a fringe-like structure used to expel water while retaining the krill and plankton which they feed on. They use their throat pleats to expand the mouth to take in huge gulps of water, balaenids have heads that can make up 40% of their body mass to take in water. Toothed whales, on the hand, have conical teeth designed for catching fish or squid. Some species, such as whales, are well adapted for diving to great depths to catch squid. Whales have evolved from land-living mammals, as such they must breathe air regularly, though they can remain submerged for long periods. They have blowholes located on top of their heads, through air is taken in. They are warm-blooded, and have a layer of fat, or blubber, under the skin, with streamlined fusiform bodies and two limbs that are modified into flippers, whales can travel at up to 20 knots, though they are not as flexible or agile as seals. Whales produce a variety of vocalizations, notably the extended songs of the humpback whale. Although whales are widespread, most species prefer the waters of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Species such as humpbacks and blue whales are capable of travelling thousands of miles without feeding, males typically mate with multiple females every year, but females only mate every two to three years. Calves are typically born in the spring and summer months and females bear all the responsibility for raising them, mothers of some species fast and nurse their young for one to two years. Once relentlessly hunted for their products, whales are now protected by international law, the North Atlantic right whales nearly became extinct in the twentieth century, with a population low of 450, and the North Pacific gray whale population is ranked Critically Endangered by the IUCN
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Vampire bat
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Vampire bats are bats whose food source is blood, a dietary trait called hematophagy. Three bat species feed solely on blood, the vampire bat, the hairy-legged vampire bat. All three species are native to the Americas, ranging from Mexico to Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, due to differences among the three species, each has been placed within a different genus, each consisting of one species. The three known species of vampire bats all seem more similar to one another than to any other species and that suggests that sanguivorous habits evolved only once, and the three species share a common ancestor. Unlike fruit bats, the bats have short, conical muzzles. It also lacks a leaf, instead having naked pads with U-shaped grooves at the tip. The common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus, also has specialized thermoreceptors on its nose, a nucleus has been found in the brain of vampire bats that has a similar position and similar histology to the infrared receptor of infrared-sensing snakes. A vampire bat has front teeth that are specialized for cutting, the inferior colliculus, the part of the bats brain that processes sound, is well adapted to detecting the regular breathing sounds of sleeping animals that serve as its main food source. This ability to run seems to have evolved independently within the bat lineage, Vampire bats use infrared radiation to locate blood hotspots on their prey. A recent study has shown that common vampire bats tune a TRP-channel that is already heat-sensitive, TRPV1 and this is achieved through alternative splicing of TRPV1 transcripts to produce a channel with a truncated carboxy-terminal cytoplasmic domain. These splicing events occur exclusively in trigeminal ganglia, and not in dorsal root ganglia, the only other vertebrates capable of detecting infrared radiation are boas, pythons and pit vipers, all of which have pit organs. Vampire bats tend to live in colonies in almost completely dark places, such as caves, old wells, hollow trees and they range in Central to South America and live in arid to humid, tropical and subtropical areas. Vampire bat colony numbers can range from single digits to hundreds in roosting sites. The basic social structure of roosting bats is made of groups and their offspring, a few adult males, known as resident males. In hairy-legged vampire bats, the segregation of nonresident males appears less strict than in common vampire bats. Nonresident males are accepted into the harems when the ambient temperature lowers, resident males mate with the females in their harems, and it is less common for outside males to copulate with the females. Female offspring often remain in their natal groups Several matrilines can be found in a group, male offspring tend to live in their natal groups until they are about two years old, sometimes being forcefully expelled by the resident adult males. Vampire bats form strong bonds with members of the colony
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Leech
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Half-Life is a series of first-person shooter video games that share a single science fiction alternate history. The games in the series all utilize either the GoldSrc or Source engines and are linear, narrative, Valve Corporation is the developer, and partly the publisher and distributor, for their signature games of the series. The major titles in the feature the player as the protagonist, Gordon Freeman. Two of these games, Half-Life and Half-Life 2 are full length titles, while two more, Half-Life 2, Episode One and Half-Life 2, Episode Two, are shorter, episodic titles. A final episode, Half-Life 2, Episode Three, was scheduled to appear around Christmas 2007. A puzzle-based first-person series, set in the fictional universe as the Half-Life games, was created with Portal in 2007, followed by a sequel, Portal 2. Half-Life, the first game in the series, takes place at the fictional Black Mesa Research Facility in New Mexico circa the turn of the 21st century. As Freeman and the try to flee, a Marine Recon unit is brought in to contain the situation. Freeman ultimately makes his way to Xen and eliminates the alien leader, the Nihilanth, but then is confronted by the G-Man, Half-Life, Opposing Force follows Recon soldier Adrian Shephard as he helps to quell another alien invasion within the Black Mesa facility. Within Half-Life, Blue Shift, Black Mesa security worker Barney Calhoun works to escape the facility from both forces and the Recon soldiers with Dr. Rosenberg and two other scientists. Half-Life 2 starts about twenty years following the first game, with the death of the Nihilanth, the Black Mesa dimensional rift grew out of control, creating portal storms across Earth and further spread of alien creatures. Surviving humans now are forced to live in former cities converted to internment camps and patrolled by the Combine, G-Man wakes Freeman up to this new world, sending him to City 17. They confront Wallace Breen, the spokesman for the Combine. Within Half-Life 2, Episode One, the destruction of the Citadels reactor has started a reaction that will take all of City 17 with it. Aided in part by the G-Man and the Vortigaunt, Freeman and Alyx escape the explosions and work to try to slow the reaction. However, they find that the Combine are attempting to accelerate the process, Freeman and his allies safely make their way out of City 17 in time. In Half-Life 2, Episode Two, the explosion has created a superportal which could allow the full Combine force onto Earth. Freeman and his allies help to secure safety for the survivors from City 17
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Felidae
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Felidae is the family of cats. A member of family is also called a felid. They are sometimes referred to as hypercarnivores because of the large proportion of protein they require in their diet. Of the 13 terrestrial families in the order Carnivora, they are the strictest carnivores, the first cats emerged during the Oligocene, about 25 million years ago. In prehistoric times, there was a subfamily, the Machairodontinae. Other superficially cat-like mammals, such as the metatherians Thylacosmilus and Thylacoleo, the 42 known cat species in the world today are all descended from a common ancestor. Cats originated in Asia and spread across continents by crossing land bridges, about 60% of the modern cat species are estimated to have developed within the last million years. Felidaes closest relatives are thought to be the Asiatic linsangs, together with the Viverridae, hyenas, mongooses, and Madagascar carnivores, they form the suborder Feliformia. Most cat species share a genetic anomaly that prevents them from tasting sweetness, most cat species have a haploid number of 18 or 19. New World cats have a number of 18, possibly due to the combination of two smaller chromosomes into a larger one. Domestic cats may either have a long or short tail, at one point, biologists had to consider whether the short tail also found in the lynx was the ancestral or derived trait. Without looking at the record, researchers were able to look at the character states found in their outgroups. Because all animals belonging to Felidae’s sister taxa, Viverridae, have long tails, some domestic cats display a rosette pattern on their coats. This character state, however, is not related to the rosettes found on big cats, domestic cats and big cats underwent convergent evolution for this trait. The most common ancestor to all cats had a flecked coat, the jaguarundi lost this character state secondarily. The most common recent ancestor of snow leopards, tigers, jaguars, lions, tigers and lions, however, do not display rosettes as adults. They both have lost this character state over time. Adult tigers actually display elongated rosettes that now appear as stripes, adult lions seem to lack any distinctive markings altogether
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Fish
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A fish is any member of a group of animals that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic craniate animals that lack limbs with digits. They form a group to the tunicates, together forming the olfactores. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous, tetrapods emerged within lobe-finned fishes, so cladistically they are fish as well. However, traditionally fish are rendered obsolete or paraphyletic by excluding the tetrapods, because in this manner the term fish is defined negatively as a paraphyletic group, it is not considered a formal taxonomic grouping in systematic biology. The traditional term pisces is considered a typological, but not a phylogenetic classification, the earliest organisms that can be classified as fish were soft-bodied chordates that first appeared during the Cambrian period. Although they lacked a true spine, they possessed notochords which allowed them to be more agile than their invertebrate counterparts, fish would continue to evolve through the Paleozoic era, diversifying into a wide variety of forms. Many fish of the Paleozoic developed external armor that protected them from predators, the first fish with jaws appeared in the Silurian period, after which many became formidable marine predators rather than just the prey of arthropods. Fish are abundant in most bodies of water and they can be found in nearly all aquatic environments, from high mountain streams to the abyssal and even hadal depths of the deepest oceans. With 33,100 described species, fish exhibit greater species diversity than any group of vertebrates. Fish are an important resource for humans worldwide, especially as food, commercial and subsistence fishers hunt fish in wild fisheries or farm them in ponds or in cages in the ocean. They are also caught by fishers, kept as pets, raised by fishkeepers. Fish have had a role in culture through the ages, serving as deities, religious symbols, fish do not represent a monophyletic group, and therefore the evolution of fish is not studied as a single event. Early fish from the record are represented by a group of small, jawless. Jawless fish lineages are mostly extinct, an extant clade, the lampreys may approximate ancient pre-jawed fish. The first jaws are found in Placodermi fossils, the diversity of jawed vertebrates may indicate the evolutionary advantage of a jawed mouth. It is unclear if the advantage of a hinged jaw is greater biting force, improved respiration, fish may have evolved from a creature similar to a coral-like sea squirt, whose larvae resemble primitive fish in important ways. The first ancestors of fish may have kept the form into adulthood. Fish are a group, that is, any clade containing all fish also contains the tetrapods
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Bird
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Birds, a subgroup of Reptiles, are the last living examples of Dinosaurs. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the 5 cm bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m ostrich. They rank as the class of tetrapods with the most living species, at ten thousand. Birds are the closest living relatives of crocodilians, the fossil record indicates that birds evolved from feathered ancestors within the theropod group of saurischian dinosaurs. True birds first appeared during the Cretaceous period, around 100 million years ago, Birds, especially those in the southern continents, survived this event and then migrated to other parts of the world while diversifying during periods of global cooling. Primitive bird-like dinosaurs that lie outside class Aves proper, in the broader group Avialae, have been found dating back to the mid-Jurassic period, around 170 million years ago. Birds have wings which are more or less developed depending on the species, the digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have evolved for swimming. Many species annually migrate great distances, Birds are social, communicating with visual signals, calls, and bird songs, and participating in such social behaviours as cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators. The vast majority of species are socially monogamous, usually for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous or, rarely, Birds produce offspring by laying eggs which are fertilised through sexual reproduction. They are usually laid in a nest and incubated by the parents, most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching. Some birds, such as hens, lay eggs even when not fertilised, songbirds, parrots, and other species are popular as pets. Guano is harvested for use as a fertiliser, Birds prominently figure throughout human culture. About 120–130 species have become extinct due to human activity since the 17th century, human activity threatens about 1,200 bird species with extinction, though efforts are underway to protect them. Recreational birdwatching is an important part of the ecotourism industry, the first classification of birds was developed by Francis Willughby and John Ray in their 1676 volume Ornithologiae. Carl Linnaeus modified that work in 1758 to devise the taxonomic classification system currently in use, Birds are categorised as the biological class Aves in Linnaean taxonomy. Phylogenetic taxonomy places Aves in the dinosaur clade Theropoda, Aves and a sister group, the clade Crocodilia, contain the only living representatives of the reptile clade Archosauria
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Hawk
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Hawks are a group of medium-sized diurnal birds of prey of the family Accipitridae which are widely distributed and varying greatly in size. The subfamily Accipitrinae includes goshawks, sparrowhawks, the sharp-shinned hawk and these are mainly woodland birds with long tails and high visual acuity, hunting by sudden dashes from a concealed perch. In the Americas, members of the Buteo group are also called hawks, generally buteos have broad wings and sturdy builds. They are relatively larger winged, shorter-tailed and soar more extensively in areas than accipiters. The terms accipitrine hawk and buteonine hawk may be used to distinguish the two types, in regions where hawk applies to both, the term true hawk is sometimes used for the accipitrine hawks, in regions where buzzard is preferred for the buteonine hawks. All these groups are members of the Accipitridae family, which includes the hawks and buzzards as well as kites, harriers, some authors use hawk generally for any small to medium Accipitrid that is not an eagle. The common names of birds include the term hawk, reflecting traditional usage rather than taxonomy. Falconry was also called hawking, and any bird used for falconry could be referred to as a hawk, aristotle listed eleven types of ἱέρακες, aisalōn, asterias, hypotriorchēs, kirkos, leios, perkos, phassophonos, phrynologos, pternis, spizias, and triorchēs. Pliny numbered sixteen kinds of hawks, but named only aigithos, epileios, kenchrēïs, kybindis, the accipitrine hawks generally take birds as their primary prey. They have also been called hen-hawks, or wood-hawks because of their woodland habitat, the subfamily Accipitrinae contains Accipiter, it also contains genera Micronisus, Urotriorchis, and Megatriorchis. Melierax may be included in the subfamily, or given a subfamily of its own, erythrotriorchis is traditionally included in Accipitrinae, but is possibly a convergent genus from an unrelated group. The Buteo group includes genera Buteo, Parabuteo, Geranoetus, members of this group have also been called hawk-buzzards. Proposed new genera Morphnarchus, Rupornis, and Pseudastur are formed from members of Buteo, the Buteogallus group are also called hawks, with the exception of the solitary eagles. Buteo is the genus of the subfamily Buteoninae. Traditionally this subfamily also includes eagles and sea-eagles, lerner and Mindell proposed placing those into separate subfamilies, leaving just the buteonine hawks/buzzards in Buteoninae. In February 2005, the Canadian ornithologist Louis Lefebvre announced a method of measuring avian IQ in terms of their innovation in feeding habits, Hawks were named among the most intelligent birds based on his scale. Hawks have four types of receptors in the eye. These give birds the ability to not only the visible range but also the ultraviolet part of the spectrum
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Woodpecker
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The woodpeckers are part of the family Picidae, a group of near-passerine birds that also consist of piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar, the Picidae are just one of eight living families in the order Piciformes. More recently, DNA sequence analyses have confirmed this view, there are about 200 species and about 30 genera in this family. Many species are threatened or endangered due to loss of habitat or habitat fragmentation, the woodpeckers range from very tiny piculets measuring no more than 7 cm and weighing 7 g to large woodpeckers which can be more than 50 cm in length. The largest surviving species is the great slaty woodpecker, which weighs 360–563 g, Woodpeckers have strong bills for drilling and drumming on trees and long sticky tongues for extracting food. Woodpecker bills are typically longer, sharper and stronger than the bills of piculets and wrynecks, however, the bills chisel-like tip is kept sharp by the pecking action in birds that regularly use it on wood. Combined, this helps the beak absorb mechanical stress. Species of woodpecker and flicker that use their bills in soil or for probing as opposed to regular hammering tend to have longer, due to their smaller bill size, many piculets and wrynecks will forage in decaying wood more often than woodpeckers. The long sticky tongues, which possess bristles, aid these birds in grabbing and extracting insects deep within a hole of a tree. It had been reported that the tongue was used to spear grubs, many of the foraging, breeding and signaling behaviors of woodpeckers involve drumming and hammering using the bill. To prevent brain damage from the rapid and repeated impacts, woodpeckers have a number of features designed to protect the brain. The skull is made of strong but compressible sponge-like bone which is most concentrated in the forehead, computer simulations have shown that 99. All the pecking also heats up the skull, which is part of the reason why they often peck in short bursts with brief breaks in between, giving the head some time to cool. The millisecond before contact with wood a thickened nictitating membrane closes and these membranes also prevent the retina from tearing. The nostrils are also protected, they are often slit-like and have special feathers to cover them, Woodpeckers are capable of repeated pecking on a tree at high decelerations on the order of 10,000 m/s2. Woodpeckers, piculets and wrynecks all possess feet consisting of four toes, the first and the fourth facing backward and this foot arrangement is good for grasping the limbs and trunks of trees. Members of this family can walk vertically up a tree trunk, in addition to their strong claws and feet, woodpeckers have short strong legs. This is typical of birds that forage on trunks
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Pelican
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Pelicans are a genus of large water birds that makes up the family Pelecanidae. They are characterised by a beak and a large throat pouch used for catching prey. They have predominantly pale plumage, the exceptions being the brown, the bills, pouches and bare facial skin of all species become brightly coloured before the breeding season. Ibises, spoonbills, herons and the desolate bitterns have been classified in the same order, fossil evidence of pelicans dates back to at least 30 million years to the remains of a beak very similar to that of modern species recovered from Oligocene strata in France. Pelicans frequent inland and coastal waters where they feed principally on fish and they are gregarious birds, travelling in flocks, hunting cooperatively and breeding colonially. Four white-plumaged species tend to nest on the ground, and four brown or grey-plumaged species nest mainly in trees, the relationship between pelicans and people has often been contentious. The birds have been persecuted because of their competition with commercial and recreational fishing. Their populations have fallen through habitat destruction, disturbance and environmental pollution and they also have a long history of cultural significance in mythology, and in Christian and heraldic iconography. The genus Pelecanus was first formally described by Linnaeus in 1758 in the edition of his Systema Naturae. He described the characteristics as a straight bill hooked at the tip, linear nostrils, a bare face. This early definition included frigatebirds, cormorants, and sulids as well as pelicans, the name comes from the Ancient Greek word pelekan, which is itself derived from the word pelekys meaning axe. In classical times, the word was applied to both the pelican and the woodpecker, the family Pelecanidae was introduced by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. Pelicans give their name to the Pelecaniformes, an order which has a varied taxonomic history, in their place, herons, ibises, spoonbills, the hamerkop and the shoebill have now been transferred into Pelecaniformes. Molecular evidence suggests that the shoebill and the form a sister group to the pelicans. Its beak is almost complete and is identical to that of present-day pelicans. The Late Eocene Protopelicanus may be a pelecaniform or suliform – or an aquatic bird such as a pseudotooth. The supposed Miocene pelican Liptornis from Patagonia is a nomen dubium, fossil finds from North America have been meagre compared with Europe, which has a richer fossil record. The Dalmatian, pink-backed and spot-billed were all related to one another
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Parrot
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Parrots, also known as psittacines /ˈsɪtəsaɪnz/, are birds of the roughly 393 species in 92 genera that make up the order Psittaciformes, found in most tropical and subtropical regions. The order is subdivided into three superfamilies, the Psittacoidea, the Cacatuoidea, and the Strigopoidea, Parrots have a generally pantropical distribution with several species inhabiting temperate regions in the Southern Hemisphere, as well. The greatest diversity of parrots is in South America and Australasia, characteristic features of parrots include a strong, curved bill, an upright stance, strong legs, and clawed zygodactyl feet. Many parrots are vividly coloured, and some are multi-coloured, most parrots exhibit little or no sexual dimorphism in the visual spectrum. They form the most variably sized bird order in terms of length, the most important components of most parrots diets are seeds, nuts, fruit, buds, and other plant material. A few species sometimes eat animals and carrion, while the lories and lorikeets are specialised for feeding on floral nectar, almost all parrots nest in tree hollows, and lay white eggs from which hatch altricial young. Parrots, along with ravens, crows, jays, and magpies, are among the most intelligent birds, some parrots are intelligent and talk at the level of a four-to-five year old human. Measures taken to conserve the habitats of some high-profile charismatic species have protected many of the less charismatic species living in the same ecosystems. Psittaciform diversity in South America and Australasia suggests that the order may have evolved in Gondwana, molecular studies suggest that parrots evolved approximately 59 million years ago in Gondwana. The three major clades of Neotropical parrots originated about 50 Mya, likewise, the earliest parrots do not have the specialised crushing bills of modern species. If so, they probably had not evolved their morphological autapomorphies yet, the combined evidence supported the hypothesis of Psittaciformes being near passerines, i. e. the mostly land-living birds that emerged in close proximity to the K-Pg extinction. Europe is the origin of the first undeniable parrot fossils, which date from about 50 Mya, the climate there and then was tropical, consistent with the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum. Initially, a neoavian named Mopsitta tanta, uncovered in Denmarks Early Eocene Fur Formation and dated to 54 Mya, was assigned to the Psittaciformes, fossils assignable to Psittaciformes date from slightly later in the Eocene, starting around 50 Mya. Several fairly complete skeletons of birds have been found in England. The fossil record—mainly from Europe—consists of bones clearly recognisable as belonging to parrots of modern type, at this point, however, is found the first unambiguous parrot fossil, an upper jaw that is indistinguishable from that of modern cockatoos. The Psittaciformes comprise three lineages, Strigopoidea, Psittacoidea and Cacatuoidea. Colourful feathers with high levels of psittacofulvin resist the feather-degrading bacterium Bacillus licheniformis better than white ones, lorikeets were previously regarded as a third family, Loriidae, but are now considered a tribe within the subfamily Lorinae, family Cacatuoidea. The two other tribes in the subfamily are the closely related fig parrots and budgerigar, the order Psittaciformes consists of roughly 393 species belonging to 92 genera
29.
Kingfisher
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Kingfishers are a group of small to medium-sized, brightly colored birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a distribution, with most species found outside of the Americas. The group is treated either as a family, the Alcedinidae. Roughly 90 species of kingfishers are described, all have large heads, long, sharp, pointed bills, short legs, and stubby tails. Most species have bright plumage with few differences between the sexes, most species are tropical in distribution, and a slight majority are found only in forests. They consume a range of prey, as well as fish. While kingfishers are usually thought to live near rivers and eat fish, most species live away from water, like other members of their order, they nest in cavities, usually tunnels dug into the natural or artificial banks in the ground. A quarter of all kingfishers nest in abandoned termite nests, a few species, principally insular forms, are threatened with extinction. In Britain, the word normally refers to the common kingfisher. The family Alcedinidae was introduced by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815, the taxonomy of the three families is complex and rather controversial. Although commonly assigned to the order Coraciiformes, from this level down confusion sets in and that move was supported by chromosome and DNA–DNA hybridisation studies, but challenged on the grounds that all three groups are monophyletic with respect to the other Coraciiformes. This leads to them being grouped as the suborder Alcedines, the tree kingfishers have been previously given the familial name Dacelonidae, but Halcyonidae has priority. The centre of diversity is the Australasian region, but the group is not thought to have originated there. Instead, they evolved in the Northern Hemisphere and invaded the Australasian region a number of times, fossil kingfishers have been described from Lower Eocene rocks in Wyoming and Middle Eocene rocks in Germany, around 30–40 million years ago. More recent fossil kingfishers have been described in the Miocene rocks of Australia, amongst the three families, the Alcedinidae are basal to the other two families. The few species found in the Americas, all from the family Cerylidae, the family is a comparatively recent split from the Halcyonidae, diversifying in the Old World as recently as the Miocene or Pliocene. The smallest species of kingfisher is the African dwarf kingfisher, which averages 10.4 g in weight and 10 cm in length, the largest overall is the giant kingfisher, at an average of 355 g and 45 cm. However, the familiar Australian kingfisher known as the laughing kookaburra may be the heaviest species, the plumage of most kingfishers is bright, with green and blue being the most common colours
30.
Claw
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A claw is a curved, pointed appendage, found at the end of a toe or finger in most amniotes. Some invertebrates such as beetles and spiders have somewhat similar fine hooked structures at the end of the leg or tarsus for gripping a surface as the creature walks, crabs, lobsters and scorpions pincers, or more formally, their chelae, are sometimes called claws. A true claw, is made of protein called keratin. Similar appendages that are flat and do not come to a point are called nails instead. Claw-like projections that do not form at the end of digits, in tetrapods, claws are made of keratin and consist of two layers. The unguis is the external layer, which consists of keratin fibers arranged perpendicular to the direction of growth. The subunguis is the softer, flaky underside layer whose grain is parallel to the direction of growth, the claw grows outward from the nail matrix at the base of the unguis and the subunguis grows thicker while travelling across the nail bed. The unguis grows outward faster than the subunguis to produce a curve, tetrapods use their claws in many ways, commonly to grasp or kill prey, to dig and to climb and hang. All Carnivora have claws, which vary considerably in length and shape, Claws grow out of the third phalanges of the paws and are made of keratin. Many predatory mammals have protractile claws that can hide inside the animals paw, especially the cat family, Felidae. Outside of the cat family, retractable claws are found only in species of the Viverridae. A claw that is retractable is protected from wear and tear, most cats and dogs also have a dewclaw on the inside of the front paws. It is much less functional than the other claws but does help the cats to grasp prey, because the dew claw does not touch the ground, it receives less wear and tends to be sharper and longer. A nail is homologous to a claw but is flatter and has a curved edge instead of a point, a nail that is big enough to bear weight is called a hoof. Every so often, the growth of claws stops and restarts, in hair, this results in the hair falling out and being replaced by a new one. In claws, this results in an layer, and the old segment breaks off. This process takes several months for human thumbnails, cats are often seen working old unguis layers off on wood or on boards made for the purpose. Ungulates hooves wear or self-trim by ground contact, domesticated equids usually need regular trimming by a farrier, as a consequence of reduced activity on hard ground
31.
Primate
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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
32.
Camouflage
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Camouflage is the use of any combination of materials, coloration, or illumination for concealment, either by making animals or objects hard to see, or by disguising them as something else. Examples include the spotted coat, the battledress of a modern soldier. A third approach, motion dazzle, confuses the observer with a pattern, making the object visible. The majority of camouflage methods aim for crypsis, often through a general resemblance to the background, high contrast disruptive coloration, eliminating shadow, and countershading. Some animals, such as chameleons and octopuses, are capable of changing their skin pattern and colours. Military camouflage was spurred by the range and accuracy of firearms in the 19th century. In particular the replacement of the inaccurate musket with the rifle made personal concealment in battle a survival skill, in the 20th century, military camouflage developed rapidly, especially during the First World War. On land, artists such as André Mare designed camouflage schemes, at sea, merchant ships and troop carriers were painted in dazzle patterns that were highly visible, but designed to confuse enemy submarines as to the targets speed, range, and heading. During and after the Second World War, a variety of schemes were used for aircraft. The use of radar since the century has largely made camouflage for fixed-wing military aircraft obsolete. Non-military use of camouflage includes making cell telephone towers less obtrusive, patterns derived from military camouflage are frequently used in fashion clothing, exploiting their strong designs and sometimes their symbolism. Camouflage themes recur in modern art, and both figuratively and literally in science fiction and works of literature, in ancient Greece, Aristotle commented on the colour-changing abilities, both for camouflage and for signalling, of cephalopods including the octopus, in his Historia animalium, The octopus. Seeks its prey by so changing its colour as to render it like the colour of the adjacent to it, it does so also when alarmed. Camouflage has been a topic of interest and research in zoology for well over a century, the English zoologist Edward Bagnall Poulton studied animal coloration, especially camouflage. In his 1890 book The Colours of Animals, he classified different types such as special protective resemblance and his experiments showed that swallowtailed moth pupae were camouflaged to match the backgrounds on which they were reared as larvae. Among vertebrates numerous species of parrots, iguanas, tree-frogs, beddard did however briefly mention other methods, including the alluring coloration of the flower mantis and the possibility of a different mechanism in the orange tip butterfly. He wrote that the scattered green spots upon the surface of the wings might have been intended for a rough sketch of the small flowerets of the plant. The artist Abbott Handerson Thayer formulated what is sometimes called Thayers Law, Thayer was roundly mocked for these views by critics including Teddy Roosevelt
33.
Digestion
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Digestion is the breakdown of large insoluble food molecules into small water-soluble food molecules so that they can be absorbed into the watery blood plasma. In certain organisms, these substances are absorbed through the small intestine into the blood stream. Digestion is a form of catabolism that is divided into two processes based on how food is broken down, mechanical and chemical digestion. The term mechanical digestion refers to the breakdown of large pieces of food into smaller pieces which can subsequently be accessed by digestive enzymes. In chemical digestion, enzymes break down food into the small molecules the body can use. In the human system, food enters the mouth and mechanical digestion of the food starts by the action of mastication, a form of mechanical digestion. After undergoing mastication and starch digestion, the food will be in the form of a small and it will then travel down the esophagus and into the stomach by the action of peristalsis. Gastric juice in the stomach starts protein digestion, gastric juice mainly contains hydrochloric acid and pepsin. As these two chemicals may damage the stomach wall, mucus is secreted by the stomach, providing a slimy layer that acts as a shield against the effects of the chemicals. At the same time protein digestion is occurring, mechanical mixing occurs by peristalsis and this allows the mass of food to further mix with the digestive enzymes. After some time, the resulting liquid is called chyme. When the chyme is fully digested, it is absorbed into the blood, 95% of absorption of nutrients occurs in the small intestine. Water and minerals are reabsorbed back into the blood in the colon where the pH is slightly acidic about 5.6 ~6.9, some vitamins, such as biotin and vitamin K produced by bacteria in the colon are also absorbed into the blood in the colon. Waste material is eliminated from the rectum during defecation, there is a fundamental distinction between internal and external digestion. External digestion developed earlier in history, and most fungi still rely on it. In this process, enzymes are secreted into the environment surrounding the organism, where they break down an organic material, some organisms, including nearly all spiders, simply secrete biotoxins and digestive chemicals into the extracellular environment prior to ingestion of the consequent soup. Bacteria use several systems to obtain nutrients from other organisms in the environments, in a channel transupport system, several proteins form a contiguous channel traversing the inner and outer membranes of the bacteria. It is a system, which consists of only three protein subunits, the ABC protein, membrane fusion protein, and outer membrane protein
34.
Commensalism
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Commensalism, in ecology, is a class of relationships between two organisms where one organism benefits from the other without affecting it. Originally, the term was used to describe the use of food by second animals, like the carcass eaters that follow hunting animals. Commensalism, in biology, is a relation between individuals of two species in one species obtains food or other benefits from the other without either harming or benefiting the latter. The commensal may obtain nutrients, shelter, support, or locomotion from the host species, both remora and pilot fish feed on the leftovers of their hosts’ meals. Numerous birds feed on the turned up by grazing mammals. The commensal pathway was traveled by animals that fed on refuse around human habitats or by animals that preyed on other animals drawn to human camps and those animals established a commensal relationship with humans in which the animals benefited but the humans received little benefit or harm. Those animals that were most capable of taking advantage of the associated with human camps would have been the tamer. Later, these animals developed closer social or economic bonds with humans, commensal pathway animals include dogs, cats, fowl, and possibly pigs. The dog is an example of a domestic animal that likely traveled a commensal pathway into domestication. This process may have begun during the initial stage of dog domestication. One study has identified the remains of a population of extinct Pleistocene Beringian wolves with unique mitochondrial signatures, whether the relationship between humans and some types of gut flora is commensal or mutualistic is still unanswered. For example, epiphytes are nutritional pirates that may intercept substantial amounts of nutrients that would go to the host plant. Large numbers of epiphytes can also cause tree limbs to break or shade the host plant, similarly, phoretic mites may hinder their host by making flight more difficult, which may affect its aerial hunting ability or cause it to expend extra energy while carrying these passengers. Like all ecological interactions, commensalisms vary in strength and duration from intimate, long-lived symbioses to brief, phoresy is one animal attached to another exclusively for transport, mainly arthropods, examples of which are mites on insects, pseudoscorpions on mammals or beetles, and millipedes on birds. Phoresy can be obligate or facultative. Inquilinism is the use of an organism for permanent housing. Examples are epiphytic plants grow on trees, or birds that live in holes in trees. Metabiosis is a more indirect dependency, in one organism creates or prepares a suitable environment for a second
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Symbiosis
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Symbiosis is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different species, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasitic. In 1879, Heinrich Anton de Bary defined it as the living together of unlike organisms, Symbiosis can be obligatory, which means that one or both of the symbionts entirely depend on each other for survival, or facultative when they can generally live independently. When one organism lives on another such as mistletoe, it is called ectosymbiosis, or endosymbiosis when one partner lives inside the tissues of another, as in Symbiodinium in corals. In 1877, Albert Bernhard Frank used the term symbiosis which previously had used to depict people living together in community to describe the mutualistic relationship in lichens. In 1879, the German mycologist Heinrich Anton de Bary defined it as the living together of unlike organisms, symbiotic relationships can be obligate, meaning that one or both of the symbionts entirely depend on each other for survival. For example, in lichens, which consist of fungal and photosynthetic symbionts, the algal or cyanobacterial symbionts in lichens, such as Trentepohlia, can generally live independently, and their symbiosis is, therefore, facultative. Endosymbiosis is any relationship in which one symbiont lives within the tissues of the other, either within the cells or extracellularly. Mutualism or interspecies reciprocal altruism is a relationship between individuals of different species where both individuals benefit, in general, only lifelong interactions involving close physical and biochemical contact can properly be considered symbiotic. Mutualistic relationships may be either obligate for both species, obligate for one but facultative for the other, or facultative for both, a large percentage of herbivores have mutualistic gut flora to help them digest plant matter, which is more difficult to digest than animal prey. This gut flora is made up of cellulose-digesting protozoans or bacteria living in the herbivores intestines, coral reefs are the result of mutualisms between coral organisms and various types of algae which live inside them. Most land plants and land ecosystems rely on mutualisms between the plants, which fix carbon from the air, and mycorrhyzal fungi, which help in extracting water, an example of mutual symbiosis is the relationship between the ocellaris clownfish that dwell among the tentacles of Ritteri sea anemones. The territorial fish protects the anemone from anemone-eating fish, and in turn the stinging tentacles of the anemone protect the clownfish from its predators, a special mucus on the clownfish protects it from the stinging tentacles. A further example is the fish, which sometimes lives together with a shrimp. The shrimp digs and cleans up a burrow in the sand in which both the shrimp and the fish live. The shrimp is almost blind, leaving it vulnerable to predators when outside its burrow, in case of danger the goby fish touches the shrimp with its tail to warn it. When that happens both the shrimp and goby fish quickly retreat into the burrow, different species of gobies also exhibit mutualistic behavior through cleaning up ectoparasites in other fish. Another non-obligate symbiosis is known from encrusting bryozoans and hermit crabs, the bryozoan colony develops a cirumrotatory growth and offers the crab a helicospiral-tubular extension of its living chamber that initially was situated within a gastropod shell. A spectacular examples of mutualism is between the siboglinid tube worms and symbiotic bacteria that live at hydrothermal vents and cold seeps
36.
Filter feeder
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Some animals that use this method of feeding are clams, krill, sponges, baleen whales, and many fish. Some birds, such as flamingos and certain species of duck, are filter feeders. Filter feeders can play an important role in clarifying water, and are therefore considered ecosystem engineers, most forage fish are filter feeders. For example, the Atlantic menhaden, a type of herring, adult menhaden can filter up to four gallons of water a minute and play an important role in clarifying ocean water. They are also a check to the deadly red tide. In addition to bony fish, four types of cartilaginous fishes are also filter feeders. The whale shark sucks in a mouthful of water, closes its mouth, during the slight delay between closing the mouth and opening the gill flaps, plankton is trapped against the dermal denticles which line its gill plates and pharynx. This fine sieve-like apparatus, which is a modification of the gill rakers, prevents the passage of anything. Any material caught in the filter between the bars is swallowed. Whale sharks have been observed coughing and it is presumed that this is a method of clearing a build up of particles in the gill rakers. The megamouth shark has luminous organs called photophores around its mouth and it is believed they may exist to lure plankton or small fish into its mouth. The basking shark is a filter feeder, filtering zooplankton, small fish. Unlike the megamouth and whale sharks, the shark does not appear to actively seek its quarry. Unlike the other filter feeders, it relies only on the water that is pushed through the gills by swimming. Manta rays can time their arrival at the spawning of large shoals of fish and feed on the free-floating eggs and this stratagem is also employed by whale sharks. Mysidacea are small crustaceans that live close to shore and hover above the sea floor and they are an important food source for herring, cod, flounder, and striped bass. Mysids have a resistance to toxins in polluted areas. Antarctic krill manages to directly utilize the minute phytoplankton cells, which no other animal of krill size can do
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Detritivore
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Detritivores, also known as detrivores, detritophages, detritus feeders, or detritus eaters, are heterotrophs that obtain nutrients by consuming detritus. There are many kinds of invertebrates, vertebrates and plants carry out coprophagy. By doing so, all these detritivores contribute to decomposition and the nutrient cycles, however, the terms detritivore and decomposer are often used interchangeably. Detritivores are an important aspect of many ecosystems and they can live on any soil with an organic component, including marine ecosystems, where they are termed interchangeably with bottom feeders. The eating of wood, whether alive or dead, is known as xylophagy, Τhe activity of animals feeding only on dead wood is called sapro-xylophagy and those animals, sapro-xylophagous. In food webs, detritivores generally play the roles of decomposers, detritivores are often eaten by consumers and therefore commonly play important roles as recyclers in ecosystem energy flow and biogeochemical cycles. Many detritivores live in woodland, though the term can be applied to certain bottom-feeders in wet environments. These organisms play a role in benthic ecosystems, forming essential food chains. Fungi, acting as decomposers, are important in todays terrestrial environment, by feeding on sediments directly to extract the organic component, some detritivores accidentally concentrate toxic pollutants. Decomposer Saprotrophic nutrition Nepenthes ampullaria Consumer-resource systems
38.
Aquatic feeding mechanisms
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This problem was first identified by Robert McNeill Alexander. As a result, underwater predators, especially fish, have evolved a number of specialized feeding mechanisms, such as filter feeding, ram feeding, suction feeding, protrusion. Most underwater predators combine more than one of basic principles. For example, a typical generalized predator, such as the cod, combines suction with some amount of protrusion, suction feeding is a method of ingesting a prey item in fluids by sucking the prey into the predators mouth. This is typically accomplished by the expanding the volume of its oral cavity and/or throat. When the mouth is opened, the pressure difference causes water to flow into the predators mouth, most commonly this is achieved by increasing the lateral expansion of the skull. In addition, the character of upper jaw protrusion is acknowledged to increase the force exerted on the prey to be engulfed. Perhaps the best examples of these characters that are explained belong to fishes in the teleostei clade. However, a misconception of these fishes is that suction feeding is the only or primary method employed. In Micropterus salmoides ram feeding is the method for prey capture, however. Also, it is thought that fishes belonging to more primitive clades exhibit suction feeding. Although suction may be created upon the opening in such fishes. Ram feeding, also known as feeding, is a method of feeding underwater in which the predator moves forward with its mouth open. During ram feeding, the prey remains fixed in space, the motion of the head may induce a bow wave in the fluid which pushes the prey away from the jaws, but this can be avoided by allowing water to flow through the jaw. This can be accomplished by means of a throat, as in snapping turtles and baleen whales, or by allowing water to flow out through the gills, as in sharks. A number of species have evolved narrow snouts, as in gar fish, if they encounter copepods schooling in high concentrations, the herrings switch to ram feeding. They swim with their mouth open and their opercula fully expanded. Every several feet, they close and clean their gill rakers for a few milliseconds, the fish all open their mouths and opercula wide at the same time
39.
Myzocytosis
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Myzocytosis is a method of feeding found in some heterotrophic organisms. It is also called cellular vampirism as the predatory cell pierces the cell wall and/or cell membrane of the cell with a feeding tube. Myzocytosis is found in Myzozoa and also in some species of Ciliophora, a classic example of myzocytosis is the feeding method of the infamous predatory ciliate, Didinium, where it is often depicted devouring a hapless Paramecium. The suctorian ciliates were originally thought to have fed exclusively through myzocytosis and it is now understood that suctorians do not feed through myzocytosis, but actually, instead, manipulate and envenomate captured prey with their tentacle-like pseudopodia. Eva C. M. Nowack and Michael Melkonian Endosymbiotic associations within protists Phil, B12 March 2010 vol.365 no.1541 699-712
40.
Phagocytosis
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In cell biology, phagocytosis is the process by which a cell—often a phagocyte or a protist—engulfs a solid particle to form an internal compartment known as a phagosome. It is distinct from other forms of endocytosis like pinocytosis that involves the internalization of extracellular liquids, phagocytosis is involved in the acquisition of nutrients for some cells. In an organisms immune system, phagocytosis is a mechanism used to remove pathogens. For example, when a macrophage ingests a pathogenic microorganism, the pathogen becomes trapped in a phagosome which then fuses with a lysosome to form a phagolysosome, within the phagolysosome, enzymes and toxic peroxides digest the pathogen. Bacteria, dead cells, and small mineral particles are all examples of objects that may be phagocytized. The process has triggered the name Phagocytes for the 1st line of defence in the immune system, phagocytosis was first noted by Canadian physician William Osler, and later studied and named by Élie Metchnikoff. Phagocytosis in mammalian cells is activated by attachment to pathogen-associated molecular patterns. Opsonins such as C3b and antibodies can act as attachment sites, engulfment of material is facilitated by the actin-myosin contractile system. The phagosome of ingested material is fused with the lysosome, forming a phagolysosome. Degradation can be oxygen-dependent or oxygen-independent, oxygen-dependent degradation depends on NADPH and the production of reactive oxygen species. Hydrogen peroxide and myeloperoxidase activate a system, which leads to the creation of hypochlorite. Oxygen-independent degradation depends on the release of granules, containing proteolytic enzymes such as defensins, lysozyme, other antimicrobial peptides are present in these granules, including lactoferrin, which sequesters iron to provide unfavourable growth conditions for bacteria. It is possible for other than dedicated phagocytes to engage in phagocytosis. Some white blood cells in human immune system perform phagocytosis by gulping in some pathogenic, following apoptosis, the dying cells need to be taken up into the surrounding tissues by macrophages in a process called efferocytosis. Defects in apoptotic cell clearance is usually associated with impaired phagocytosis of macrophages, in many protists, phagocytosis is used as a means of feeding, providing part or all of their nourishment. This is called phagotrophic nutrition, distinguished from osmotrophic nutrition which takes place by absorption, in some, such as amoeba, phagocytosis takes place by surrounding the target object with pseudopods, as in animal phagocytes. In humans, entamoeba histolytica can phagocytose red blood cells, Entamoeba histolytica is an anaerobic parasitic protozoan, part of the genus Entamoeba. Predominantly infecting humans and other primates, E. histolytica is estimated to infect about 50 million people worldwide
41.
Generalist and specialist species
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A generalist species is able to thrive in a wide variety of environmental conditions and can make use of a variety of different resources. A specialist species can thrive only in a range of environmental conditions or has a limited diet. Most organisms do not all fit neatly into either group, however, some species are highly specialized, others less so, and some can tolerate many different environments. In other words, there is a continuum from highly-specialized to broadly-generalist species, herbivores are often specialists, but those that eat a variety of plants may be considered generalists. A well-known example of a specialist animal is the koala, which subsists almost entirely on eucalyptus leaves. The raccoon is a generalist because it has a range that includes most of North and Central America. Monophagous organisms feed exclusively, or nearly so, on a single other species, the distinction between generalists and specialists is not limited to animals. For example, some require a narrow range of temperatures, soil conditions. A cactus could be considered a specialist species and it will die during winters at high latitudes or if it receives too much water. When body weight is controlled for, specialist feeders such as insectivores and frugivores have larger ranges than generalists like some folivores. Because their food source is abundant, they need a bigger area for foraging. An example comes from the research of Tim Clutton-Brock, who found that the black and white colobus, on the other hand, the more specialized red colobus monkey has a home range of 70 ha, which it requires to find patchy shoots, flowers and fruit. When environmental conditions change, generalists are able to adapt, for example, if a species of fish were to go extinct, any specialist parasites would also face extinction. On the other hand, a species with a specialized ecological niche is more effective at competing with other organisms. This tends to drive the speciation of more specialized species provided conditions remain relatively stable and this involves niche partitioning as new species are formed, and biodiversity is increased. Fitness landscape List of feeding behaviours
42.
Carnivore
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Animals that depend solely on animal flesh for their nutrient requirements are called obligate carnivores while those that also consume non-animal food are called facultative carnivores. A carnivore that sits at the top of the chain is termed an apex predator. Plants that capture and digest insects are called carnivorous plants, similarly, fungi that capture microscopic animals are often called carnivorous fungi. The word carnivore sometimes refers to the mammalian order Carnivora, while many Carnivora meet the definition of being meat eaters, not all do, and even fewer are true obligate carnivores. In addition, there are plenty of species that are not members of Carnivora. Outside the animal kingdom, there are several genera containing carnivorous plants, the former are predominantly insectivores, while the latter prey mostly on microscopic invertebrates, such as nematodes, amoebae and springtails. Carnivores are sometimes characterized by the type of prey that they consume, for example, animals that eat insects and similar invertebrates primarily or exclusively are called insectivores, while those that eat fish primarily or exclusively are called piscivores. The first tetrapods, or land-dwelling vertebrates, were piscivorous amphibians known as labyrinthodonts and they gave rise to insectivorous vertebrates and, later, to predators of other tetrapods. Carnivores may alternatively be classified according to the percentage of meat in their diet, obligate carnivores or true carnivores depend on the nutrients found only in animal flesh for their survival. For instance, felids including the cat are obligate carnivores requiring a diet of primarily animal flesh. Characteristics commonly associated with carnivores include organs for capturing and disarticulating prey, in truth, these assumptions may be misleading, as some carnivores do not hunt and are scavengers. Thus they do not have the associated with hunting carnivores. Carnivores have comparatively short digestive systems, as they are not required to break down tough cellulose found in plants, many animals that hunt other animals have evolved eyes that face forward, thus making depth perception possible. This is almost universal among mammalian predators, other predators, like crocodiles, as well as most reptiles and amphibians, have sideways facing eyes and hunt by ambush rather than pursuit. The first vertebrate carnivores were fish, and then amphibians that moved on to land, early tetrapods were large amphibious piscivores. Some scientists assert that Dimetrodon was the first terrestrial vertebrate to develop the curved, serrated teeth that enable a predator to eat prey much larger than itself. While amphibians continued to feed on fish and later insects, reptiles began exploring two new types, tetrapods, and later, plants. Carnivory was a transition from insectivory for medium and large tetrapods
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Avivore
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An avivore is a specialized predator of birds, with birds making up a large proportion of its diet. Such bird-eating animals come from a range of groups, birds that are specialized predators of other birds include certain accipiters and falcons. General features of avian avivores include a form which is well adapted for grasping and crushing with the beak. Bird-eating raptors also tend to show sexual dimorphism than other raptors. Some avian avivores such as the shikra, besra, Eurasian sparrowhawk, in contrast, the lanner falcon hunts in open country taking birds by horizontal pursuit. The aplomado falcon will use both ambush and more extended flights, the peregrine falcon dives on flying birds from a great height at speeds that can exceed 300 km/h. The extinct Haasts eagle of New Zealand preyed on the flightless bird species of the region such as the moa. In certain biotopes, birds constitute the bulk of the diet of various carnivorans, a number of mammal species are specialized predators of birds. The caracal and the serval, both medium-sized cats, are known for their leaping ability which they use to catch flying birds, some carnivora, including the red fox and martens, are known for engaging in surplus killing of birds. Kruuk observed that four red foxes killed 230 black-headed gulls in one night in a colony at the Cumberland coast while fewer than 3% of the gulls showed any sign of being eaten. The egg-eating snake specializes in eating eggs, swallowing them whole. The fanged frog Limnonectes megastomias preys on birds and insects, the Goliath birdeater was named by explorers who saw it eating a hummingbird
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Durophagy
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Durophagy is the eating behavior of animals that consume hard-shelled or exoskeleton bearing organisms, such as corals, shelled mollusks, or crabs. It is mostly used describing fish, but is used when describing reptiles and invertebrates. Durophagy requires special adaptions, such as blunt, strong teeth, in the order Carnivora there are two dietary categories of durophagy, bonecrackers and bamboo eaters. Bonecrackers are exemplified by hyenas and saber-toothed cats, while bamboo eaters are primarily the giant panda, both have developed similar cranial morphology. However, the mandible morphology reveals more about their dietary resources, both have a raised and dome-like anterior cranial, enlarged areas for the attachment of masticatory muscles, enlarged premolars, and reinforced tooth enamel. Bamboo eaters tend to larger mandibles, while bonecrackers have more sophisticated premolars
