1.
San Francisco Zoo
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The San Francisco Zoo is a 100-acre zoo located in the southwestern corner of San Francisco, California, between Lake Merced and the Pacific Ocean along the Great Highway. This zoo is the birthplace of Koko the gorilla, and, since 1974, the home of Elly and it houses more than 1000 individual animals representing over 250 species, as of 2016. The area was already home to a children’s playground, an original Michael Dentzel/Marcus Illions carousel, and the Mother’s Building. Most of the exhibits were populated with animals transferred from Golden Gate Park, the first exhibits built in the 1930s cost $3.5 million, which included Monkey Island, Lion House, Elephant House, a small mammal grotto, an aviary, and bear grottos. These spacious, moated enclosures were among the first bar-less exhibits in the country. In 1955, a local San Francisco newspaper purchased Pennie, a baby female Asian elephant, and donated her to the zoo after many children donated their pennies, nickels, and dimes for her purchase. The Zoological Society will aid the Parks Commission in the acquisition of rare animals, true to its charter, the Society immediately exerted its influence on the zoo, obtaining more than 1,300 annual memberships in its first 10 years. In November 2004, Tinkerbelle, San Francisco Zoos last Asian elephant, was moved to ARK2000 and she was later joined in March 2005 by the African elephant Lulu, the last elephant on display at the zoo. The moves followed the highly publicized deaths of 38-year-old Calle in March 2004, in early 2006, the SF Zoo announced its offer to name a soon-to-hatch American bald eagle after comedian Stephen Colbert. The publicity and goodwill garnered from coverage of the event on the Colbert Report was a windfall for the zoo, Stephen Jr. was born on April 17,2006. Visitors can examine specimens under microscopes, and there are insect-themed books, videos, puppets, peafowl roam the zoo grounds freely and are acknowledged officially on the zoos website. sfchronicle. com/bayarea/article/S-F-Zoo-s-remaining-chimps-endanger-6120334. The Lion House was closed for ten months as a result, californias Division of Occupation Safety and Health found the zoo liable for the keepers injuries, fined the zoo, and ordered safety improvements. On December 25,2007, the same tiger escaped from her grotto, carlos Sousa,17, of San Jose, California, was killed at the scene, while another taunter was mauled and survived. The tiger was shot and killed by police hiding in the landscape after the attack. Three other tigers who shared Tatianas grotto did not escape, tatiana arrived at the San Francisco Zoo from the Denver Zoo in 2005, in hopes that she would mate. The attack is the first visitor fatality due to escape at a member zoo in the history of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The San Francisco Zoo participates in Species Survival Plans, conservation programs sponsored by the Association of Zoos, the zoo participates in more than 30 SSP programs, working to conserve species ranging from Madagascan radiated tortoises and reticulated giraffes to black rhinos and gorillas. Citizens Lobbying for Animals in Zoos Media related to San Francisco Zoo at Wikimedia Commons Official website
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Conservation status
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The conservation status of a group of organisms indicates whether the group still exists and how likely the group is to become extinct in the near future. Various systems of conservation status exist and are in use at international, multi-country, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the best known worldwide conservation status listing and ranking system. Also included are species that have gone extinct since 500 AD, when discussing the IUCN Red List, the official term threatened is a grouping of three categories, critically endangered, endangered, and vulnerable. Widespread and abundant taxa are included in this category, Data deficient – Not enough data to make an assessment of its risk of extinction Not evaluated – Has not yet been evaluated against the criteria. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora aims to ensure that trade in specimens of wild animals. Many countries require CITES permits when importing plants and animals listed on CITES, in the European Union, the Birds and Habitats Directives are the legal instruments that evaluate the conservation status within the EU of species and habitats. NatureServe conservation status focuses on Latin America, United States, Canada, and it has been developed by scientists from NatureServe, The Nature Conservancy, and the network of natural heritage programs and data centers. It is increasingly integrated with the IUCN Red List system and its categories for species include, presumed extinct, possibly extinct, critically imperiled, imperiled, vulnerable, apparently secure, and secure. The system also allows ambiguous or uncertain ranks including inexact numeric ranks, NatureServe adds a qualifier for captive or cultivated only, which has a similar meaning to the IUCN Red List extinct in the wild status. The Red Data Book of the Russian Federation is used within the Russian Federation, in Australia, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 describes lists of threatened species, ecological communities and threatening processes. The categories resemble those of the 1994 IUCN Red List Categories & Criteria, prior to the EPBC Act, a simpler classification system was used by the Endangered Species Protection Act 1992. Some state and territory governments also have their own systems for conservation status, in Belgium, the Flemish Research Institute for Nature and Forest publishes an online set of more than 150 nature indicators in Dutch. In Canada, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada is a group of experts that assesses and designates which wild species are in danger of disappearing from Canada. Under the Species at Risk Act, it is up to the federal government, in China, the State, provinces and some counties have determined their key protected wildlife species. There is the China red data book, in Finland, a large number of species are protected under the Nature Conservation Act, and through the EU Habitats Directive and EU Birds Directive. In Germany, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation publishes red lists of endangered species, india has the Wild Life Protection Act,1972, Amended 2003 and the Biological Diversity Act,2002. In Japan, the Ministry of Environment publishes a Threatened Wildlife of Japan Red Data Book, in the Netherlands, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality publishes a list of threatened species, and conservation is enforced by the Nature Conservation Act 1998. Species are also protected through the Wild Birds and Habitats Directives, in New Zealand, the Department of Conservation publishes the New Zealand Threat Classification System lists
3.
Least Concern
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A least concern species is one which has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as evaluated but not qualified for any other category. As such they do not qualify as threatened, near threatened, species cannot be assigned the Least Concern category unless they have had their population status evaluated. That is, adequate information is needed to make a direct, or indirect, since 2001 the category has had the abbreviation LC, following the IUCN2001 Categories & Criteria. However, around 20% of least concern taxa in the IUCN database use the code LR/lc, prior to 2001 least concern was a subcategory of the Lower Risk category and assigned the code LR/lc or. While least concern is not considered a red listed category by the IUCN, the number of animal species listed in this category totals 14033. There are also 101 animal subspecies listed and 1500 plant taxa, there are also two animal subpopulations listed, the Australasian and Southern African subpopulations of spiny dogfish. No fungi or protista have the classification, though only four species in those kingdoms have been evaluated by the IUCN, humans qualify for this category, and in 2008 were formally assessed as such by the IUCN
4.
IUCN Red List
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The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, founded in 1964, is the worlds most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature is the main authority on the conservation status of species. A series of Regional Red Lists are produced by countries or organizations, the IUCN Red List is set upon precise criteria to evaluate the extinction risk of thousands of species and subspecies. These criteria are relevant to all species and all regions of the world, the aim is to convey the urgency of conservation issues to the public and policy makers, as well as help the international community to try to reduce species extinction. Major species assessors include BirdLife International, the Institute of Zoology, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, collectively, assessments by these organizations and groups account for nearly half the species on the Red List. The IUCN aims to have the category of every species re-evaluated every five years if possible, the 1964 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants used the older pre-criteria Red List assessment system. Plants listed may not, therefore, appear in the current Red List, IUCN advise that is best to check both the online Red List and the 1997 plants Red List publication. The 2006 Red List, released on 4 May 2006 evaluated 40,168 species as a whole, plus an additional 2,160 subspecies, varieties, aquatic stocks, on 12 September 2007, the World Conservation Union released the 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Russ Mittermeier, chief of Swiss-based IUCNs Primate Specialist Group, stated that 16,306 species are endangered with extinction,188 more than in 2006, the Red List includes the Sumatran orangutan in the Critically Endangered category and the Bornean orangutan in the Endangered category. The study shows at least 1,141 of the 5,487 mammals on Earth are known to be threatened with extinction, and 836 are listed as Data Deficient. The Red List of 2012 was released 19 July 2012 at Rio+20 Earth Summit, nearly 2,000 species were added, the IUCN assessed a total of 63,837 species which revealed 19,817 are threatened with extinction. With 3,947 described as endangered and 5,766 as endangered. At threat are 41% of amphibian species, 33% of reef-building corals, 30% of conifers, 25% of mammals, the IUCN Red List has listed 132 species of plants and animals from India as Critically Endangered. Extinct – No known individuals remaining, extinct in the wild – Known only to survive in captivity, or as a naturalized population outside its historic range. Critically endangered – Extremely high risk of extinction in the wild, Endangered – High risk of extinction in the wild. Vulnerable – High risk of endangerment in the wild, near threatened – Likely to become endangered in the near future. Does not qualify for a more at-risk category, widespread and abundant taxa are included in this category. Data deficient – Not enough data to make an assessment of its risk of extinction, Not evaluated – Has not yet been evaluated against the criteria
5.
Taxonomy (biology)
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Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy, the broadest meaning of taxonomy is used here. The word taxonomy was introduced in 1813 by Candolle, in his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, the term alpha taxonomy is primarily used today to refer to the discipline of finding, describing, and naming taxa, particularly species. In earlier literature, the term had a different meaning, referring to morphological taxonomy, ideals can, it may be said, never be completely realized. They have, however, a value of acting as permanent stimulants. Some of us please ourselves by thinking we are now groping in a beta taxonomy, turrill thus explicitly excludes from alpha taxonomy various areas of study that he includes within taxonomy as a whole, such as ecology, physiology, genetics, and cytology. He further excludes phylogenetic reconstruction from alpha taxonomy, thus, Ernst Mayr in 1968 defined beta taxonomy as the classification of ranks higher than species. This activity is what the term denotes, it is also referred to as beta taxonomy. How species should be defined in a group of organisms gives rise to practical and theoretical problems that are referred to as the species problem. The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy, by extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at higher taxonomic ranks, from subgenus and above only, than species. While some descriptions of taxonomic history attempt to date taxonomy to ancient civilizations, earlier works were primarily descriptive, and focused on plants that were useful in agriculture or medicine. There are a number of stages in scientific thinking. Early taxonomy was based on criteria, the so-called artificial systems. Later came systems based on a complete consideration of the characteristics of taxa, referred to as natural systems, such as those of de Jussieu, de Candolle and Bentham. The publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species led to new ways of thinking about classification based on evolutionary relationships and this was the concept of phyletic systems, from 1883 onwards. This approach was typified by those of Eichler and Engler, the advent of molecular genetics and statistical methodology allowed the creation of the modern era of phylogenetic systems based on cladistics, rather than morphology alone. Taxonomy has been called the worlds oldest profession, and naming and classifying our surroundings has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate
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Animalia
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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
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Chordate
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Chordates are deuterostomes, as during the embryo development stage the anus forms before the mouth. They are also bilaterally symmetric coelomates, in the case of vertebrate chordates, the notochord is usually replaced by a vertebral column during development, and they may have body plans organized via segmentation. There are also additional extinct taxa, the Vertebrata are sometimes considered as a subgroup of the clade Craniata, consisting of chordates with a skull, the Craniata and Tunicata compose the clade Olfactores. Of the more than 65,000 living species of chordates, the worlds largest and fastest animals, the blue whale and peregrine falcon respectively, are chordates, as are humans. Fossil chordates are known from at least as early as the Cambrian explosion, Hemichordata, which includes the acorn worms, has been presented as a fourth chordate subphylum, but it now is usually treated as a separate phylum. The Hemichordata, along with the Echinodermata, form the Ambulacraria, the Chordata and Ambulacraria form the superphylum Deuterostomia, composed of the deuterostomes. Attempts to work out the relationships of the chordates have produced several hypotheses. All of the earliest chordate fossils have found in the Early Cambrian Chengjiang fauna. Because the fossil record of early chordates is poor, only molecular phylogenetics offers a prospect of dating their emergence. However, the use of molecular phylogenetics for dating evolutionary transitions is controversial and it has also proved difficult to produce a detailed classification within the living chordates. Attempts to produce family trees shows that many of the traditional classes are paraphyletic. While this has been known since the 19th century, an insistence on only monophyletic taxa has resulted in vertebrate classification being in a state of flux. Although the name Chordata is attributed to William Bateson, it was already in prevalent use by 1880, ernst Haeckel described a taxon comprising tunicates, cephalochordates, and vertebrates in 1866. Though he used the German vernacular form, it is allowed under the ICZN code because of its subsequent latinization, among the vertebrate sub-group of chordates the notochord develops into the spine, and in wholly aquatic species this helps the animal to swim by flexing its tail. In fish and other vertebrates, this develops into the spinal cord, the pharynx is the part of the throat immediately behind the mouth. In fish, the slits are modified to form gills, a muscular tail that extends backwards behind the anus. This is a groove in the wall of the pharynx. In filter-feeding species it produces mucus to gather food particles, which helps in transporting food to the esophagus and it also stores iodine, and may be a precursor of the vertebrate thyroid gland
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Mammal
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Mammals are any vertebrates within the class Mammalia, a clade of endothermic amniotes distinguished from reptiles by the possession of a neocortex, hair, three middle ear bones and mammary glands. All female mammals nurse their young with milk, secreted from the mammary glands, Mammals include the largest animals on the planet, the great whales. The basic body type is a quadruped, but some mammals are adapted for life at sea, in the air, in trees. The largest group of mammals, the placentals, have a placenta, Mammals range in size from the 30–40 mm bumblebee bat to the 30-meter blue whale. With the exception of the five species of monotreme, all modern mammals give birth to live young, most mammals, including the six most species-rich orders, belong to the placental group. The largest orders are the rodents, bats and Soricomorpha, the next three biggest orders, depending on the biological classification scheme used, are the Primates, the Cetartiodactyla, and the Carnivora. Living mammals are divided into the Yinotheria and Theriiformes There are around 5450 species of mammal, in some classifications, extant mammals are divided into two subclasses, the Prototheria, that is, the order Monotremata, and the Theria, or the infraclasses Metatheria and Eutheria. The marsupials constitute the group of the Metatheria, and include all living metatherians as well as many extinct ones. Much of the changes reflect the advances of cladistic analysis and molecular genetics, findings from molecular genetics, for example, have prompted adopting new groups, such as the Afrotheria, and abandoning traditional groups, such as the Insectivora. The mammals represent the only living Synapsida, which together with the Sauropsida form the Amniota clade, the early synapsid mammalian ancestors were sphenacodont pelycosaurs, a group that produced the non-mammalian Dimetrodon. At the end of the Carboniferous period, this group diverged from the line that led to todays reptiles. Some mammals are intelligent, with some possessing large brains, self-awareness, Mammals can communicate and vocalize in several different ways, including the production of ultrasound, scent-marking, alarm signals, singing, and echolocation. Mammals can organize themselves into fission-fusion societies, harems, and hierarchies, most mammals are polygynous, but some can be monogamous or polyandrous. They provided, and continue to provide, power for transport and agriculture, as well as commodities such as meat, dairy products, wool. Mammals are hunted or raced for sport, and are used as model organisms in science, Mammals have been depicted in art since Palaeolithic times, and appear in literature, film, mythology, and religion. Defaunation of mammals is primarily driven by anthropogenic factors, such as poaching and habitat destruction, Mammal classification has been through several iterations since Carl Linnaeus initially defined the class. No classification system is accepted, McKenna & Bell and Wilson & Reader provide useful recent compendiums. Though field work gradually made Simpsons classification outdated, it remains the closest thing to a classification of mammals
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Carnivora
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Carnivora is a diverse scrotiferan order that includes over 280 species of placental mammals. Its members are referred to as carnivorans, whereas the word carnivore can refer to any meat-eating organism.9 m in length. Some carnivorans, such as cats and pinnipeds, depend entirely on meat for their nutrition, carnivorans have teeth and claws adapted for catching and eating other animals. Many hunt in packs and are social animals, giving them an advantage over larger prey, carnivorans are split into two suborders, feliforms and caniforms. Carnivorans all share the same arrangement of teeth in which the last upper premolar, carnivorans have had this arrangement for over 60 million years with many adaptions, and these dental adaptions help identify carnivoran species and groupings of species. Carnivorans evolved in North America out of members of the family Miacidae about 42 million years ago and they soon split into cat-like and dog-like forms. Their molecular phylogeny shows the extant Carnivora are a monophyletic group, the last premolar of the upper jaw and first molar of the lower are termed the carnassials or sectorial teeth. These blade-like teeth occlude with an action for shearing and shredding meat. Carnassials are most highly developed in the Felidae and the least developed in the Ursidae, carnivorans have six incisors and two conical canines in each jaw. The only two exceptions to this are the sea otter, which has four incisors in the jaw, and the sloth bear. The number of molars and premolars is variable between species, but all teeth are deeply rooted and are diphyodont. Incisors are retained by carnivorans and the incisor is commonly large. Carnivorans have either four or five digits on each foot, with the first digit on the forepaws, also known as the dew claw, being vestigial in most species and absent in some. Most species are plain in coloration, lacking the flashy spotted or rosetted coats like many species of felids and viverrids have. This is because Canoidea tend to range in the temperate and subarctic biomes, most are terrestrial, although a few species, like procyonids, are arboreal. All families except the Canidae and a few species of Mustelidae are plantigrade, diet is varied and most tend to be omnivorous to some degree, and thus the carnassial teeth are less specialized. Canoidea have more premolars and molars in an elongated skull and this is because these species tend to range in tropical habitats, although a few species do inhabit temperate and subarctic habitats. Many are arboreal or semiarboreal, and the majority are digitigrade, diet tends to be more strictly carnivorous, especially in the family Felidae
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Mustelidae
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The Mustelidae are a family of carnivorous mammals, including the weasel, badger, otter, marten, ferret, mink, stoat, and wolverine. Mustelids are diverse and the largest family in the order Carnivora, the internal classification is still disputed, with rival proposals containing between two and eight subfamilies. One study, published in 2008, questions the long-accepted Mustelinae subfamily, mustelids vary greatly in size and behaviour. The least weasel is not much larger than a mouse, while the giant otter can measure up to 1.7 m in length and sea otters can exceed 45 kg in weight. The wolverine can crush bones as thick as the femur of a moose to get at the marrow, the sea otter uses rocks to break open shellfish to eat. The marten is largely arboreal, while the badger digs extensive networks of tunnels, some mustelids have been domesticated, the ferret and the tayra are kept as pets, or as working animals for hunting or vermin control. Others have been important in the fur trade—the mink is often raised for its fur, as well as being one of the most species-rich families in the order Carnivora, the family Mustelidae is one of the oldest. Mustelid-like forms first appeared about 40 million years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of rodents, the direct ancestors of the modern mustelids first appeared about 15 million years ago. Within a large range of variation, the mustelids exhibit some common characteristics and they are typically small animals with short legs, short, round ears, and thick fur. Most mustelids are solitary, nocturnal animals, and are active year-round, with the exception of the sea otter, they have anal scent glands that produce a strong-smelling secretion the animals use for sexual signaling and for marking territory. Most mustelid reproduction involves embryonic diapause, the embryo does not immediately implant in the uterus, but remains dormant for some time. No development takes place as long as the embryo remains unattached to the uterine lining, as a result, the normal gestation period is extended, sometimes up to a year. This allows the young to be born under more favorable environmental conditions, reproduction has a large energy cost and it is to a females benefit to have available food and mild weather. The young are likely to survive if birth occurs after previous offspring have been weaned. Mustelids are predominantly carnivorous, although some eat vegetable matter at times, while not all mustelids share an identical dentition, they all possess teeth adapted for eating flesh, including the presence of shearing carnassials. With variation between species, the most common formula is 3.1.3.13.1.3.2. Several members of the family are aquatic to varying degrees, ranging from the semiaquatic mink, to the river otters, the sea otter is one of the few nonprimate mammals known to use a tool while foraging. It uses anvil stones to open the shellfish that form a significant part of its diet
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Binomial nomenclature
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Such a name is called a binomial name, a binomen, binominal name or a scientific name, more informally it is also called a Latin name. The first part of the name identifies the genus to which the species belongs, for example, humans belong to the genus Homo and within this genus to the species Homo sapiens. The formal introduction of system of naming species is credited to Carl Linnaeus. But Gaspard Bauhin, in as early as 1623, had introduced in his book Pinax theatri botanici many names of genera that were adopted by Linnaeus. Although the general principles underlying binomial nomenclature are common to these two codes, there are differences, both in the terminology they use and in their precise rules. Similarly, both parts are italicized when a binomial name occurs in normal text, thus the binomial name of the annual phlox is now written as Phlox drummondii. In scientific works, the authority for a name is usually given, at least when it is first mentioned. In zoology Patella vulgata Linnaeus,1758, the original name given by Linnaeus was Fringilla domestica, the parentheses indicate that the species is now considered to belong in a different genus. The ICZN does not require that the name of the person who changed the genus be given, nor the date on which the change was made, in botany Amaranthus retroflexus L. – L. is the standard abbreviation used in botany for Linnaeus. – Linnaeus first named this bluebell species Scilla italica, Rothmaler transferred it to the genus Hyacinthoides, the ICN does not require that the dates of either publication be specified. Prior to the adoption of the binomial system of naming species. Together they formed a system of polynomial nomenclature and these names had two separate functions. First, to designate or label the species, and second, to be a diagnosis or description, such polynomial names may sometimes look like binomials, but are significantly different. For example, Gerards herbal describes various kinds of spiderwort, The first is called Phalangium ramosum, Branched Spiderwort, is aptly termed Phalangium Ephemerum Virginianum, Soon-Fading Spiderwort of Virginia. The Latin phrases are short descriptions, rather than identifying labels, the Bauhins, in particular Caspar Bauhin, took some important steps towards the binomial system, by pruning the Latin descriptions, in many cases to two words. The adoption by biologists of a system of binomial nomenclature is due to Swedish botanist and physician Carl von Linné. It was in his 1753 Species Plantarum that he first began using a one-word trivial name together with a generic name in a system of binomial nomenclature. This trivial name is what is now known as an epithet or specific name
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Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber
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Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber, often styled J. C. D. von Schreber, was a German naturalist. He was appointed professor of materia medica at the University of Erlangen in 1769, in 1774 he began writing a multi-volume set of books entitled Die Säugethiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur mit Beschreibungen, which focused on the mammals of the world. Many of the animals included were given a name for the first time. From 1791 until his death in 1810, he was the President of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1787. In April 1795 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society Numerous honors were bestowed on him including the office of a count palatine. Schreber also wrote on entomology notably Schreberi Novae Species Insectorvm and his herbarium collection has been preserved in the Botanische Staatssammlung München since 1813
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Subspecies
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In biological classification, subspecies is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, or a taxonomic unit in that rank. A subspecies cannot be recognized independently, a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or at least two, in zoology, under the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the subspecies is the only taxonomic rank below that of species that can receive a name. In botany and mycology, under the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, in bacteriology and virology, under standard bacterial nomenclature and virus nomenclature, there are recommendations but not strict requirements for recognizing other important infraspecific ranks. A taxonomist decides whether to recognize a subspecies or not, the differences between subspecies are usually less distinct than the differences between species. In zoology, the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature accepts only one rank below that of species, other groupings, infrasubspecific entities do not have names regulated by the ICZN. Such forms have no official ICZN status, though they may be useful in describing altitudinal or geographical clines, pet breeds, transgenic animals, etc. While the scientific name of a species is a binomen, the name of a subspecies is a trinomen - a binomen followed by a subspecific name. A tigers binomen is Panthera tigris, so for a Sumatran tiger the trinomen is, for example, names published before 1992 in the rank of variety are taken to be names of subspecies. In botany, subspecies is one of many ranks below that of species, such as variety, subvariety, form, the subspecific name is preceded by subsp. or ssp. as Schoenoplectus californicus ssp. tatora. A botanical name consists of at most three parts, an infraspecific name includes the species binomial, and one infraspecific epithet, such as subspecies or variety. For example, Motacilla alba alba is the subspecies of the white wagtail. The subspecies name that repeats the name is referred to in botanical nomenclature as the subspecies autonym. When zoologists disagree over whether a population is a subspecies or a full species. A subspecies is a rank below species – the only recognized rank in the zoological code. Botanists and mycologists have the choice of ranks lower than subspecies, such as variety or form, in biological terms, rather than in relation to nomenclature, a polytypic species has two or more subspecies, races, or more generally speaking, populations that need a separate description. These are separate groups that are distinct from one another and do not generally interbreed. These subspecies, races, or populations, can be named as subspecies by zoologists, a monotypic species has no distinct population or races, or rather one race comprising the whole species. A taxonomist would not name a subspecies within such a species, monotypic species can occur in several ways, All members of the species are very similar and cannot be sensibly divided into biologically significant subcategories
14.
Synonym (taxonomy)
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For example, Linnaeus was the first to give a scientific name to the Norway spruce, which he called Pinus abies. This name is no longer in use, it is now a synonym of the current scientific name which is Picea abies, unlike synonyms in other contexts, in taxonomy a synonym is not interchangeable with the name of which it is a synonym. In taxonomy, synonyms are not equals, but have a different status, for any taxon with a particular circumscription, position, and rank, only one scientific name is considered to be the correct one at any given time. A synonym cannot exist in isolation, it is always an alternative to a different scientific name, given that the correct name of a taxon depends on the taxonomic viewpoint used a name that is one taxonomists synonym may be another taxonomists correct name. Synonyms may arise whenever the same taxon is described and named more than once, independently. They may also arise when existing taxa are changed, as when two taxa are joined to one, a species is moved to a different genus. To the general user of scientific names, in such as agriculture, horticulture, ecology, general science. A synonym is a name that was used as the correct scientific name but which has been displaced by another scientific name. Thus Oxford Dictionaries Online defines the term as a name which has the same application as another. In handbooks and general texts, it is useful to have mentioned as such after the current scientific name. Synonyms used in this way may not always meet the strict definitions of the synonym in the formal rules of nomenclature which govern scientific names. Changes of scientific name have two causes, they may be taxonomic or nomenclatural, a name change may be caused by changes in the circumscription, position or rank of a taxon, representing a change in taxonomic, scientific insight. A name change may be due to purely nomenclatural reasons, that is, based on the rules of nomenclature, the earliest such name is called the senior synonym, while the later name is the junior synonym. One basic principle of zoological nomenclature is that the earliest correctly published name, synonyms are important because if the earliest name cannot be used, then the next available junior synonym must be used for the taxon. Objective synonyms refer to taxa with the type and same rank. For example, John Edward Gray published the name Antilocapra anteflexa in 1855 for a species of pronghorn, however, it is now commonly accepted that his specimen was an unusual individual of the species Antilocapra americana published by George Ord in 1815. Ords name thus takes precedence, with Antilocapra anteflexa being a subjective synonym. Objective synonyms are common at the level of genera, because for various reasons two genera may contain the type species, these are objective synonyms
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Endemism
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The extreme opposite of endemism is cosmopolitan distribution. An alternative term for a species that is endemic is precinctive, the word endemic is from New Latin endēmicus, from Greek ενδήμος, endēmos, native. Endēmos is formed of en meaning in, and dēmos meaning the people, the term, precinctive, has been suggested by some scientists, and was first used in botany by MacCaughey in 1917. It is the equivalent of endemism, precinction was perhaps first used by Frank and McCoy. That definition excludes artificial confinement of examples by humans in far-off botanical gardens or zoological parks, physical, climatic, and biological factors can contribute to endemism. The orange-breasted sunbird is found in the fynbos vegetation zone of southwestern South Africa. The glacier bear is found only in limited places in Southeast Alaska, political factors can play a part if a species is protected, or actively hunted, in one jurisdiction but not another. There are two subcategories of endemism, paleoendemism and neoendemism, paleoendemism refers to species that were formerly widespread but are now restricted to a smaller area. Neoendemism refers to species that have arisen, such as through divergence and reproductive isolation or through hybridization. Endemics can easily become endangered or extinct if their restricted habitat changes, particularly—but not only—due to human actions, there were millions of both Bermuda petrels and Bermuda cedars in Bermuda when it was settled at the start of the seventeenth century. By the end of the century, the petrels were thought extinct, cedars, already ravaged by centuries of shipbuilding, were driven nearly to extinction in the twentieth century by the introduction of a parasite. Bermuda petrels and cedars are now rare, as are species endemic to Bermuda
16.
North America
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North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16. 5% of the land area. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 565 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7. 5% of the worlds population, North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge. The so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago, the Classic stage spans roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era ended with the migrations and the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect different kind of interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants, European influences are strongest in the northern parts of the continent while indigenous and African influences are relatively stronger in the south. Because of the history of colonialism, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, the Americas are usually accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass previously unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a map, in which he placed the word America on the continent of South America. He explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio, for Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespuccis name, but in its feminine form America, following the examples of Europa, Asia and Africa. Later, other mapmakers extended the name America to the continent, In 1538. Some argue that the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries except in the case of royalty, a minutely explored belief that has been advanced is that America was named for a Spanish sailor bearing the ancient Visigothic name of Amairick. Another is that the name is rooted in a Native American language, the term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with location and context. In Canadian English, North America may be used to refer to the United States, alternatively, usage sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands
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Lutrinae
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Otters are carnivorous mammals in the subfamily Lutrinae. The 13 extant otter species are all semiaquatic, aquatic or marine, with diets based on fish, Lutrinae is a branch of the weasel family Mustelidae, which also includes badgers, honey badgers, martens, minks, polecats, and wolverines. The word otter derives from the Old English word otor or oter and this, and cognate words in other Indo-European languages, ultimately stem from the Proto-Indo-European language root *wódr̥, which also gave rise to the English word water. An otters den is called a holt or couch, male otters are called dogs or boars, females are called bitches or sows, and their offspring are called pups. The collective nouns for otters are bevy, family, lodge, romp or, the feces of otters are typically identified by their distinctive aroma, the smell of which has been described as ranging from freshly mown hay to putrefied fish, these are known as spraints. The gestation period in otters is about 60 to 86 days, the newborn pup is cared for by the bitch, dog and older offspring. Bitch otters reach sexual maturity at two years of age and males at approximately three years. The holt is built under tree roots or a rocky cairn and it is lined with moss and grass. After one month, the pup can leave the holt and after two months, it is able to swim, the pup lives with its family for approximately one year. Otters live up to 16 years, they are by nature playful and its usual source of food is fish, and further downriver, eels, but it may sample frogs and birds. Otters have long, slim bodies and relatively short limbs and their most striking anatomical features are the powerful webbed feet used to swim, and their seal-like abilities holding breath underwater. Most have sharp claws on their feet and all except the sea otter have long, the 13 species range in adult size from 0.6 to 1.8 m in length and 1 to 45 kg in weight. The Oriental small-clawed otter is the smallest otter species and the giant otter and they have very soft, insulated underfur, which is protected by an outer layer of long guard hairs. This traps a layer of air which keeps them dry, warm, several otter species live in cold waters and have high metabolic rates to help keep them warm. European otters must eat 15% of their weight each day. In water as warm as 10 °C, an otter needs to catch 100 g of fish per hour to survive, most species hunt for three to five hours each day and nursing mothers up to eight hours each day. For most otters, fish is the staple of their diet and this is often supplemented by frogs, crayfish and crabs. Some otters are expert at opening shellfish, and others feed on available small mammals or birds
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Burrow
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A burrow is a hole or tunnel excavated into the ground by an animal to create a space suitable for habitation, temporary refuge, or as a byproduct of locomotion. Burrows provide a form of shelter against predation and exposure to the elements and can be found in nearly every biome, a wide variety of vertebrates construct or use burrows in many different types of substrate and can range widely in complexity. Mammals are perhaps most well known for burrowing, especially Insectivora like the voracious mole, the rabbit, a member of the family Lagomorpha, is a well-known burrower. There are estimates that a single burrow can occupy a full cubic metre. Great gerbils live in groups in extensive burrows, which can be seen on satellite images. Even the unoccupied burrows can remain visible in the landscape for years, the burrows are distributed regularly, although the occupied burrows appear to be clustered in space. Even Carnivora like the meerkat, and marsupials, are burrowers, the largest burrowing animal is probably the polar bear when it makes its maternity den in snow or earth. Burrows by birds are made in soft soils, some penguins. The Magellanic penguin is an example, constructing burrows along coastal Patagonian regions of Chile, other burrowing birds are puffins, kingfishers, and bee-eaters. Kangaroo mice construct burrows in fine sand, examples of vertebrate burrowing animals include a number of mammals, amphibians, fish, reptiles, and birds. Scabies mites construct their burrows in the skin of the animal or human. Some sea urchins and clams can burrow into rock, the burrows produced by invertebrate animals can be filled actively or passively. Dwelling burrows which remain open during occupation by an organism are filled passively, actively filled burrows, on the other hand, are filled with material by the burrowing organism itself. The establishment of an invertebrate burrow often involves the soaking of surrounding sediment in mucus in order to prevent collapse, examples of burrowing invertebrates are insects, spiders, sea urchins, crustaceans, clams and worms. Burrows are also preserved in the fossil record as a type of trace fossil. Holt Maternity den Sett- a network of badger tunnels
19.
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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Amphibian
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Amphibians are ectothermic, tetrapod vertebrates of the class Amphibia. They inhabit a variety of habitats, with most species living within terrestrial, fossorial, arboreal or freshwater aquatic ecosystems. Thus amphibians typically start out as larvae living in water, the young generally undergo metamorphosis from larva with gills to an adult air-breathing form with lungs. Amphibians use their skin as a respiratory surface and some small terrestrial salamanders and frogs lack lungs. They are superficially similar to lizards but, along with mammals and birds, reptiles are amniotes, the earliest amphibians evolved in the Devonian period from sarcopterygian fish with lungs and bony-limbed fins, features that were helpful in adapting to dry land. They diversified and became dominant during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, over time, amphibians shrank in size and decreased in diversity, leaving only the modern subclass Lissamphibia. The three modern orders of amphibians are Anura, Urodela, and Apoda, the number of known amphibian species is approximately 7,000, of which nearly 90% are frogs. The smallest amphibian in the world is a frog from New Guinea with a length of just 7.7 mm. The largest living amphibian is the 1.8 m Chinese giant salamander, the study of amphibians is called batrachology, while the study of both reptiles and amphibians is called herpetology. The word amphibian is derived from the Ancient Greek term ἀμφίβιος, the term was initially used as a general adjective for animals that could live on land or in water, including seals and otters. Traditionally, the class Amphibia includes all tetrapod vertebrates that are not amniotes, the numbers of species cited above follows Frost and the total number of known amphibian species is over 7,000, of which nearly 90% are frogs. With the phylogenetic classification, the taxon Labyrinthodontia has been discarded as it is a group without unique defining features apart from shared primitive characteristics. Classification varies according to the phylogeny of the author and whether they use a stem-based or a node-based classification. The phylogeny of Paleozoic amphibians is uncertain, and Lissamphibia may possibly fall within groups, like the Temnospondyli or the Lepospondyli. If the common ancestor of amphibians and amniotes is included in Amphibia, all modern amphibians are included in the subclass Lissamphibia, which is usually considered a clade, a group of species that have evolved from a common ancestor. The three modern orders are Anura, Caudata, and Gymnophiona, although the fossils of several older proto-frogs with primitive characteristics are known, the oldest true frog is Prosalirus bitis, from the Early Jurassic Kayenta Formation of Arizona. It is anatomically similar to modern frogs. The oldest known caecilian is another Early Jurassic species, Eocaecilia micropodia, the earliest salamander is Beiyanerpeton jianpingensis from the Late Jurassic of northeastern China
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Salamander
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All present-day salamander families are grouped together under the scientific name Urodela. Salamander diversity is most abundant in the Northern Hemisphere and most species are found in the Holarctic ecozone, Salamanders never have more than four toes on their front legs and five on their rear legs, but some species have fewer digits and others lack hind limbs. Their permeable skin usually makes them reliant on habitats in or near water or other cool, some salamander species are fully aquatic throughout their lives, some take to the water intermittently, and others are entirely terrestrial as adults. Unique among vertebrates, they are capable of regenerating lost limbs, members of the family Salamandridae are mostly known as newts and lack the costal grooves along the sides of their bodies typical of other groups. The skin of some species contains the poison tetrodotoxin and these salamanders tend to be slow-moving and have bright warning coloration to advertise their toxicity. Salamanders typically lay eggs in water and have aquatic larvae, in some species and some harsh environments, salamanders reproduce while still in the larval state. In literature and legend, the salamander is associated with fire, being supposedly unharmed by the flames, more plausibly, salamanders were said to be intensely poisonous. Despite this, salamander brandy, a prepared by dunking live salamanders in fermenting fruit juices, is reputed to have hallucinogenic. The skin lacks scales and is moist and smooth to the touch, except in newts of the Salamandridae, the skin may be drab or brightly colored, exhibiting various patterns of stripes, bars, spots, blotches, or dots. Male newts become dramatically colored during the breeding season, cave species dwelling in darkness lack pigmentation and have a translucent pink or pearlescent appearance. Salamanders range in size from the minute salamanders, with a length of 2.7 cm, including the tail, to the Chinese giant salamander which reaches 1.8 m. Most, however, are between 10 and 20 cm in length, an adult salamander generally resembles a small lizard, having a basal tetrapod body form with a cylindrical trunk, four limbs, and a long tail. Their function seems to be to keep the skin moist by channeling water over the surface of the body. The feet are broad with short digits, usually four on the front feet, Salamanders do not have claws, and the shape of the foot varies according to the animals habitat. Climbing species have elongated, square-tipped toes, while rock-dwellers have larger feet with short, when ascending, the tail props up the rear of the body, while one hind foot moves forward and then swings to the other side to provide support as the other hind foot advances. In larvae and aquatic salamanders, the tail is flattened, has dorsal and ventral fins. In the families Ambystomatidae and Salamandridae, the tail, which is larger than that of the female, is used during the amplexus embrace to propel the mating couple to a secluded location. In terrestrial species, the moves to counterbalance the animal as it runs, while in the arboreal salamander and other tree-climbing species
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Frog
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A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order Anura. The oldest fossil proto-frog appeared in the early Triassic of Madagascar, Frogs are widely distributed, ranging from the tropics to subarctic regions, but the greatest concentration of species diversity is in tropical rainforests. There are approximately 4,800 recorded species, accounting for over 85% of extant amphibian species and they are also one of the five most diverse vertebrate orders. The body plan of a frog is generally characterized by a stout body, protruding eyes, cleft tongue, limbs folded underneath. Besides living in water and on dry land, the adults of some species are adapted for living underground or in trees. The skin of the frog is glandular, with secretions ranging from distasteful to toxic, Frogs skins vary in colour from well-camouflaged dappled brown, grey and green to vivid patterns of bright red or yellow and black to advertise toxicity and warn off predators. Frogs typically lay their eggs in water, the eggs hatch into aquatic larvae called tadpoles that have tails and internal gills. They have highly specialized rasping mouth parts suitable for herbivorous, omnivorous or planktivorous diets, the life cycle is completed when they metamorphose into adults. A few species deposit eggs on land or bypass the tadpole stage, adult frogs generally have a carnivorous diet consisting of small invertebrates, but omnivorous species exist and a few feed on fruit. Frogs are extremely efficient at converting what they eat into body mass and they are an important food source for predators and part of the food web dynamics of many of the worlds ecosystems. The skin is semi-permeable, making them susceptible to dehydration, so they live in moist places or have special adaptations to deal with dry habitats. Frogs are valued as food by humans and also have many roles in literature, symbolism. Frog populations have declined significantly since the 1950s, more than one third of species are considered to be threatened with extinction and over one hundred and twenty are believed to have become extinct since the 1980s. The number of malformations among frogs is on the rise and a fungal disease. Conservation biologists are working to understand the causes of these problems, the name frog derives from Old English frogga, abbreviated to frox, forsc, and frosc, probably deriving from Proto-Indo-European preu = to jump. About 88% of amphibian species are classified in the order Anura and these include around 4,810 species in 33 families, of which the Leptodactylidae, Hylidae and Ranidae are the richest in species. The use of the common frog and toad has no taxonomic justification. From a classification perspective, all members of the order Anura are frogs, there are numerous exceptions to this rule
23.
Freshwater bivalve
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Freshwater bivalves are one kind of freshwater molluscs, along with freshwater snails. They are bivalves which live in freshwater, as opposed to saltwater, the majority of species of bivalve molluscs live in the sea, but in addition, a number of different families live in freshwater. These families belong to two different evolutionary lineages, and the two groups are not closely related, freshwater bivalves live in many types of habitat, ranging from small ditches and ponds, to lakes, canals, rivers, and swamps. Species in the two groups vary greatly in size, some of the pea clams have an adult size of only 3 mm. In contrast, one of the largest species of bivalves is the swan mussel, in the family Unionidae, it can grow to a length of 20 cm. Freshwater pearl mussels are economically important as a source of freshwater pearls, Order Unionoida The Unionoida, of worldwide distribution, are the pearly freshwater mussels. All reproduce by means of a stage that is parasitic on a fish or salamander. Many species are utilized as sources of mother-of-pearl, however, several families occur in fresh and brackish waters. Families, Corbiculidae Sphaeriidae Dreissenidae Order Veneroida ANSP site Info on Unionoida genera at Info on Rhode Island freshwater clams and mussels
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Mussel
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Mussel is the common name used for members of several families of bivalve molluscs, from saltwater and freshwater habitats. These groups have in common a shell whose outline is elongated and asymmetrical compared with other edible clams, a few species have colonised hydrothermal vents associated with deep ocean ridges. In most marine mussels the shell is longer than it is wide, the external colour of the shell is often dark blue, blackish, or brown, while the interior is silvery and somewhat nacreous. The common name mussel is also used for many freshwater bivalves, freshwater mussel species inhabit lakes, ponds, rivers, creeks, canals, and they are classified in a different subclass of bivalves, despite some very superficial similarities in appearance. They are classified with the Heterodonta, the group which includes most of the bivalves commonly referred to as clams. The mussels external shell is composed of two hinged halves or valves, the valves are joined together on the outside by a ligament, and are closed when necessary by strong internal muscles. Mussel shells carry out a variety of functions, including support for soft tissues, protection from predators, the periostracum is composed of a protein called conchin, and its function is to protect the prismatic layer from abrasion and dissolution by acids. Like most bivalves, mussels have an organ called a foot. In freshwater mussels, the foot is large, muscular, and it is used to pull the animal through the substrate in which it lies partially buried. It does this by repeatedly advancing the foot through the substrate, expanding the end so it serves as an anchor and it also serves as a fleshy anchor when the animal is stationary. In marine mussels, the foot is smaller, tongue-like in shape, in this pit, a viscous secretion is exuded, entering the groove and hardening gradually upon contact with sea water. This forms extremely tough, strong, elastic, byssal threads that secure the mussel to its substrate allowing it to remain sessile in areas of high flow, in cooking, the byssus of the mussel is known as the beard and is removed before the mussels are prepared. Both marine and freshwater mussels are filter feeders, they feed on plankton, a mussel draws water in through its incurrent siphon. The water is brought into the branchial chamber by the actions of the cilia located on the gills for ciliary-mucus feeding. The wastewater exits through the excurrent siphon, the labial palps finally funnel the food into the mouth, where digestion begins. Marine mussels are usually found clumping together on wave-washed rocks, each attached to the rock by its byssus, the clumping habit helps hold the mussels firm against the force of the waves. At low tide mussels in the middle of a clump will undergo less water loss because of capture by the other mussels. Both marine and freshwater mussels are gonochoristic, with male and female individuals
25.
Freshwater snail
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Freshwater snails are gastropod mollusks which live in freshwater. They are found throughout the world in various habitats, ranging from ephemeral pools to the largest lakes, the great majority of freshwater gastropods have a shell, with very few exceptions. Some groups of snails that live in freshwater respire using gills, most feed on algae, but many are detritivors and some are filter feeders. According to a 2008 review of the taxonomy, there are about 4,000 species of freshwater gastropods, at least 33–38 independent lineages of gastropods have successfully colonized freshwater environments. It is not possible to quantify the number of these lineages yet. From six to eight of these independent lineages occur in North America, and simplified with families that contain freshwater species marked in boldface, The Neritimorpha are a group of primitive prosobranch gilled snails which have a shelly operculum. Neritiliidae,5 extant freshwater species Neritidae, largely confined to the tropics, also the rivers of Europe, there are about 110 extant freshwater species. The Caenogastropoda are a group of gilled operculate snails, which are largely marine. Viviparidae, medium to large snails, live-bearing, commonly referred to as mystery snails, worldwide except South America, and everywhere confined to fresh waters. Sorbeoconcha Melanopsidae, family native to rivers draining to the Mediterranean, also Middle East, native to South and Central America. Formerly included with the Pleuroceridae by many authors, paludomidae - about 100 species in south Asia, diverse in African Lakes, and Sri Lanka. Formerly classified with the Pleuroceridae by some authors, Pleuroceridae, abundant and diverse in eastern North America, largely high-spired snails of small to large size. Semisulcospiridae, - primarily eastern Asia, Japan, also the Juga snails of northwestern North America, thiaridae, high-spired parthenogenic snails of the tropics, includes those referred to as trumpet snails in aquaria. Littorinimorpha Littorinidae -9 species in the genus Cremnoconchus are freshwater living in streams, assimineidae - about 20 freshwater species, other are marine Bithyniidae, small snails, native to Eastern Hemisphere. Helicostoidae, the only species Helicostoa sinensis lives in China, hydrobiidae, small to very small snails found worldwide. About 1250 freshwater species other are marine, Pomatiopsidae, small amphibious snails scattered worldwide, most diverse in eastern and Southeast Asia. Stenothyridae - about 60 freshwater species, others are marine, neogastropoda Buccinidae - 8-10 freshwater species in the genus Clea, native to Southeast Asia. Marginellidae -2 freshwater species in the genus Rivomarginella, native to Southeast Asia, lower Heterobranchia Glacidorbidae -20 species
26.
Turtle
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Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines characterised by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs and acting as a shield. Turtle may refer to the order as a whole or to fresh-water, the order Testudines includes both extant and extinct species. The earliest known members of this date from 157 million years ago, making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups. Of the 327 known species alive today, some are highly endangered, turtles are ectotherms—animals commonly called cold-blooded—meaning that their internal temperature varies according to the ambient environment. However, because of their metabolic rate, leatherback sea turtles have a body temperature that is noticeably higher than that of the surrounding water. Turtles are classified as amniotes, along with reptiles, birds. Like other amniotes, turtles breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, Chelonia is based on the Greek word χελώνη chelone tortoise, turtle, also denoting armor or interlocking shields, testudines, on the other hand, is based on the Latin word testudo tortoise. Turtle may either refer to the order as a whole, or to particular turtles that make up a form taxon that is not monophyletic, the meaning of the word turtle differs from region to region. In North America, all chelonians are commonly called turtles, including terrapins, in Great Britain, the word turtle is used for sea-dwelling species, but not for tortoises. The term tortoise usually refers to any land-dwelling, non-swimming chelonian, most land-dwelling chelonians are in the Testudinidae family, only one of the 14 extant turtle families. Terrapin is used to describe several species of small, edible, hard-shell turtles, typically found in brackish waters. Some languages do not have this distinction, as all of these are referred to by the same name, for example, in Spanish, the word tortuga is used for turtles, tortoises, and terrapins. A sea-dwelling turtle is tortuga marina, a freshwater species tortuga de río, the largest living chelonian is the leatherback sea turtle, which reaches a shell length of 200 cm and can reach a weight of over 900 kg. Freshwater turtles are generally smaller, but with the largest species, the Asian softshell turtle Pelochelys cantorii, a few individuals have been reported up to 200 cm. This dwarfs even the better-known alligator snapping turtle, the largest chelonian in North America and they became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed humans hunted them for food. The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands and can grow to over 130 cm in length, the largest ever chelonian was Archelon ischyros, a Late Cretaceous sea turtle known to have been up to 4.6 m long. The smallest turtle is the speckled padloper tortoise of South Africa and it measures no more than 8 cm in length and weighs about 140 g. Two other species of turtles are the American mud turtles
27.
Crayfish
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Some species are found in brooks and streams where there is running fresh water, while others thrive in swamps, ditches, and rice paddies. Most crayfish cannot tolerate polluted water, although species such as Procambarus clarkii are hardier. Crayfish feed on living and dead animals and plants, the name crayfish comes from the Old French word escrevisse. The word has been modified to crayfish by association with fish, the largely American variant crawfish is similarly derived. Some kinds of crayfish are known locally as lobsters, crawdads, mudbugs, the study of crayfish is called astacology. Exceptions include western rock lobster found on the west coast of Australia, the Tasmanian giant freshwater crayfish found only in Tasmania, in Singapore, the term crayfish typically refers to Thenus orientalis, a seawater crustacean from the slipper lobster family. True crayfish are not native to Singapore, but are found as pets, or as an invasive species in the many water catchment areas. The body of a crustacean, such as a crab, lobster. Each segment may possess one pair of appendages, although in various groups these may be reduced or missing, on average, crayfish grow to 17.5 centimetres in length, but some grow larger. Walking legs have a claw at the end. There are three families of crayfish, two in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere family Parastacidae lives in South America, Madagascar and Australasia, and is distinguished by the lack of the first pair of pleopods. Of the other two families, members of the Astacidae live in western Eurasia and western North America and members of the family Cambaridae live in eastern Asia, Madagascar has an endemic genus, Astacoides, containing seven species. Europe is home to seven species of crayfish in the genera Astacus and Austropotamobius, cambaroides is native to Japan and eastern mainland Asia. The greatest diversity of species is found in southeastern North America, with over 330 species in nine genera. A further genus of crayfish is found in the Pacific Northwest. Many crayfish are found in lowland areas where the water is abundant in calcium. Crayfish were introduced purposely into a few Arizona reservoirs and other bodies of water decades ago and they have since dispersed beyond those original sites. Australia has over 100 species in a dozen genera, in Australia, many of the better-known crayfish are of the genus Cherax, and include the marron from Western Australia, red-claw crayfish, common yabby and western yabby
28.
European colonization of the Americas
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European colonization of the Americas began as early as the 10th–11th century, when West Norse sailors explored and briefly settled limited areas on the shores of present-day Canada. These Norsemen were Vikings who had discovered and settled Greenland, then sailed up the Arctic region of North America alongside Greenland, according to Icelandic Sagas, violent conflicts with the indigenous population ultimately made the Norse abandon those settlements. Running aground on the part of Hispaniola on December 5,1492, which the Taino people had inhabited since the 7th century. European conquest, large-scale exploration, colonization and industrial development soon followed, Columbus first two voyages reached the Bahamas and various Caribbean islands, including Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Cuba. In 1497, sailing from Bristol on behalf of England, John Cabot landed on the North American coast, other powers such as France also founded colonies in the Americas, in eastern North America, a number of Caribbean islands, and small coastal parts of South America. Portugal colonized Brazil, tried colonizing the coasts of present-day Canada, the Age of Exploration was the beginning of territorial expansion for several European countries. Eventually, the entire Western Hemisphere came under the control of European governments, leading to profound changes to its landscape, population. In the 19th century alone over 50 million people left Europe for the Americas, Norse journeys to Greenland and Canada are supported by historical and archaeological evidence. It was named a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1978, Early explorations and conquests were made by the Spanish and the Portuguese immediately following their own final reconquest of Iberia in 1492. Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés took over the Aztec Kingdom and Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire, over this same timeframe, Portugal claimed lands in North America and colonized much of eastern South America, naming it Santa Cruz and Brazil. Other European nations soon disputed the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas, England and France attempted to plant colonies in the Americas in the 16th century, but these failed. England and France succeeded in establishing permanent colonies in the following century, in the 18th century, Denmark–Norway revived its former colonies in Greenland, while the Russian Empire gained a foothold in Alaska. Denmark-Norway would later make claims in the Caribbean, starting in the 1600s. As more nations gained an interest in the colonization of the Americas, colonists often faced the threat of attacks from neighboring colonies, as well as from indigenous tribes and pirates. He was followed by other such as John Cabot, who was sponsored by England. Pedro Álvares Cabral reached Brazil and claimed it for Portugal, amerigo Vespucci, working for Portugal in voyages from 1497 to 1513, established that Columbus had reached a new set of continents. Cartographers still use a Latinized version of his first name, America, in 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and led the first European expedition to see the Pacific Ocean from the west coast of the New World. In an action with enduring historical import, Balboa claimed the Pacific Ocean and it was 1517 before another expedition, from Cuba, visited Central America, landing on the coast of Yucatán in search of slaves
29.
Fur
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Fur is used in reference to the hair of non-human mammals, particularly those with extensive body hair coverage that is generally soft and thick, as opposed to the stiffer bristles on most pigs. The term pelage – first known use in English c.1828 – is sometimes used to refer to the hair of an animal as a complete coat. Fur is also used to refer to animal pelts which have been processed into leather with the still attached. The words fur or furry are also used, more casually, to refer to hair-like growths or formations, particularly when the subject being referred to exhibits a dense coat of fine, soft hairs. If layered, rather than grown as a coat, it may consist of short down hairs, long guard hairs. Mammals with reduced amounts of fur are called naked, as with the naked mole-rat, or hairless. An animal with commercially valuable fur is known within the fur industry as a furbearer and its principal function is thermoregulation, it maintains a layer of dry air next to the skin and repels water, thus providing thermal insulation. Guard hair — the top consisting of longer, generally coarser. The distal ends of the guard hairs provide the externally visible layer of the coat of most mammals with well-developed fur and this layer of the coat displays the most marked pigmentation and gloss, including coat patterns adapted to display or camouflage. It is also adapted to shedding water and blocking sunlight, protecting the undercoat and skin from external factors such as rain, many animals, such as domestic cats, erect their guard hairs as part of their threat display when agitated. Mammals with well-developed down and guard hairs also usually have numbers of awn hairs. These begin their growth much as guard hairs do, but change their mode of growth and this portion of the hair is called awn. The rest of the growth is thin and wavy, much like down hair, in many species of mammals, the awn hairs comprise the bulk of the visible coat. Hair is one of the characteristics of mammals, however. These are often called naked or hairless, some mammals naturally have reduced amounts of fur. Some semiaquatic or aquatic mammals such as cetaceans, pinnipeds and hippopotamuses have evolved hairlessness, the naked mole-rat has evolved hairlessness, perhaps as an adaptation to their subterranean life-style. Two of the largest extant mammals, the elephant and the rhinoceros, are largely hairless. The hairless bat is mostly hairless but does have short bristly hairs around its neck, on its front toes, most hairless animals cannot go in the sun for long periods of time, or stay in the cold for too long
30.
Pollution
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Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants. Pollution is often classed as point source or nonpoint source pollution, Air pollution has always accompanied civilizations. Pollution started from prehistoric times when man created the first fires, metal forging appears to be a key turning point in the creation of significant air pollution levels outside the home. The burning of coal and wood, and the presence of horses in concentrated areas made the cities the cesspools of pollution. The Industrial Revolution brought an infusion of untreated chemicals and wastes into local streams that served as the water supply, king Edward I of England banned the burning of sea-coal by proclamation in London in 1272, after its smoke became a problem. But the fuel was so common in England that this earliest of names for it was acquired because it could be carted away from some shores by the wheelbarrow and it was the industrial revolution that gave birth to environmental pollution as we know it today. London also recorded one of the extreme cases of water quality problems with the Great Stink on the Thames of 1858. Pollution issues escalated as population growth far exceeded view ability of neighborhoods to handle their waste problem, reformers began to demand sewer systems, and clean water. In 1870, the conditions in Berlin were among the worst in Europe. There were no toilets in the streets or squares. Visitors, especially women, often became desperate when nature called, in the public buildings the sanitary facilities were unbelievably primitive. As a metropolis, Berlin did not emerge from a state of barbarism into civilization until after 1870. Chicago and Cincinnati were the first two American cities to enact laws ensuring cleaner air in 1881, as historian Martin Melosi notes, The generation that first saw automobiles replacing the horses saw cars as miracles of cleanliness. By the 1940s, however, automobile-caused smog was an issue in Los Angeles. Other cities followed around the country early in the 20th century. Extreme smog events were experienced by the cities of Los Angeles and Donora, Pennsylvania in the late 1940s, Air pollution would continue to be a problem in England, especially later during the industrial revolution, and extending into the recent past with the Great Smog of 1952. Awareness of atmospheric pollution spread widely after World War II, with fears triggered by reports of fallout from atomic warfare. Then a non-nuclear event, The Great Smog of 1952 in London and this prompted some of the first major modern environmental legislation, The Clean Air Act of 1956
31.
Otter
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Otters are carnivorous mammals in the subfamily Lutrinae. The 13 extant otter species are all semiaquatic, aquatic or marine, with diets based on fish, Lutrinae is a branch of the weasel family Mustelidae, which also includes badgers, honey badgers, martens, minks, polecats, and wolverines. The word otter derives from the Old English word otor or oter and this, and cognate words in other Indo-European languages, ultimately stem from the Proto-Indo-European language root *wódr̥, which also gave rise to the English word water. An otters den is called a holt or couch, male otters are called dogs or boars, females are called bitches or sows, and their offspring are called pups. The collective nouns for otters are bevy, family, lodge, romp or, the feces of otters are typically identified by their distinctive aroma, the smell of which has been described as ranging from freshly mown hay to putrefied fish, these are known as spraints. The gestation period in otters is about 60 to 86 days, the newborn pup is cared for by the bitch, dog and older offspring. Bitch otters reach sexual maturity at two years of age and males at approximately three years. The holt is built under tree roots or a rocky cairn and it is lined with moss and grass. After one month, the pup can leave the holt and after two months, it is able to swim, the pup lives with its family for approximately one year. Otters live up to 16 years, they are by nature playful and its usual source of food is fish, and further downriver, eels, but it may sample frogs and birds. Otters have long, slim bodies and relatively short limbs and their most striking anatomical features are the powerful webbed feet used to swim, and their seal-like abilities holding breath underwater. Most have sharp claws on their feet and all except the sea otter have long, the 13 species range in adult size from 0.6 to 1.8 m in length and 1 to 45 kg in weight. The Oriental small-clawed otter is the smallest otter species and the giant otter and they have very soft, insulated underfur, which is protected by an outer layer of long guard hairs. This traps a layer of air which keeps them dry, warm, several otter species live in cold waters and have high metabolic rates to help keep them warm. European otters must eat 15% of their weight each day. In water as warm as 10 °C, an otter needs to catch 100 g of fish per hour to survive, most species hunt for three to five hours each day and nursing mothers up to eight hours each day. For most otters, fish is the staple of their diet and this is often supplemented by frogs, crayfish and crabs. Some otters are expert at opening shellfish, and others feed on available small mammals or birds
32.
Lutra
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Lutra is a genus of otters, one of seven in the subfamily Lutrinae. Lutra species are mammals, so they are well-adapted to both water and land. They prefer shallow, narrow areas of streams surrounded by trees and with rocks, especially where weirs reduce the flow of the water. They seem to tolerate roads and residential and agricultural areas, and they clearly avoid areas without vegetation cover and rocks. The otters diets consist mainly of fish, however, during the winter and in colder environments, fish consumption is significantly lower and the otters use other resources for their food supply. Their diets can consist of amphibians, bird predation, small rodents, and invertebrates such as beetles, snails. They have also feed on plants, specifically grasses, with this large diversity of prey and resources for their diets, otters are considered opportunistic eaters. Some otters live in solitude, while others live in groups
33.
New World
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The New World is one of the names used for the Earths Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas. The term was coined by Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci, the Americas were also referred to as the fourth part of the world. New World are meaningful in historical context and for the purpose of distinguishing the worlds major ecozones, and to classify plant and animal species that originated therein. One can speak of the New World in a context, e. g. when discussing the voyages of Christopher Columbus. For lack of alternatives, the term is still useful to those discussing issues that concern the Americas. The term New World is used in a context, when one speaks of Old World. Biological taxonomists often attach the New World label to groups of species that are exclusively in the Americas, to distinguish them from their counterparts in the Old World. New World monkeys, New World vultures, New World warblers, the label is also often used in agriculture. Common Old World crops, and domesticated animals did not exist in the Americas until they were introduced by contact in the 1490s. Other famous New World crops include the cashew, cocoa, rubber, sunflower, tobacco, and vanilla, there are rare instances of overlap, e. g. In wine terminology, New World has a different definition, Vespucci was finally convinced when he proceeded on his mapping expedition through 1501-02, covering the huge stretch of coast of eastern Brazil. But this opinion is false, and entirely opposed to the truth, Vespuccis letter was a publishing sensation in Europe, immediately reprinted in several other countries. The Venetian explorer Alvise Cadamosto had used the term un altro mundo to refer to sub-Saharan Africa, however, this was merely a literary flourish, not a suggestion of a new fourth part of the world. Cadamosto was quite aware sub-Saharan Africa was firmly part of the African continent, the Italian-born Spanish chronicler Peter Martyr dAnghiera often shares credit with Vespucci for designating the Americas as a new world. Peter Martyr used the term Orbe Novo in the title of his history of the discovery of the Americas as a whole, a year later, Peter Martyr again refers to the marvels of the New Globe and the Western hemisphere. Christopher Columbus touched the continent of South America in his 1498 third voyage, in another letter, Columbus refers to having reached a new heavens and world and that he had placed another world under the dominion of the Kings of Spain. The Vespucci passage above applied the New World label to merely the continental landmass of South America, although the proceedings of the Toro-Burgos conferences are missing, it is almost certain that Vespucci articulated his recent New World thesis to his fellow navigators there. In English usage the term New World was problematic and only accepted relatively late, while it became generally accepted after Vespucci that Columbuss discoveries were not Asia but a New World, the geographic relationship between the two continents was still unclear
34.
Giant otter
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The giant otter or giant river otter is a South American carnivorous mammal. It is the longest member of the Mustelidae, or weasel family, atypical of mustelids, the giant otter is a social species, with family groups typically supporting three to eight members. The groups are centered on a dominant breeding pair and are cohesive and cooperative. Although generally peaceful, the species is territorial, and aggression has been observed between groups, the giant otter is diurnal, being active exclusively during daylight hours. It is the noisiest otter species, and distinct vocalizations have been documented that indicate alarm, aggressiveness, the giant otter ranges across north-central South America, it lives mostly in and along the Amazon River and in the Pantanal. Its distribution has been reduced and is now discontinuous. Decades of poaching for its velvety pelt, peaking in the 1950s and 1960s, the species was listed as endangered in 1999 and wild population estimates are typically below 5,000. The Guianas are one of the last real strongholds for the species and it is one of the most endangered mammal species in the neotropics. Habitat degradation and loss is the greatest current threat, the giant otter is also rare in captivity, in 2003, only 60 animals were being held. The giant otter shows a variety of adaptations suitable to a lifestyle, including exceptionally dense fur, a wing-like tail. The species prefers freshwater rivers and streams, which are seasonally flooded. It constructs extensive campsites close to feeding areas, clearing large amounts of vegetation, the giant otter subsists almost exclusively on a diet of fish, particularly characins and catfish, but may also eat crabs, turtles, snakes and small caiman. It has no natural predators other than humans, although it must compete with other species, including the neotropical otter and caiman species. The giant otter has a handful of other names, in Brazil it is known as ariranha, from the Tupí word ariraña, meaning water jaguar. All three names are in use in South America, with a number of regional variations, giant otter translates literally as nutria gigante and lontra gigante in Spanish and Portuguese, respectively. Among the Achuar people, they are known as wankanim, the genus name, Pteronura, is derived from the Ancient Greek words pteron/πτερον and ura/ουρά, a reference to its distinctive, wing-like tail. The otters form the Lutrinae subfamily within the mustelids and the giant otter is the member of the genus Pteronura. Two subspecies are recognized by the canonical Mammal Species of the World, P. b. brasiliensis
35.
Miocene
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The Miocene is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about 23.03 to 5.333 million years ago. The Miocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell and its name comes from the Greek words μείων and καινός and means less recent because it has 18% fewer modern sea invertebrates than the Pliocene. The Miocene follows the Oligocene Epoch and is followed by the Pliocene Epoch, the earth went from the Oligocene through the Miocene and into the Pliocene, with the climate slowly cooling towards a series of ice ages. The Miocene boundaries are not marked by a single distinct global event, the apes arose and diversified during the Miocene, becoming widespread in the Old World. By the end of this epoch, the ancestors of humans had split away from the ancestors of the chimpanzees to follow their own evolutionary path, as in the Oligocene before it, grasslands continued to expand and forests to dwindle in extent. In the Miocene seas, kelp forests made their first appearance, the plants and animals of the Miocene were fairly modern. The Miocene faunal stages from youngest to oldest are typically named according to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, Two subdivisions each form the lower, middle, continents continued to drift toward their present positions. Mountain building took place in western North America, Europe, both continental and marine Miocene deposits are common worldwide with marine outcrops common near modern shorelines. Well studied continental exposures occur in the North American Great Plains, India continued to collide with Asia, creating dramatic new mountain ranges. The Tethys Seaway continued to shrink and then disappeared as Africa collided with Eurasia in the Turkish–Arabian region between 19 and 12 Ma. The subsequent uplift of mountains in the western Mediterranean region and a fall in sea levels combined to cause a temporary drying up of the Mediterranean Sea near the end of the Miocene. The global trend was towards increasing aridity caused primarily by global cooling reducing the ability of the atmosphere to absorb moisture, climates remained moderately warm, although the slow global cooling that eventually led to the Pleistocene glaciations continued. Although a long-term cooling trend was well underway, there is evidence of a period during the Miocene when the global climate rivalled that of the Oligocene. The Miocene warming began 21 million years ago and continued until 14 million years ago, by 8 million years ago, temperatures dropped sharply once again, and the Antarctic ice sheet was already approaching its present-day size and thickness. Greenland may have begun to have large glaciers as early as 7 to 8 million years ago, life during the Miocene Epoch was mostly supported by the two newly formed biomes, kelp forests and grasslands. This allows for more grazers, such as horses, rhinoceroses, ninety five percent of modern plants existed by the end of this epoch. The higher organic content and water retention of the deeper and richer grassland soils, with long term burial of carbon in sediments, produced a carbon and this, combined with higher surface albedo and lower evapotranspiration of grassland, contributed to a cooler, drier climate. The expansion of grasslands and radiations among terrestrial herbivores correlates to fluctuations in CO2
36.
Pliocene
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The Pliocene Epoch is the epoch in the geologic timescale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58 million years BP. It is the second and youngest epoch of the Neogene Period in the Cenozoic Era, the Pliocene follows the Miocene Epoch and is followed by the Pleistocene Epoch.588 to 1.806 million years ago, and is now included in the Pleistocene. As with other geologic periods, the geological strata that define the start and end are well identified but the exact dates of the start. The boundaries defining the Pliocene are not set at an easily identified worldwide event, the upper boundary was set at the start of the Pleistocene glaciations. The Pliocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell, the name comes from the Greek words πλεῖον and καινός and means roughly continuation of the recent, referring to the essentially modern marine mollusc faunas. H. W. Fowler called the term a regrettable barbarism, in the official timescale of the ICS, the Pliocene is subdivided into two stages. From youngest to oldest they are, Piacenzian Zanclean The Piacenzian is sometimes referred to as the Late Pliocene, in the system of North American Land Mammal Ages include Hemphillian, and Blancan. The Blancan extends forward into the Pleistocene, South American Land Mammal Ages include Montehermosan, Chapadmalalan and Uquian. In the Paratethys area the Pliocene contains the Dacian and Romanian stages, as usual in stratigraphy, there are many other regional and local subdivisions in use. In Britain the Pliocene is divided into the stages, Gedgravian, Waltonian, Pre-Ludhamian, Ludhamian, Thurnian, Bramertonian or Antian, Pre-Pastonian or Baventian, Pastonian and Beestonian. The exact correlations between these stages and the ICS stages is still a matter of detail. The formation of an Arctic ice cap is signaled by a shift in oxygen isotope ratios and ice-rafted cobbles in the North Atlantic. Mid-latitude glaciation was probably underway before the end of the epoch, the global cooling that occurred during the Pliocene may have spurred on the disappearance of forests and the spread of grasslands and savannas. Continents continued to drift, moving from positions possibly as far as 250 km from their present locations to positions only 70 km from their current locations, africas collision with Europe formed the Mediterranean Sea, cutting off the remnants of the Tethys Ocean. The border between the Miocene and the Pliocene is also the time of the Messinian salinity crisis, Sea level changes exposed the land-bridge between Alaska and Asia. Pliocene marine rocks are exposed in the Mediterranean, India. Elsewhere, they are exposed largely near shores, the change to a cooler, dry, seasonal climate had considerable impacts on Pliocene vegetation, reducing tropical species worldwide. Deciduous forests proliferated, coniferous forests and tundra covered much of the north, tropical forests were limited to a tight band around the equator, and in addition to dry savannahs, deserts appeared in Asia and Africa
37.
Old World
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The Old World consists of Africa, Europe, and Asia, regarded collectively as the part of the world known to Europeans before contact with the Americas. It is used in the context of, and contrast with and these regions were connected via the Silk Road trade route, and they have a pronounced Iron Age period following the Bronze Age. The concept of the three continents in the Old World, viz. Asia, Africa, and Europe, goes back to classical antiquity and their boundaries as defined by Ptolemy and other geographers of antiquity were drawn along the Nile and Don rivers. This definition remained influential throughout the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, the Old world has areas of North Africa, Eurasia, parts of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. The mainland of Afro-Eurasia has been referred to as the World Island, the term may have been coined by Sir Halford John Mackinder in The Geographical Pivot of History. The equivalent of the Old World had names in some of its ancient cultures, including Midgard in Germanic cosmology, synoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric cultures Afro-Eurasia
38.
Beringia
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It includes the Chukchi Sea, the Bering Sea, the Bering Strait, the Chukchi and Kamchatka Peninsulas in Russia as well as Alaska in the United States. The area includes land lying on the North American Plate and Siberian land east of the Chersky Range. Today, the land that is visible from the central part of the Bering land bridge are the Diomede Islands, the Pribilof Islands of St. Paul and St. George, St. Lawrence Island. The term Beringia was coined by the Swedish botanist Eric Hultén in 1937, during the ice ages, Beringia, like most of Siberia and all of North and Northeast China, was not glaciated because snowfall was very light. It was a grassland steppe, including the bridge, that stretched for hundreds of kilometres into the continents on either side. Before European colonization, Beringia was inhabited by the Yupik peoples on both sides of the straits and this culture remains in the region today along with others. In 2012, the governments of Russia and the United States announced a plan to establish a transboundary area of shared Beringian heritage. The underlying mechanism was first thought to be tectonics, but by 1930 changes in the icemass balance, the American arctic geologist David Hopkins redefined Beringia to include portions of Alaska and Northeast Asia. Beringia was later regarded as extending from the Verkhoyansk Mountains in the west to the Mackenzie River in the east. The distribution of plants in the genera Erythranthe and Pinus are good examples of this as genera members are found in Asia, during the Pleistocene epoch, global cooling led periodically to the expansion of glaciers and lowering of sea levels. This created land connections in various regions around the globe, today, the average water depth of the Bering Strait is 40–50 m, therefore the land bridge opened when the sea level dropped more than 50 m below the current level. Post-glacial rebound has continued to some sections of coast. During the last glacial period, enough of the water became frozen in the great ice sheets covering North America. For thousands of years the sea floors of many interglacial shallow seas were exposed, including those of the Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea to the north, other land bridges around the world have emerged and disappeared in the same way. Beringias closeness to the sea created intermittent maritime cloud cover, which caused an interruption to the dry, in the Late Pleistocene, Beringia was a mosaic of biological communities. Commencing from c. 57,000 BP, steppe–tundra vegetation dominated large parts of Beringia with a diversity of grasses. There were patches of shrub tundra with isolated refugia of larch and spruce forests with birch and it has been proposed that the largest and most diverse megafaunal community residing in Beringia at this time could only have been sustained in a highly diverse and productive environment. These changes provided the most likely explanation for mammal migrations after c. 15,000 BP, as the warming provided increased forage for browsers, Beringia did not block the movement of most dry steppe-adapted large species such as saiga antelope, woolly mammoth, and caballid horses
39.
Isthmus of Panama
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The Isthmus of Panama, also historically known as the Isthmus of Darien, is the narrow strip of land that lies between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, linking North and South America. It contains the country of Panama and the Panama Canal, like many isthmuses, it is a location of great strategic value. The isthmus was formed 12 to 15 million years ago and this major geological event separated the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and caused the creation of the Gulf Stream. Vasco Núñez de Balboa heard of the South Sea from natives while sailing along the Caribbean coast, on 25 September 1513 he saw the Pacific. In 1519 the town of Panamá was founded near a small settlement on the Pacific coast. After the discovery of Peru, it developed into an important port of trade, in 1671 the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan crossed the Isthmus of Panamá from the Caribbean side and destroyed the city. The town was relocated some kilometers to the west at a small peninsula, the ruins of the old town, Panamá Viejo, are preserved and were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. Silver and gold from the viceroyalty of Peru were transported overland across the isthmus to Porto Bello, Lionel Wafer spent four years between 1680 and 1684 among the Cuna Indians. Scotland tried to establish a settlement in 1698 through the Darien scheme, the California Gold Rush, starting in 1849, brought a large increase in the transportation of people from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Steamships brought gold seekers from eastern US ports who trekked across the isthmus by foot, horse, on the Pacific side, they boarded Pacific Mail Steamship Company vessels headed for San Francisco. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man behind the Suez Canal, started a Panama Canal Company in 1880 that went bankrupt in 1889 in a scandal. In 1902–4, the United States forced Colombia to grant independence to the department of the isthmus, bought the assets of the Panama Canal Company. A significant body of water separated the continents of North and South America. Beneath the surface, two plates of the Earths crust were slowly colliding, forcing the Cocos Plate to slide under the Caribbean Plate. The pressure and heat caused by this led to the formation of underwater volcanoes. Meanwhile, movement of the two plates was also pushing up the sea floor, eventually forcing some areas above sea level. Over time, massive amounts of sediment from North and South America filled the gaps between the newly forming islands, over millions of years, the sediment deposits added to the islands until the gaps were completely filled. By no later than 4.5 million years ago, an isthmus had formed between North and South America and that warm currents can lead to glacier formation may seem counterintuitive, but heated air flowing over the warm Gulf Stream can hold more moisture
40.
Eurasian otter
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The Eurasian otter, also known as the European otter, Eurasian river otter, common otter, and Old World otter, is a semiaquatic mammal native to Eurasia. The most widely distributed member of the subfamily of the weasel family, it is found in the waterways and coasts of Europe, many parts of Asia. The Eurasian otter has a diet mainly of fish, and is strongly territorial and it is endangered in parts of its range, but recovering in others. The Eurasian otter is a species of the otter subfamily. Brown above and cream below, these long, slender creatures are well-equipped for their aquatic habits and their bones show osteosclerosis, increasing their density to reduce buoyancy. This otter differs from the North American river otter by its neck, broader visage. However, the Eurasian otter is the otter in much of its range. Normally, this species is 57 to 95 cm long, not counting a tail of 35–45 cm, the female is shorter than the male. The otters average body weight is 7 to 12 kg, although occasionally a large old male may reach up to 17 kg, the record-sized specimen, reported by a reliable source but not verified, weighed over 24 kg. The Eurasian otter is the most widely distributed species, its range including parts of Asia and Africa. Ireland has the highest density of Eurasian otters in Europe, in Italy, they can be found in southern parts of the peninsula. The South Korean population is endangered, in Andalusia the golf courses became part of their habitat. Eurasian otters may also live along the coast, in salt water, the Eurasian otters diet mainly consists of fish. Fish is their most preferred choice of food in Mediterranean and temperate freshwater habitats, Eurasian otters are strongly territorial, living alone for the most part. An individuals territory may vary between about 1 and 40 km long, with about 18 km being usual, the territories are only held against members of the same sex, so those of males and females may overlap. Eurasian otters are nonseasonal breeders and it has found that their mating season is most likely determined simply by the otters reproductive maturity. Female otters are sexually mature between 18 and 24 months old and the age of first breeding is found to be 2.5 years old. Gestation for the Eurasian otter is 60–64 days, the litter weighing about 10% of the body mass
41.
Rhinarium
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The rhinarium is the naked skin surface surrounding the external openings of the nostrils in most mammals. In common usage, for example among breeders of cats or dogs, more informally people may speak of a wet snout or wet nose because its surface commonly is moist in a healthy cat or dog. In many species there is a philtrum, a groove down the middle. The study of the structure and of its functions has proved to be of considerable importance in mammalian evolution. In an analogous connection of no relevance to vertebrate morphology, the term sometimes is applied to chemosensory structures in invertebrates. For example, microscopic sensilla in the form of flattened sense organs on the antennae of aphids are referred to as rhinaria, morphologically the rhinarium certainly is part of the olfactory system, but it still is open to debate which part of the system it derived from. An example of the view is that the rhinarium is an outward extension of the olfactory. Skin that covers the nasal passages, contains nerve receptors for smell, if that interpretation is correct, and the rhinarium extends the olfactory epithelium that lines the nasal passages, then the rhinarium is part of the main system. Where on the one hand the moisture may have trapped odiferous molecules in the medium, the rhinarium is very useful to animals with good sense of smell because it acts as a wind direction detector. The cold receptors in the skin respond to the place where evaporation is the highest, thus the detection of a particular smell is associated with the direction it came from. The rhinarium is adapted for different purposes in different mammals according to ecological niche, in aquatic mammals, development of lobes next to the nostrils allow them to be closed for diving. In mammals that dig or root with their noses, the rhinarium often develops into a resilient pad, with the nostrils off to the side or below, examples include the common wombat, marsupial mole, and members of the Chrysochloridae. In the elephants it has become a tactile organ, in the walrus, it is covered with stiff bristles to protect it during foraging for shellfish. In many animals the form and purpose of the remains to be elucidated. The evolutionary pressures also are not always clearly distinguishable and there have been upheavals in late 20th and early 21st century taxonomy. For example, the lack of an obvious rhinarium in Tarsiiformes has been suggested to be the consequence of the development of the eyeballs. The rhinarium is a general mammalian feature and therefore is likely to have present in the proto-mammal stage. Primates are phylogenetically divided into Strepsirrhini, and the Haplorhini, the Strepsirrhini, which means twisted-nosed, are primates with rhinaria, which is the ancestral condition. The Strepsirrhini consists of the prosimians, the lorises, and the lemurs, the Haplorhini, which means simple-nosed, are primates which have replaced the rhinarium with a more mobile, continuous, dry upper lip
42.
Anatomical terms of location
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Standard anatomical terms of location deal unambiguously with the anatomy of animals, including humans. All vertebrates have the basic body plan – they are strictly bilaterally symmetrical in early embryonic stages. That is, they have left and right halves if divided down the centre. For these reasons, the directional terms can be considered to be those used in vertebrates. By extension, the terms are used for many other organisms as well. While these terms are standardized within specific fields of biology, there are unavoidable, sometimes dramatic, for example, differences in terminology remain a problem that, to some extent, still separates the terminology of human anatomy from that used in the study of various other zoological categories. The vertebrates and Craniata share a heritage and common structure. To avoid ambiguities this terminology is based on the anatomy of each animal in a standard way, for humans, one type of vertebrate, anatomical terms may differ from other forms of vertebrates. Thus what is on top of a human is the head, whereas the top of a dog may be its back, for example, many species are not even bilaterally symmetrical. In these species, terminology depends on their type of symmetry, all descriptions are with respect to the organism in its standard anatomical position, even when the organism in question has appendages in another position. This helps avoid confusion in terminology when referring to the organism in different postures. In humans, this refers to the body in a position with arms at the side. While the universal vertebrate terminology used in medicine would work in human medicine. Many anatomical terms can be combined, either to indicate a position in two axes simultaneously or to indicate the direction of a movement relative to the body, for example, anterolateral indicates a position that is both anterior and lateral to the body axis. There is no limit to the contexts in which terms may be modified to qualify each other in such combinations. Generally the modifier term is truncated and an o or an i is added in prefixing it to the qualified term, where desirable three or more terms may be agglutinated or concatenated, as in anteriodorsolateral. Such terms sometimes used to be hyphenated, but the tendency is to omit the hyphen. There is however little basis for any rule to interfere with choice of convenience in such usage
43.
Skull
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The skull is a bony structure that forms the head of the skeleton in most vertebrates. It supports the structures of the face and provides a cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of two parts, the cranium and the mandible, in the human these two parts are the neurocranium and the viscerocranium or facial skeleton that includes the mandible as its largest bone. The skull forms the anterior most portion of the skeleton and is a product of cephalisation—housing the brain, and several sensory structures such as the eyes, ears, nose, in the human these sensory structures are part of the facial skeleton. In some animals such as horned ungulates, the skull also has a function by providing the mount for the horns. The English word skull is probably derived from Old Norse skulle, while the Latin word cranium comes from the Greek root κρανίον, the skull is made up of a number of fused flat bones, and contains many foramina and processes, and several cavities or sinuses. For details and the constituent bones, see neurocranium and viscerocranium, the human skull is the bony structure that forms the head in the human skeleton. It supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain, like the skulls of other vertebrates, it protects the brain from injury. The skull consists of two parts, of different embryological origin—the neurocranium and the facial skeleton, the neurocranium forms the protective cranial cavity that surrounds and houses the brain and brainstem. The facial skeleton is formed by the supporting the face. Except for the mandible, all of the bones of the skull are joined together by sutures—synarthrodial joints formed by bony ossification, sometimes there can be extra bone pieces within the suture known as wormian bones or sutural bones. The human skull is considered to consist of twenty-two bones—eight cranial bones. In the neurocranium these are the bone, two temporal bones, two parietal bones, the sphenoid, ethmoid and frontal bones. The bones of the skeleton are the vomer, two nasal conchae, two nasal bones, two maxilla, the mandible, two palatine bones, two zygomatic bones, and two lacrimal bones. Some of these bones—the occipital, parietal, frontal, in the neurocranium, and the nasal, lacrimal, the skull also contains sinus cavities and numerous foramina. The sinuses are lined with respiratory epithelium and their known functions are the lessening of the weight of the skull, the aiding of resonance to the voice and the warming and moistening of the air drawn through the nasal cavity. The foramina are openings in the skull, the largest of these is the foramen magnum that allows the passage of the spinal cord as well as nerves and blood vessels. The many processes of the include the mastoid process and the zygomatic process
44.
Whiskers
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They are specialised for tactile sensing. Vibrissae grow in places on most mammals, including all primates except humans. In medicine, the term also refers to the thick hairs found inside human nostrils. Vibrissae typically grow in groups in different locations on an animal and these groups are relatively well conserved across land mammals, and somewhat less well conserved between land and marine mammals. Most simply described, macrovibrissae are large, motile and used for sensing, whereas microvibrissae are small, immotile. These two sub-groups can be identified in the image of the rat, but it can also be seen that there is no clear physical boundary between them. Apart from cranial vibrissae, other groups are found elsewhere on the body, many land mammals, including domestic cats, also have carpal vibrissae on the underside of the leg just above the paws. Whilst these five major groups are reported in studies of land mammals. Marine mammals can have substantially different vibrissal arrangements, for instance, cetaceans have lost the vibrissae around the snout and gained vibrissae around their blowholes, whereas every single one of the body hairs of the Florida manatee may be a vibrissa. Other marine mammals have cranial vibrissal groups that appear to correspond closely to those described for land mammals, the vibrissal hair is usually thicker and stiffer than other types of hair but, like other hairs, the shaft consists of an inert material and contains no nerves. The mystacial macrovibrissae are shared by a group of land and marine mammals. The arrangement of whiskers is not random, they form an ordered grid of arcs and rows, with shorter whiskers at the front. In the mouse, gerbil, hamster, rat, guinea pig, rabbit and these cells serve an even larger number of mechanoreceptors of at least eight distinct types. Accordingly, even small deflections of the hair can evoke a sensory response in the animal. Rats and mice typically have approximately 30 macrovibrissae on each side of the face, with lengths up to around 50 mm in rats,30 mm in mice. Thus, an estimate for the number of sensory nerve cells serving the mystacial vibrissal array on the face of a rat or mouse might be 25,000. Rats and mice are considered to be specialists, but marine mammals may make even greater investment in their vibrissal sensory system. Manatees, remarkably, have around 600 vibrissae on or around their lips, Whiskers can be very long in some species, the length of a chinchillas whiskers can be more than a third of its body length
45.
Senescence
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The word senescence can refer either to cellular senescence or to senescence of the whole organism. It is commonly believed that cellular senescence underlies organismal senescence, the science of biological aging is biogerontology. Senescence is not the fate of all organisms and can be delayed. Organisms of some groups, including some animals, experience chronological decrease in mortality. On the other extreme are accelerated aging diseases, rare in humans, there is also the extremely rare and poorly understood Syndrome X, whereby a person remains physically and mentally an infant or child throughout ones life. Even if environmental factors do not cause aging, they may affect it, in such a way, for example, different parts of the body may age at different rates. Two organisms of the species can also age at different rates, so that biological aging. Albeit indirectly, senescence is by far the leading cause of death, whether senescence as a biological process itself can be slowed down, halted or even reversed, is a subject of current scientific speculation and research. Cellular senescence is the phenomenon by which diploid cells cease to divide. In culture, fibroblasts can reach a maximum of 50 cell divisions before becoming senescent and this phenomenon is known as replicative senescence, or the Hayflick limit. Replicative senescence is the result of telomere shortening that ultimately triggers a DNA damage response, cells can also be induced to senesce via DNA damage in response to elevated reactive oxygen species, activation of oncogenes and cell-cell fusion, independent of telomere length. As such, cellular senescence represents a change in state rather than a cell becoming aged as the name confusingly suggests. The nucleus of senescent cells is characterized by senescence-associated heterochromatin foci, senescent cells affect tumour suppression, wound healing and possibly embryonic/placental development and a pathological role in age-related diseases. The experimental elimination of senescent cells from transgenic mice and non-progeroid. These results highlight the independence of cellular senescence from epigenetic aging, where removal of senescent cells slowed down aging. These senescent cells, in sufficient numbers, will cause the deterioration of tissues. However, at the level, aging, as measured by the epigenetic clock, is distinct from senescence. It is a mechanism that exists from the birth of the cell
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. PMID 18275614.
