1.
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
2.
Animal
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Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia. The animal kingdom emerged as a clade within Apoikozoa as the group to the choanoflagellates. Animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently at some point in their lives and their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs, they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance, most known animal phyla appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years ago. Animals can be divided broadly into vertebrates and invertebrates, vertebrates have a backbone or spine, and amount to less than five percent of all described animal species. They include fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, the remaining animals are the invertebrates, which lack a backbone. These include molluscs, arthropods, annelids, nematodes, flatworms, cnidarians, ctenophores, the study of animals is called zoology. The word animal comes from the Latin animalis, meaning having breath, the biological definition of the word refers to all members of the kingdom Animalia, encompassing creatures as diverse as sponges, jellyfish, insects, and humans. Aristotle divided the world between animals and plants, and this was followed by Carl Linnaeus, in the first hierarchical classification. In Linnaeuss original scheme, the animals were one of three kingdoms, divided into the classes of Vermes, Insecta, Pisces, Amphibia, Aves, and Mammalia. Since then the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, in 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into two subkingdoms, Metazoa and Protozoa. The protozoa were later moved to the kingdom Protista, leaving only the metazoa, thus Metazoa is now considered a synonym of Animalia. Animals have several characteristics that set apart from other living things. Animals are eukaryotic and multicellular, which separates them from bacteria and they are heterotrophic, generally digesting food in an internal chamber, which separates them from plants and algae. They are also distinguished from plants, algae, and fungi by lacking cell walls. All animals are motile, if only at life stages. In most animals, embryos pass through a stage, which is a characteristic exclusive to animals. With a few exceptions, most notably the sponges and Placozoa and these include muscles, which are able to contract and control locomotion, and nerve tissues, which send and process signals
3.
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
4.
Lissotriton
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Lissotriton is a genus of newts native to Europe and parts of Asia Minor. As most other newts, they are aquatic as larvae and during breeding time but live in terrestrial and these rather small species used to be included in genus Triturus, but phylogenetic analyses demonstrated that genus as paraphyletic. In the following, the name Lissotriton, originally introduced by Thomas Bell in 1839, was reinstated for the small-bodied species related to the type species Lissotriton vulgaris and their exact phylogenetic placement within the newts is still uncertain. Experiments were carried out with Lissotriton vulgarus in which female newts were paired sequentially with two males having different degrees of relatedness to the female. It was found that the more genetically dissimilar male had a higher paternity share than the less related male, female choice may reflect an avoidance of inbreeding with related males that could lead to less fit progeny
5.
Carl Linnaeus
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Carl Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who formalised the modern system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature. He is known by the father of modern taxonomy. Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus, Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. He received most of his education at Uppsala University. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published a first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands and he then returned to Sweden, where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, at the time of his death, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message, Tell him I know no man on earth. The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, Swedish author August Strindberg wrote, Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist. Among other compliments, Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum, The Pliny of the North and he is also considered as one of the founders of modern ecology. In botany, the abbreviation used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for species names is L. In older publications, sometimes the abbreviation Linn. is found, Linnæus was born in the village of Råshult in Småland, Sweden, on 23 May 1707. He was the first child of Nicolaus Ingemarsson and Christina Brodersonia and his siblings were Anna Maria Linnæa, Sofia Juliana Linnæa, Samuel Linnæus, and Emerentia Linnæa. One of a line of peasants and priests, Nils was an amateur botanist, a Lutheran minister. Christina was the daughter of the rector of Stenbrohult, Samuel Brodersonius, a year after Linnæus birth, his grandfather Samuel Brodersonius died, and his father Nils became the rector of Stenbrohult. The family moved into the rectory from the curates house, even in his early years, Linnæus seemed to have a liking for plants, flowers in particular. Whenever he was upset, he was given a flower, which calmed him. Nils spent much time in his garden and often showed flowers to Linnaeus, soon Linnæus was given his own patch of earth where he could grow plants
6.
Newt
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A newt is a salamander in the subfamily Pleurodelinae, also called eft during its terrestrial juvenile phase. Unlike other members of the family Salamandridae, newts are semiaquatic, not all aquatic salamanders are considered newts, however. The more than 100 known species of newts are found in North America, Europe, North Africa, newts metamorphose through three distinct developmental life stages, aquatic larva, terrestrial juvenile, and adult. Adult newts have lizard-like bodies and return to the every year to breed, otherwise living in humid. Newts are threatened by loss, fragmentation and pollution. Several species are endangered, and at least one species, the Yunnan lake newt, has gone extinct recently, the Old English name of the animal was efte, efeta, resulting in Middle English eft, this word was transformed irregularly into euft, evete, or ewt. The initial n was added from the article an by provection by the early 15th century. The form newt appears to have arisen as a variant of eft in Staffordshire. Dialectal English and Scots also has the word ask used for both newts and wall lizards, from Old English āþexe, from Proto-Germanic *agiþahsijǭ, literally lizard-badger or distaff-like lizard. Latin had the name stellio for a type of spotted newt, ancient Greek had the name κορδύλος, presumably for the water newt. German has Molch, from Middle High German mol, wikt, olm, newts are also known as Tritones in historical literature, and triton remains in use as common name in some Romance languages, in Greek, in Russian and Serbian. The systematic name Tritones was introduced alongside Pleurodelinae by Tschudi in 1838, laurentis Triton was renamed to Triturus by Rafinesque in 1815. Tschudis Pleurodelinae is based on the type genus Pleurodeles named by Michahelles in 1830, newts are found in North America, Europe, North Africa and Asia. Eastern Asia, from Eastern India over Indochina to Japan, is home to five genera with more than 40 species, newts are semi-aquatic, spending part of the year in the water for reproduction and the rest of the year on land. While most species prefer stagnant water bodies such as ponds, ditches or flooded meadows for reproduction, the European brook newts and European mountain newts have even adapted to life in cold, oxygen-rich mountain streams. During their terrestrial phase, newts live in habitats with abundandant cover such as logs, rocks. Newts share many of the characteristics of their kin, Caudata, including semipermeable glandular skin, four equal-sized limbs. The newts skin, however, is not as smooth as that of other salamanders, aquatic larvae have true teeth on both upper and lower jaws, and external gills
7.
Iberian Peninsula
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The Iberian Peninsula /aɪˈbɪəriən pəˈnɪnsjᵿlə/, also known as Iberia /aɪˈbɪəriə/, is located in the southwest corner of Europe. The peninsula is divided between Portugal and Spain, comprising most of their territory. With an area of approximately 582,000 km2, it is the second largest European peninsula, at that time, the name did not describe a single political entity or a distinct population of people. Strabos Iberia was delineated from Keltikē by the Pyrenees and included the land mass southwest of there. The ancient Greeks reached the Iberian Peninsula, of which they had heard from the Phoenicians, hecataeus of Miletus was the first known to use the term Iberia, which he wrote about circa 500 BC. Herodotus of Halicarnassus says of the Phocaeans that it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with. According to Strabo, prior historians used Iberia to mean the country side of the Ἶβηρος as far north as the river Rhône in France. Polybius respects that limit, but identifies Iberia as the Mediterranean side as far south as Gibraltar, elsewhere he says that Saguntum is on the seaward foot of the range of hills connecting Iberia and Celtiberia. Strabo refers to the Carretanians as people of the Iberian stock living in the Pyrenees, according to Charles Ebel, the ancient sources in both Latin and Greek use Hispania and Hiberia as synonyms. The confusion of the words was because of an overlapping in political, the Latin word Hiberia, similar to the Greek Iberia, literally translates to land of the Hiberians. This word was derived from the river Ebro, which the Romans called Hiberus, hiber was thus used as a term for peoples living near the river Ebro. The first mention in Roman literature was by the annalist poet Ennius in 200 BC. Virgil refers to the Ipacatos Hiberos in his Georgics, the Roman geographers and other prose writers from the time of the late Roman Republic called the entire peninsula Hispania. As they became interested in the former Carthaginian territories, the Romans began to use the names Hispania Citerior. At the time Hispania was made up of three Roman provinces, Hispania Baetica, Hispania Tarraconensis, and Lusitania, Strabo says that the Romans use Hispania and Iberia synonymously, distinguishing between the near northern and the far southern provinces. Whatever language may generally have been spoken on the peninsula soon gave way to Latin, except for that of the Vascones, the Iberian Peninsula has always been associated with the Ebro, Ibēros in ancient Greek and Ibērus or Hibērus in Latin. The association was so known it was hardly necessary to state, for example. Pliny goes so far as to assert that the Greeks had called the whole of Spain Hiberia because of the Hiberus River, the river appears in the Ebro Treaty of 226 BC between Rome and Carthage, setting the limit of Carthaginian interest at the Ebro. The fullest description of the treaty, stated in Appian, uses Ibērus, with reference to this border, Polybius states that the native name is Ibēr, apparently the original word, stripped of its Greek or Latin -os or -us termination
8.
Cloaca
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In animal anatomy, a cloaca /kloʊˈeɪkə/ kloh-AY-kə is the posterior orifice that serves as the only opening for the digestive, reproductive, and urinary tracts of certain animals, opening at the vent. Excretory systems with analogous purpose in certain invertebrates are sometimes referred to as cloacae. The cloacal region is often associated with a secretory organ, the cloacal gland, which has been implicated in the scent-marking behavior of some reptiles, amphibians. The word comes from Latin, and means sewer, derived from cluō, birds reproduce using their cloaca, this occurs during a cloacal kiss in most birds. Birds that mate using this method touch their cloacae together, in species for only a few seconds. The reproductive system must be re-engorged before the season of each species. Such regeneration usually takes about a month, birds generally produce one batch of eggs per year, but they will produce another if the first is taken away. For some birds, such as ostriches, cassowaries, kiwi, geese, and some species of swans and ducks, the males do not use the cloaca for reproduction, in those, the penis helps ensure water does not wash away the males sperm during copulation. One study has looked into birds that use their cloaca for cooling, among fish, a true cloaca is present only in elasmobranchs and lobe-finned fishes. In lampreys and in some ray-finned fishes, part of the remains in the adult to receive the urinary and reproductive ducts. In chimaeras and most teleosts, however, all three openings are entirely separated, with a few exceptions noted below, mammals have no cloacae. Even in those that have one, the cloaca is partially subdivided into regions for the anus. The monotremes possess a true cloaca, in marsupials, the genital tract is separate from the anus, but a trace of the original cloaca does remain externally. Unlike other marsupials, marsupial moles have a cloaca, a fact that has been argued against a marsupial identity for these mammals. Most adult placental mammals have no remaining trace of the cloaca, however, the tenrecs and golden moles, small placental mammals native to Africa, as well as some shrews retain a cloaca as adults. Being placental animals, humans only have a cloaca, which is split up into separate tracts during the development of the urinary. However, a few human congenital disorders result in persons being born with a cloaca, including persistent cloaca, some species have modified cloacae for increased gas exchange. This is where reproductive activity occurs, some turtles, especially those specialized in diving, are highly reliant on cloacal respiration during dives
9.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
10.
Ireland
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Ireland is an island in the North Atlantic. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, Ireland is the second-largest island of the British Isles, the third-largest in Europe, and the twentieth-largest on Earth. Politically, Ireland is divided between the Republic of Ireland, which covers five-sixths of the island, and Northern Ireland, in 2011, the population of Ireland was about 6.4 million, ranking it the second-most populous island in Europe after Great Britain. Just under 4.6 million live in the Republic of Ireland, the islands geography comprises relatively low-lying mountains surrounding a central plain, with several navigable rivers extending inland. The island has lush vegetation, a product of its mild, thick woodlands covered the island until the Middle Ages. As of 2013, the amount of land that is wooded in Ireland is about 11% of the total, there are twenty-six extant mammal species native to Ireland. The Irish climate is moderate and classified as oceanic. As a result, winters are milder than expected for such a northerly area, however, summers are cooler than those in Continental Europe. Rainfall and cloud cover are abundant, the earliest evidence of human presence in Ireland is dated at 10,500 BC. Gaelic Ireland had emerged by the 1st century CE, the island was Christianised from the 5th century onward. Following the Norman invasion in the 12th century, England claimed sovereignty over Ireland, however, English rule did not extend over the whole island until the 16th–17th century Tudor conquest, which led to colonisation by settlers from Britain. In the 1690s, a system of Protestant English rule was designed to materially disadvantage the Catholic majority and Protestant dissenters, with the Acts of Union in 1801, Ireland became a part of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland saw much civil unrest from the late 1960s until the 1990s and this subsided following a political agreement in 1998. In 1973 the Republic of Ireland joined the European Economic Community while the United Kingdom, Irish culture has had a significant influence on other cultures, especially in the fields of literature. Alongside mainstream Western culture, an indigenous culture exists, as expressed through Gaelic games, Irish music. The culture of the island shares many features with that of Great Britain, including the English language, and sports such as association football, rugby, horse racing. The name Ireland derives from Old Irish Eriu and this in turn derives from Proto-Celtic *Iveriu, which is also the source of Latin Hibernia. Iveriu derives from a root meaning fat, prosperous, during the last glacial period, and up until about 9000 years ago, most of Ireland was covered with ice, most of the time
11.
Courtship display
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A courtship display is a set of display behaviors in which an animal attempts to attract a mate and exhibit their desire to copulate. These behaviors often include ritualized movement, vocalizations, mechanical production, or displays of beauty, strength. In most species, the male is the sex that initiates courtship displays in pre-copulatory sexual selection, performing a display allows the male to present his traits or abilities to a female. Mate choice, in context, is driven by females. Direct or indirect benefits are often key deciding factors in which males get to copulate, direct benefits can be seen due to the expression of preference. Females can raise their own if they prefer to respond to particular types of signals, independent of costs. For example, choosing to mate with males that produce more localized signals would incur less of an investment for a female as she searches for a mate. On the other hand, females can put in more energy towards this process, with this, the males being chosen may impose lower costs on the female or even provide more in terms of material or offspring contributions. Indirect benefits are benefits that may not directly affect the parents fitness and this stimulation, along with many other factors, results in subsequent copulation or rejection. In some species, males initiate courtship rituals only after mounting the female, courtship may even continue after copulation has been completed. In this systems, the ability of the female to choose their mates is limited and this process, known as copulatory courtship, is prevalent in many insect species. Female courtship display is common in nature as a female would have to invest a lot of energy into both exaggerated traits and in their energetically expensive gametes. However, situations in males are the sexually selective sex in a species do occur in nature. Male choice in reproduction can arise if males are the sex in a species that are in supply, for example. This could arise in mating systems where reproducing comes at an energy cost to males, such energy costs can include the effort associated in obtaining nuptial gifts for the female or performing long courtship or copulatory behaviors. An added cost from these time and energy investment may come in the form of increased mortality rates. In pipefish, females use a temporary ornament, a striped pattern, in this case, the female of a species developed a sexually selected signal which serves a dual function of being both attractive to mates and deterring rivals. Many species of animals engage in some type of display to attract a mate, such as dancing
12.
Tadpole
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A tadpole is the larval stage in the life cycle of an amphibian, particularly that of a frog or toad. They are usually wholly aquatic, though some species have tadpoles that are terrestrial, when first hatched from the egg they have a more or less globular body, a laterally compressed tail and internal or external gills. As they grow they undergo metamorphosis, during which process they grow limbs, develop lungs, most tadpoles are herbivorous and during metamorphosis the mouth and internal organs are rearranged to prepare for an adult carnivorous lifestyle. Having no hard parts, it might be expected that fossil tadpoles would not exist, however, traces of biofilms have been preserved and fossil tadpoles have been found dating back to the Miocene. Tadpoles are eaten in parts of the world and are mentioned in folk tales. The name tadpole is from Middle English taddepol, made up of the elements tadde, toad, similarly, pollywog / polliwog is from Middle English polwygle, made up of the same pol, head, and wiglen, to wiggle. Tadpoles are young amphibians that live in the water, though a few tadpoles are semi-terrestrial and terrestrial. During the tadpole stage of the life cycle, most respire by means of autonomous external or internal gills. They do not usually have arms or legs until the transition to adulthood, as a tadpole matures, it most commonly metamorphosizes by gradually growing limbs and then outwardly absorbing its tail by apoptosis. Lungs develop around the time of leg development, and tadpoles late in development will often be found near the surface of the water, where they breathe air. During the final stages of external metamorphosis, the mouth changes from a small. The intestines shorten to accommodate the new diet, most tadpoles are herbivorous, subsisting on algae and plants. Some species are omnivorous, eating detritus and, when available, tadpoles vary greatly in size, both during their development and between species. For example, in a family, Megophryidae, length of late-stage tadpoles varies between 33 millimetres and 106 millimetres. The tadpoles of Pseudis paradoxa grow to 25 centimetres, the largest of any frog, despite their soft-bodied nature and lack of mineralised hard parts, fossil tadpoles have been recovered from Upper Miocene strata. They are preserved by virtue of biofilms, with more robust structures preserved as a carbon film, in Miocene fossils from Libros, Spain, the brain case is preserved in calcium carbonate, and the nerve cord in calcium phosphate. Other parts of the tadpoles bodies exist as organic remains and bacterial biofilms, tadpole remains with telltale external gills are also known from several of the Labyrinthodont groups. Some tadpoles are used as food, tadpoles of megophryid frog Oreolalax rhodostigmatus are particularly large, more than 10 cm in length, and are collected for human consumption in China
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