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Cecropia Pachystachya
''Cecropia pachystachya'', commonly known as Ambay pumpwood, is a species of tree in the family Urticaceae. It is native to Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil where it grows near the edges of moist forests. Description ''Cecropia pachystachya'' is a small evergreen tree growing to a height of about , and a trunk diameter of . The tree has an open structure, with a small number of branches forking at an obtuse angle, and often forms a parasol-like shape. The twigs are hollow and are filled with mucilage, and both twigs and branches exude a mucilaginous sap when damaged. The large leaves are almost circular, and are deeply divided into nine to ten lobes which are separated by gaps of two or three centimetres. The upper surfaces of the leaves are rough and the lower surfaces are felted with pale-coloured hairs. It is a dioecious species, male and female flowers occurring on separate trees. The tree has a mutualistic relationship with ants from the genus '' Azteca'' which protect the tre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auguste Trécul
Auguste Adolphe Lucien Trécul (8 January 1818 in Mondoubleau – 17 October 1896 in Paris) was a French botanist. He studied pharmacy in Paris, and in 1841 became an interne to hospitals. His interests later changed to botany, and in 1848–50, on behalf of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle and the Ministry of Agriculture, he conducted scientific research in North America. In 1866 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences (botany section), and during the following year, was awarded the Légion d'Honneur.Trécul, Auguste-Adolphe-Lucien (1818-1896) IdRef His main research dealt with , |
Tree
In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are usable as lumber or plants above a specified height. In wider definitions, the taller palms, tree ferns, bananas, and bamboos are also trees. Trees are not a taxonomic group but include a variety of plant species that have independently evolved a trunk and branches as a way to tower above other plants to compete for sunlight. The majority of tree species are angiosperms or hardwoods; of the rest, many are gymnosperms or softwoods. Trees tend to be long-lived, some reaching several thousand years old. Trees have been in existence for 370 million years. It is estimated that there are some three trillion mature trees in the world. A tree typically has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground by the trunk. This trunk typically ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Urticaceae
The Urticaceae are a family, the nettle family, of flowering plants. The family name comes from the genus ''Urtica''. The Urticaceae include a number of well-known and useful plants, including nettles in the genus ''Urtica'', ramie (''Boehmeria nivea''), māmaki ('' Pipturus albidus''), and ajlai ('' Debregeasia saeneb''). The family includes about 2,625 species, grouped into 53 genera according to the database of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Christenhusz and Byng (2016). The largest genera are '' Pilea'' (500 to 715 species), '' Elatostema'' (300 species), ''Urtica'' (80 species), and '' Cecropia'' (75 species). '' Cecropia'' contains many myrmecophytes. Urticaceae species can be found worldwide, apart from the polar regions. Description Urticaceae species can be shrubs (e.g. '' Pilea''), lianas, herbs (e.g. ''Urtica'', '' Parietaria''), or, rarely, trees ('' Dendrocnide'', '' Cecropia''). Their leaves are usually entire and bear stipules. Urticating (stinging) hai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mucilage
Mucilage is a thick, gluey substance produced by nearly all plants and some microorganisms. These microorganisms include protists which use it for their locomotion. The direction of their movement is always opposite to that of the secretion of mucilage. It is a polar glycoprotein and an exopolysaccharide. Mucilage in plants plays a role in the storage of water and food, seed germination, and thickening membranes. Cacti (and other succulents) and flax seeds are especially rich sources of mucilage. Occurrence Exopolysaccharides are the most stabilising factor for microaggregates and are widely distributed in soils. Therefore, exopolysaccharide-producing "soil algae" play a vital role in the ecology of the world's soils. The substance covers the outside of, for example, unicellular or filamentous green algae and cyanobacteria. Amongst the green algae especially, the group Volvocales are known to produce exopolysaccharides at a certain point in their life cycle. It occurs in alm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dioecy
Dioecy (; ; adj. dioecious , ) is a characteristic of a species, meaning that it has distinct individual organisms (unisexual) that produce male or female gametes, either directly (in animals) or indirectly (in seed plants). Dioecious reproduction is biparental reproduction. Dioecy has costs, since only about half the population directly produces offspring. It is one method for excluding self-fertilization and promoting allogamy (outcrossing), and thus tends to reduce the expression of recessive deleterious mutations present in a population. Plants have several other methods of preventing self-fertilization including, for example, dichogamy, herkogamy, and self-incompatibility. Dioecy is a dimorphic sexual system, alongside gynodioecy and androdioecy. In zoology In zoology, dioecious species may be opposed to hermaphroditic species, meaning that an individual is either male or female, in which case the synonym gonochory is more often used. Most animal species are dioecious (gon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mutualism (biology)
Mutualism describes the ecological interaction between two or more species where each species has a net benefit. Mutualism is a common type of ecological interaction. Prominent examples include most vascular plants engaged in mutualistic interactions with mycorrhizae, flowering plants being pollinated by animals, vascular plants being dispersed by animals, and corals with zooxanthellae, among many others. Mutualism can be contrasted with interspecific competition, in which each species experiences ''reduced'' fitness, and exploitation, or parasitism, in which one species benefits at the expense of the other. The term ''mutualism'' was introduced by Pierre-Joseph van Beneden in his 1876 book ''Animal Parasites and Messmates'' to mean "mutual aid among species". Mutualism is often conflated with two other types of ecological phenomena: cooperation and symbiosis. Cooperation most commonly refers to increases in fitness through within-species (intraspecific) interactions, althoug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Azteca (genus)
''Azteca'' is a strictly Neotropical genus of ants in the subfamily Dolichoderinae. The genus is very diverse and contains around 84 extant species and two fossil species. They are essentially arboreal and many species have mutualistic associations with particular plant species, where the genus ''Cecropia'' presents the most conspicuous association. In the Brazilian Amazonia, ''Azteca'' species are associated with species of ''Codonanthopsis''. Species *''Azteca adrepens'' Forel, 1911 *'' Azteca aesopus'' Forel, 1908 *'' Azteca alfari'' Emery, 1893 *†''Azteca alpha'' Wilson, 1985 *''Azteca andreae'' Guerrero, Delabie & Dejean, 2010 *'' Azteca angusticeps'' Emery, 1893 *''Azteca aragua'' Longino, 1991 *'' Azteca aurita'' Emery, 1893 *'' Azteca australis'' Wheeler, 1942 *'' Azteca barbifex'' Forel, 1906 *''Azteca beltii'' Emery, 1893 *''Azteca bequaerti'' Wheeler & Bequaert, 1929 *''Azteca brevicornis'' (Mayr, 1878) *''Azteca brevis'' Forel, 1899 *''Azteca chartifex'' Emery, 18 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbivore
A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthparts adapted to rasping or grinding. Horses and other herbivores have wide flat teeth that are adapted to grinding grass, tree bark, and other tough plant material. A large percentage of herbivores have mutualistic gut flora that help them digest plant matter, which is more difficult to digest than animal prey. This flora is made up of cellulose-digesting protozoans or bacteria. Etymology Herbivore is the anglicized form of a modern Latin coinage, ''herbivora'', cited in Charles Lyell's 1830 ''Principles of Geology''.J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, eds. (2000) ''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. 8, p. 155. Richard Owen employed the anglicized term in an 1854 work on fossil teeth and skeletons. ''Herbivora'' is derived from Latin ''herba' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nectar
Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries or nectarines, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists, which in turn provide herbivore protection. Common nectar-consuming pollinators include mosquitoes, hoverflies, wasps, bees, butterflies and moths, hummingbirds, honeyeaters and bats. Nectar plays a crucial role in the foraging economics and evolution of nectar-eating species; for example, nectar foraging behavior is largely responsible for the divergent evolution of the African honey bee, ''A. m. scutellata'' and the western honey bee. Nectar is an economically important substance as it is the sugar source for honey. It is also useful in agriculture and horticulture because the adult stages of some predatory insects feed on nectar. For example, a number of parasitoid wasps (e.g. the social wasp species ''Apoica flavissima'') rely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pearl Body
A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carbonate (mainly aragonite or a mixture of aragonite and calcite) in minute crystalline form, which has deposited in concentric layers. The ideal pearl is perfectly round and smooth, but many other shapes, known as baroque pearls, can occur. The finest quality of natural pearls have been highly valued as gemstones and objects of beauty for many centuries. Because of this, ''pearl'' has become a metaphor for something rare, fine, admirable and valuable. The most valuable pearls occur spontaneously in the wild, but are extremely rare. These wild pearls are referred to as ''natural'' pearls. ''Cultured'' or ''farmed'' pearls from pearl oysters and freshwater mussels make up the majority of those currently sold. Imitation pearls are also widely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cecropia
''Cecropia'' is a Neotropical genus consisting of 61 recognized species with a highly distinctive lineage of dioecious trees. The genus consists of pioneer trees in the more or less humid parts of the Neotropics, with the majority of the species being myrmecophytic.Berg, Rosselli & Davidson (2005) Berg and Rosselli state that the genus is characterized by some unusual traits: spathes fully enclosing the flower-bearing parts of the inflorescences until anthesis, patches of dense indumentums (trichilia) producing Mullerian (food) at the base of the petiole, and anthers becoming detached at anthesis. ''Cecropia'' is most studied for its ecological role and association with ants. Its classification is controversial; in the past, it has been placed in the Cecropiaceae, Moraceae (the mulberry family), or Urticaceae (the nettle family).Burger (1977) The modern Angiosperm Phylogeny Group system places the "cecropiacean" group in the Urticaceae. The genus is native to the American tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trees Of Argentina
In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are usable as lumber or plants above a specified height. In wider definitions, the taller palms, tree ferns, bananas, and bamboos are also trees. Trees are not a taxonomic group but include a variety of plant species that have independently evolved a trunk and branches as a way to tower above other plants to compete for sunlight. The majority of tree species are angiosperms or hardwoods; of the rest, many are gymnosperms or softwoods. Trees tend to be long-lived, some reaching several thousand years old. Trees have been in existence for 370 million years. It is estimated that there are some three trillion mature trees in the world. A tree typically has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground by the trunk. This trunk typically co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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