|
Chaerephon Jobimena
''Chaerephon jobimena'', commonly known as the black and red free-tailed bat, is a species of bat in the family Molossidae. It is endemic to western Madagascar. With a forearm length of 45 to 48 mm (1.8 to 1.9 in), ''C. jobimena'' is somewhat larger than other Malagasy bats assigned to ''Chaerephon'', but similar in size to ''Tadarida aegyptiaca'' (see below). Habitat The known habitats of the species are tropical dry deciduous forest and spiny forest at altitudes from 50 to 870 m. It roosts in trees as well as in houses and other buildings, but has not been found to commonly roost in caves. Taxonomy Although currently listed as a member of the genus ''Chaerephon'', whose members it resembles morphologically, ''C. jobimenas closest relatives based on molecular evidence are '' Tadarida aegyptiaca'' of Africa and southwest Asia, and ''Tadarida brasiliensis'' of the Americas, which form a clade believed to be about 9.8 million years old. ''C. jobimena'' and ''T. aegyptiaca'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steven M
Stephen or Steven is a common English first name. It is particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen ( grc-gre, Στέφανος ), an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; he is widely regarded as the first martyr (or "protomartyr") of the Christian Church. In English, Stephen is most commonly pronounced as ' (). The name, in both the forms Stephen and Steven, is often shortened to Steve or Stevie. The spelling as Stephen can also be pronounced which is from the Greek original version, Stephanos. In English, the female version of the name is Stephanie. Many surnames are derived from the first name, including Stephens, Stevens, Stephenson, and Stevenson, all of which mean "Stephen's (son)". In modern times the name has sometimes been given with intentionally non-standard spelling, such as Stevan or Stevon. A common variant of the name used in English is Stephan ; related names that have found some curr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Convergent Evolution
Convergent evolution is the independent evolution of similar features in species of different periods or epochs in time. Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last common ancestor of those groups. The cladistic term for the same phenomenon is homoplasy. The recurrent evolution of flight is a classic example, as flying insects, birds, pterosaurs, and bats have independently evolved the useful capacity of flight. Functionally similar features that have arisen through convergent evolution are ''analogous'', whereas '' homologous'' structures or traits have a common origin but can have dissimilar functions. Bird, bat, and pterosaur wings are analogous structures, but their forelimbs are homologous, sharing an ancestral state despite serving different functions. The opposite of convergence is divergent evolution, where related species evolve different traits. Convergent evolution is similar to parallel evo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemic Fauna Of Madagascar
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa and is therefore said to be ''endemic'' to that particular part of the world. An endemic species can be also be referred to as an ''endemism'' or in scientific literature as an ''endemite''. For example '' Cytisus aeolicus'' is an endemite of the Italian flora. '' Adzharia renschi'' was once believed to be an endemite of the Caucasus, but it was later discovered to be a non-indigenous species from South America belonging to a different genus. The extreme opposite of an endemic species is one with a cosmopolitan distribution, having a global or widespread range. A rare alternative term for a species that is endemic is "precinctive", which applies to s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bats Of Africa
Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera.''cheir'', "hand" and πτερόν''pteron'', "wing". With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most birds, flying with their very long spread-out digits covered with a thin membrane or patagium. The smallest bat, and arguably the smallest extant mammal, is Kitti's hog-nosed bat, which is in length, across the wings and in mass. The largest bats are the flying foxes, with the giant golden-crowned flying fox, ''Acerodon jubatus'', reaching a weight of and having a wingspan of . The second largest order of mammals after rodents, bats comprise about 20% of all classified mammal species worldwide, with over 1,400 species. These were traditionally divided into two suborders: the largely fruit-eating megabats, and the echolocating microbats. But more recent evidence has supported dividing the order into Yinpterochiroptera and Yangochirop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chaerephon (bat)
''Chaerephon'' (known as Chaerephon bats or lesser mastiff bats) is a genus of Old World free-tailed bats in the family Molossidae.D.E. Wilson & D.M. Reeder, 2005: Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. Third Edition. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore Molecular sequence data indicates that ''Chaerephon'', ''Mops'' and ''Tadarida'' are not monophyletic taxa. The closest relatives of '' Chaerephon jobimena'' of Madagascar are '' Tadarida aegyptiaca'' of Africa and southwest Asia, and ''Tadarida brasiliensis'' of the Americas, which form a clade believed to be about 9.8 million years old. However, the grouping of ''Chaerephon'' minus ''C. jobimena'' plus ''Mops'' was found to be monophyletic. Species within this genus are: *'' Chaerephon atsinanana''Goodman, S. M., Buccas, W., Naidoo, T., Ratrimomanarivo, F., Taylor, P. J., & Lamb, J. (2010). Patterns of morphological and genetic variation in western Indian Ocean members of the Chaerephon'pum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Bats Of Madagascar
Bats are one of the major components of the indigenous mammalian fauna of Madagascar, in addition to tenrecs, lemurs, euplerid carnivores, and nesomyine rodents. Forty-six bat species have so far been recorded on Madagascar, of which thirty-six occur only on the island. However, new species continue to be discovered, causing the number of species to rise rapidly; for example, Nick Garbutt's ''Mammals of Madagascar'' (2007) listed only 36 species. Most Malagasy bats have their origins in nearby mainland Africa, but on at least three occasions—'' Pipistrellus raceyi'', '' Pteropus rufus'', and the species pair '' Emballonura atrata– E. tiavato''—bats have colonized Madagascar from Asia. Taxonomic classification The following bat genera and families include species found on Madagascar (all species counts are for Madagascar only): *Family Pteropodidae (3 endemic species) **Genus ''Eidolon'' (1 endemic species) **Genus ''Pteropus'' (1 endemic species) **Genus ''Rousettus'' (1 en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IUCN
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. It is involved in data gathering and analysis, research, field projects, advocacy, and education. IUCN's mission is to "influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable". Over the past decades, IUCN has widened its focus beyond conservation ecology and now incorporates issues related to sustainable development in its projects. IUCN does not itself aim to mobilize the public in support of nature conservation. It tries to influence the actions of governments, business and other stakeholders by providing information and advice and through building partnerships. The organization is best known to the wider ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Least Concern
A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. They do not qualify as threatened, near threatened, or (before 2001) conservation dependent. 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, assessment of its risk of extinction based on its distribution or population status. Evaluation Since 2001 the category has had the abbreviation "LC", following the IUCN 2001 Categories & Criteria (version 3.1). Before 2001 "least concern" was a subcategory of the "Lower Risk" category and assigned the code "LR/lc" or lc. Around 20% of least concern taxa (3261 of 15636) in the IUCN database still use the code "LR/lc", which indicates they have not been re-evaluate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monophyletic
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic groups are typically characterised by shared derived characteristics ( synapomorphies), which distinguish organisms in the clade from other organisms. An equivalent term is holophyly. The word "mono-phyly" means "one-tribe" in Greek. Monophyly is contrasted with paraphyly and polyphyly as shown in the second diagram. A ''paraphyletic group'' consists of all of the descendants of a common ancestor minus one or more monophyletic groups. A '' polyphyletic group'' is characterized by convergent features or habits of scientific interest (for example, night-active primates, fruit trees, aquatic insects). The features by which a polyphyletic group is differentiated from others are not inherited from a common ancestor. These definitions have tak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tadarida
The genus ''Tadarida'' has 9 or more species of free-tailed bats divided into two subgenera, with the first of these containing seven species spread across the Old World (including southern Europe and North Africa, large parts of southern Asia, and India right across to Japan). Four species occur exclusively in Africa including Madagascar while two more species occur in central Papua New Guinea, and western and southern Australia, respectively. The relatively well-known species '' T. teniotis'', which occurs in southern Europe and North Africa, the Middle East, and across southern Asia to Japan, is known to fly often during the late afternoon, where it hawks for insects alongside swifts (Apodidae), swallows, and martins (Hirundinidae). The other subgenus contains the widespread New World single species '' T. brasiliensis'' (subgenus ''Rhizomops''), which ranges from the southern United States and the West Indies to Chile and Argentina. This species is noted for its massive mater ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mops (bat)
''Mops'' (mastiff bats or free-tailed bats) is a genus of bats in the family Molossidae. Molecular sequence data indicates that ''Mops'' and ''Chaerephon'' are not monophyletic taxa. However, the grouping of ''Chaerephon'' and ''Mops'' was found to be monophyletic when excluding ''C. jobimena''. Species within this genus are:Simmons, 2005, pp. 441–444; Stanley, 2008 Genus ''Mops'' - greater mastiff bats *Subgenus '' Xiphonycteris'' ** Spurrell's free-tailed bat, ''Mops spurrelli'' ** Dwarf free-tailed bat, ''Mops nanulus'' ** Peterson's free-tailed bat, ''Mops petersoni'' ** Sierra Leone free-tailed bat, ''Mops brachypterus'' ** Bakari's free-tailed bat, ''Mops bakarii'' ** Railer bat, ''Mops thersites'' *Subgenus ''Mops MOPS (3-(''N''-morpholino)propanesulfonic acid) is a buffer introduced in the 1960s, one of the twenty Good's buffers. It is a structural analog to MES, and like MES, its structure contains a morpholine ring. HEPES is a similar pH buffering ...'' ** ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parallel Evolution
Parallel evolution is the similar development of a trait in distinct species that are not closely related, but share a similar original trait in response to similar evolutionary pressure.Zhang, J. and Kumar, S. 1997Detection of convergent and parallel evolution at the amino acid sequence level. ''Mol. Biol. Evol.'' 14, 527-36. Parallel vs. convergent evolution Given a particular trait that occurs in each of two lineages descended from a specified ancestor, it is possible in theory to define parallel and convergent evolutionary trends strictly, and distinguish them clearly from one another. However the criteria for defining convergent as opposed to parallel evolution often are unclear in practice, so that arbitrary diagnosis is common in some cases. When two species are similar in a particular character, evolution is defined as parallel if the ancestors shared that similarity; if they did not, the evolution of that character in those species is defined as convergent. However, thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Endemic Fauna Of Madagascar")
