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Common Starfish
The common starfish, common sea star or sugar starfish (''Asterias rubens'') is the most common and familiar starfish in the north-east Atlantic. Belonging to the family Asteriidae, it has five arms and usually grows to between 10–30 cm across, although larger specimens (up to 52 cm across) are known. The common starfish is usually orange or brownish in color, and sometimes violet; specimens found in deeper waters are pale. The common starfish is found on rocky and gravelly substrates where it feeds on mollusks and other Benthos, benthic invertebrates. Description The common starfish normally has five arms, broad at their base and gradually tapering to a point at their tips, which are often turned up slightly. There is a line of short white spines running along the centre of the aboral (upper) surface of the arms with low, soft mounds called papulae on either side. The oral (lower) surfaces of the arms have rows of small tube feet, used in locomotion and feeding. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his Nobility#Ennoblement, ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin; his name is rendered in Latin as and, after his 1761 ennoblement, as . Linnaeus was born in Råshult, the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published the first edition of his ' in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barnacle
A barnacle is a type of arthropod constituting the subclass Cirripedia in the subphylum Crustacea, and is hence related to crabs and lobsters. Barnacles are exclusively marine, and tend to live in shallow and tidal waters, typically in erosive settings. They are sessile (nonmobile) and most are suspension feeders, but those in infraclass Rhizocephala are highly specialized parasites on crustaceans. They have four nektonic (active swimming) larval stages. Around 1,000 barnacle species are currently known. The name is Latin, meaning "curl-footed". The study of barnacles is called cirripedology. Description Barnacles are encrusters, attaching themselves temporarily to a hard substrate or a symbiont such as a whale (whale barnacles), a sea snake (''Platylepas ophiophila''), or another crustacean, like a crab or a lobster (Rhizocephala). The most common among them, "acorn barnacles" (Sessilia), are sessile where they grow their shells directly onto the substrate. Pedunculat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orchitophrya Stellarum
''Orchitophrya stellarum'' is a species of single-celled marine ciliates, a member of the class Oligohymenophorea. It is found living freely in the north Atlantic and Pacific Oceans but is also parasitic, being found inside the gonads of starfish. Biology ''Orchitophrya stellarum'' tolerates a sea temperature range of between and and a salinity range of between 2 and at least 30 parts per thousand of salt equivalent. The lower the temperature, the lower the acceptable level of salinity. Growth is most rapid at 24 °C. It is a facultative parasite of sea stars in the Asteriidae family. It seems to be able to survive in the open sea indefinitely as long as there is a supply of bacteria and tissue detritus on which it can feed. Parasitism ''Orchitophrya stellarum'' is often associated with sea stars and other invertebrates, living on their outer surface and feeding on sloughed-off epidermal tissue. It only appears to become parasitic when the male host starfish has ripe gona ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protozoan
Protozoa (singular: protozoan or protozoon; alternative plural: protozoans) are a group of single-celled eukaryotes, either free-living or parasitic, that feed on organic matter such as other microorganisms or organic tissues and debris. Historically, protozoans were regarded as "one-celled animals", because they often possess animal-like behaviours, such as motility and predation, and lack a cell wall, as found in plants and many algae. When first introduced by Georg Goldfuss (originally spelled Goldfuß) in 1818, the taxon Protozoa was erected as a class within the Animalia, with the word 'protozoa' meaning "first animals". In later classification schemes it was elevated to a variety of higher ranks, including phylum, subkingdom and kingdom, and sometimes included within Protoctista or Protista. The approach of classifying Protozoa within the context of Animalia was widespread in the 19th and early 20th century, but not universal. By the 1970s, it became usual to require ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ciliate
The ciliates are a group of alveolates characterized by the presence of hair-like organelles called cilia, which are identical in structure to eukaryotic flagella, but are in general shorter and present in much larger numbers, with a different undulating pattern than flagella. Cilia occur in all members of the group (although the peculiar Suctoria only have them for part of their life cycle) and are variously used in swimming, crawling, attachment, feeding, and sensation. Ciliates are an important group of protists, common almost anywhere there is water—in lakes, ponds, oceans, rivers, and soils. About 4,500 unique free-living species have been described, and the potential number of extant species is estimated at 27,000–40,000. Included in this number are many ectosymbiotic and endosymbiotic species, as well as some obligate and opportunistic parasites. Ciliate species range in size from as little as 10 µm in some colpodeans to as much as 4 mm in length in some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops including birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation. Some insects, fish, amphibians, mollusks, crustaceans, cnidarians, echinoderms, and tunicates undergo metamorphosis, which is often accompanied by a change of nutrition source or behavior. Animals can be divided into species that undergo complete metamorphosis (" holometaboly"), incomplete metamorphosis (" hemimetaboly"), or no metamorphosis (" ametaboly"). Scientific usage of the term is technically precise, and it is not applied to general aspects of cell growth, including rapid growth spurts. Generally organisms with a larva stage undergo metamorphosis, and during metamorphosis the organism loses larval characteristics. References to "metamorphosis" in mammals are imprecise and only colloquial, but historically idealist ideas of transformatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Water Column
A water column is a conceptual column of water from the surface of a sea, river or lake to the bottom sediment.Munson, B.H., Axler, R., Hagley C., Host G., Merrick G., Richards C. (2004).Glossary. ''Water on the Web''. University of Minnesota-Duluth. Retrieved 27 May 2014. Descriptively, the deep sea water column is divided into five parts—'' pelagic zones'' (from Greek πέλαγος (pélagos), 'open sea')—from the surface to below the floor, as follows: '' epipelagic'', from the surface to 200 meters below the surface; '' mesopelagic'', from 200 to 1000 meters below the surface; ''bathypelagic'', from 1000 to 4000 meters below the surface; '' abyssopelagic'', from 4000 meters below the surface to the level sea floor; '' hadopelagic'', depressions and crevices below the level sea floor. The concept of water column is useful since many aquatic phenomena are explained by the incomplete vertical mixing of waters with discrete chemical, physical or biological characteristics. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dioecious
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 dioeci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Purple Common Starfish Out For A Walk
Purple is any of a variety of colors with hue between red and blue. In the RGB color model used in computer and television screens, purples are produced by mixing red and blue light. In the RYB color model historically used by painters, purples are created with a combination of red and blue pigments. In the CMYK color model used in printing, purples are made by combining magenta pigment with either cyan pigment, black pigment, or both. Purple has long been associated with royalty, originally because Tyrian purple dye, made from the mucus secretion of a species of snail, was extremely expensive in antiquity. Purple was the color worn by Roman magistrates; it became the imperial color worn by the rulers of the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, and later by Roman Catholic bishops. Similarly in Japan, the color is traditionally associated with the emperor and aristocracy. According to contemporary surveys in Europe and the United States, purple is the color most oft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Common Sunstar
The common sunstar is a species of sea star (aka starfish) belonging to the family Solasteridae. It is found in the northern parts of both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Distribution The common sunstar is distributed from the Arctic down to the English Channel, in the North Sea, also on both East (from the Arctic to the Gulf of Maine) and Pacific coasts (from Alaska to Puget Sound) of North America. It is also circumboreal, found in Greenland, Iceland, the Barents Sea, Kola Bay, Okhotsk Sea and the White Sea. Habitat The common sunstar is commonly found on rocky bottoms, coarse sand and gravel in the bathyal, infralittoral and circalittoral zone (from low-tide line up to depths of 300 m). It seems to prefer areas of high water movement. Very small sunstars are sometimes found in rock pools. Description It is reddish on top with concentric bands of white, pink, yellow, or dark red, and it is white on the underside. It is covered on top with brushlike spines, with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mytilus Edulis
The blue mussel (''Mytilus edulis''), also known as the common mussel, is a medium-sized edible marine bivalve mollusc in the family Mytilidae, the mussels. Blue mussels are subject to commercial use and intensive aquaculture. A species with a large range, empty shells are commonly found on beaches around the world. Systematics and distribution The ''Mytilus edulis'' complex Systematically blue mussel consists of a group of (at least) three closely related taxa of mussels, known as the ''Mytilus edulis'' complex. Collectively they occupy both coasts of the North Atlantic (including the Mediterranean) and of the North Pacific in temperate to polar waters, as well as coasts of similar nature in the Southern Hemisphere. The distribution of the component taxa has been recently modified as a result of human activity. The taxa can hybridise with each other, if present at the same locality. *''Mytilus edulis'' sensu stricto: Native to the North Atlantic. *''Mytilus galloprovincial ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mussel
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, which are often more or less rounded or oval. The word "mussel" is frequently used to mean the bivalves of the marine family Mytilidae, most of which live on exposed shores in the intertidal zone, attached by means of their strong byssal threads ("beard") to a firm substrate. A few species (in the genus '' Bathymodiolus'') have colonised hydrothermal vents associated with deep ocean ridges. In most marine mussels the shell is longer than it is wide, being wedge-shaped or asymmetrical. 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, including the freshwater pearl mussels. Freshwater mussel specie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
