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Dracophyllum Muscoides
''Dracophyllum muscoides,'' commonly known as cushion inaka, is a small cushion plant in the family ''Ericaceae''. It is endemic to New Zealand and is found only in the South Island in sub-alpine regions. Description ''D. muscoides'' grows into a small cushion just 15 - 50 mm tall, despite its upright branch growth, with many-branched stems and greyish-brown bark; though new growth is a reddish-brown colour. Its leaves grow in a spiral around branches; overlapping and pressing against each other. The olive green leaves are 1 - 3 by 0.3 - 0.8 mm and are contained within 1.5 - 3 by 1.5 - 3 light green sheathes. On the front third of the narrow leaves are tiny teeth, with 5 - 10 per cm. Flowering occurs from December to May, producing small white flowers, each on a sessile terminal inflorescence. The flowers are made up of oval-shaped 1.5 – 4 .5 by 1.5 – 2.0 mm sepals growing out of a 2.0 - 2.5 by 1.5 – 3.5 mm white bell-shaped corolla tube. The corolla tube has 1.0 – 1.5 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (30 June 1817 – 10 December 1911) was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For twenty years he served as director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, succeeding his father, William Jackson Hooker, and was awarded the highest honours of British science. Biography Early years Hooker was born in Halesworth, Suffolk, England. He was the second son of the famous botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker, Regius Professor of Botany, and Maria Sarah Turner, eldest daughter of the banker Dawson Turner and sister-in-law of Francis Palgrave. From age seven, Hooker attended his father's lectures at Glasgow University, taking an early interest in plant distribution and the voyages of explorers like Captain James Cook. He was educated at the Glasgow High School and went on to study medicine at Glasgow University, graduating M.D. in 1839. This degree qualified him for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morphology (biology)
Morphology is a branch of biology dealing with the study of the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features. This includes aspects of the outward appearance (shape, structure, colour, pattern, size), i.e. external morphology (or eidonomy), as well as the form and structure of the internal parts like bones and organs, i.e. internal morphology (or anatomy). This is in contrast to physiology, which deals primarily with function. Morphology is a branch of life science dealing with the study of gross structure of an organism or taxon and its component parts. History The etymology of the word "morphology" is from the Ancient Greek (), meaning "form", and (), meaning "word, study, research". While the concept of form in biology, opposed to function, dates back to Aristotle (see Aristotle's biology), the field of morphology was developed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1790) and independently by the German anatomist and physiologist Karl Friedrich Burdach ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemism
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cladogram
A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to descendants, nor does it show how much they have changed, so many differing evolutionary trees can be consistent with the same cladogram. A cladogram uses lines that branch off in different directions ending at a clade, a group of organisms with a last common ancestor. There are many shapes of cladograms but they all have lines that branch off from other lines. The lines can be traced back to where they branch off. These branching off points represent a hypothetical ancestor (not an actual entity) which can be inferred to exhibit the traits shared among the terminal taxa above it. This hypothetical ancestor might then provide clues about the order of evolution of various features, adaptation, and other evolutionary narratives about ance ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plastid
The plastid (Greek: πλαστός; plastós: formed, molded – plural plastids) is a membrane-bound organelle found in the Cell (biology), cells of plants, algae, and some other eukaryotic organisms. They are considered to be intracellular endosymbiotic cyanobacteria. Examples include chloroplasts (used for photosynthesis), chromoplasts (used for pigment synthesis and storage), and leucoplasts (non-pigmented plastids that can sometimes differentiate). The event which led to permanent endosymbiosis in the Archaeplastida clade (of Embryophyte, land plants, red algae, and green algae) probably occurred with a cyanobiont (a symbiotic cyanobacteria) related to the genus ''Gloeomargarita lithophora, Gloeomargarita'', around 1.5 billion years ago. A later primary endosymbiosis event occurred in photosynthetic ''Paulinella'' amoeboids about 90–140 million years ago. This plastid belongs to the "PS-clade" (of the cyanobacteria genera ''Prochlorococcus'' and ''Synechococcus''). Chloroplas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richea
''Richea'' is a genus of 11 species of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae. Nine of the species are endemic to Tasmania and the other two are endemic to the south-east of the Australian mainland. Species include: *'' Richea acerosa'' (Lindl.) F.Muell. *'' Richea alpina'' Menadue *'' Richea continentis'' B.L.Burtt – Candle heath *'' Richea dracophylla'' R.Br. – Dragonleaf richea *'' Richea gunnii'' Hook.f. – Gunn's candle heath *'' Richea milliganii'' (Hook.f.) F.Muell. – Milligan's candle heath or nodding candle heath *'' Richea pandanifolia'' Hook.f. – Pandani or giant grass tree *'' Richea procera'' (F.Muell.) F.Muell. – Lowland richea *''Richea scoparia ''Richea scoparia (formerly known as R. angustifolia)'', is a wide spread Tasmanian endemic plant. The genus '' Richea,'' forms part of the Ericaceae (formerly Epacridaceae) family, which are commonly heath-like shrubs. The name refers to the e ...'' Hook.f. – Scoparia *'' R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polyphyly
A polyphyletic group is an assemblage of organisms or other evolving elements that is of mixed evolutionary origin. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as homoplasies, which are explained as a result of convergent evolution. The arrangement of the members of a polyphyletic group is called a polyphyly .. ource for pronunciation./ref> It is contrasted with monophyly and paraphyly. For example, the biological characteristic of warm-bloodedness evolved separately in the ancestors of mammals and the ancestors of birds; "warm-blooded animals" is therefore a polyphyletic grouping. Other examples of polyphyletic groups are algae, C4 photosynthetic plants, and edentates. Many taxonomists aim to avoid homoplasies in grouping taxa together, with a goal to identify and eliminate groups that are found to be polyphyletic. This is often the stimulus for major revisions of the classification schemes. Researchers concerned more with ecology than with system ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paraphyly
In taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In contrast, a monophyletic group (a clade) includes a common ancestor and ''all'' of its descendants. The terms are commonly used in phylogenetics (a subfield of biology) and in the tree model of historical linguistics. Paraphyletic groups are identified by a combination of synapomorphies and symplesiomorphies. If many subgroups are missing from the named group, it is said to be polyparaphyletic. The term was coined by Willi Hennig to apply to well-known taxa like Reptilia ( reptiles) which, as commonly named and traditionally defined, is paraphyletic with respect to mammals and birds. Reptilia contains the last common ancestor of reptiles and all descendants of that ancestor, including all extant reptiles as well as the extinct synapsids, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paraphyletic Group
In taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In contrast, a monophyletic group (a clade) includes a common ancestor and ''all'' of its descendants. The terms are commonly used in phylogenetics (a subfield of biology) and in the tree model of historical linguistics. Paraphyletic groups are identified by a combination of synapomorphies and symplesiomorphies. If many subgroups are missing from the named group, it is said to be polyparaphyletic. The term was coined by Willi Hennig to apply to well-known taxa like Reptilia (reptiles) which, as commonly named and traditionally defined, is paraphyletic with respect to mammals and birds. Reptilia contains the last common ancestor of reptiles and all descendants of that ancestor, including all extant reptiles as well as the extinct synapsids, exc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monophyly
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 taken ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phylogenetic Tree
A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities based upon similarities and differences in their physical or genetic characteristics. All life on Earth is part of a single phylogenetic tree, indicating common ancestry. In a ''rooted'' phylogenetic tree, each node with descendants represents the inferred most recent common ancestor of those descendants, and the edge lengths in some trees may be interpreted as time estimates. Each node is called a taxonomic unit. Internal nodes are generally called hypothetical taxonomic units, as they cannot be directly observed. Trees are useful in fields of biology such as bioinformatics, systematics, and phylogenetics. ''Unrooted'' trees illustrate only the relatedness of the leaf nodes and do not require the ancestral root to b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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