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Gorgonia Ventalina
''Gorgonia ventalina'', the common sea fan and purple sea fan, is a species of sea fan, an octocoral in the family Gorgoniidae. It is found in the western Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Description ''G. ventalina'' is a fan-shaped colonial coral with several main branches and a latticework of linking smaller branches. The skeleton is composed of calcite and gorgonion, a collagen-like compound. The calyces in which the polyps are embedded are in two rows along the branches. Many of the smaller branches are compressed in the plane of the fan, which distinguishes this species from the Venus sea fan (''Gorgonia flabellum''). It often has small accessory fans growing out sideways from the main fan. It grows to 1.5 m (5 ft) tall and is variable in colour, being whitish, yellow, or pale purple. The main branches are often purple and the fan is orientated at right angles to the current. Distribution and habitat The purple sea fan is found in the western Atlantic a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné 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". 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 the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symbiosis
Symbiosis (from Greek , , "living together", from , , "together", and , bíōsis, "living") is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasitic. The organisms, each termed a symbiont, must be of different species. In 1879, Heinrich Anton de Bary defined it as "the living together of unlike organisms". The term was subject to a century-long debate about whether it should specifically denote mutualism, as in lichens. Biologists have now abandoned that restriction. Symbiosis can be obligatory, which means that one or more of the symbionts depend on each other for survival, or facultative (optional), when they can generally live independently. Symbiosis is also classified by physical attachment. When symbionts form a single body it is called conjunctive symbiosis, while all other arrangements are called disjunctive symbiosis."symbiosis." Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salinity
Salinity () is the saltiness or amount of salt dissolved in a body of water, called saline water (see also soil salinity). It is usually measured in g/L or g/kg (grams of salt per liter/kilogram of water; the latter is dimensionless and equal to ‰). Salinity is an important factor in determining many aspects of the chemistry of natural waters and of biological processes within it, and is a thermodynamic state variable that, along with temperature and pressure, governs physical characteristics like the density and heat capacity of the water. A contour line of constant salinity is called an ''isohaline'', or sometimes ''isohale''. Definitions Salinity in rivers, lakes, and the ocean is conceptually simple, but technically challenging to define and measure precisely. Conceptually the salinity is the quantity of dissolved salt content of the water. Salts are compounds like sodium chloride, magnesium sulfate, potassium nitrate, and sodium bicarbonate which dissolve into ions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epizootic
In epizoology, an epizootic (from Greek: ''epi-'' upon + ''zoon'' animal) is a disease event in a nonhuman animal population analogous to an epidemic in humans. An epizootic may be restricted to a specific locale (an "outbreak"), general (an "epizootic"), or widespread ("panzootic"). High population density is a major contributing factor to epizootics. Aquaculture is an industry sometimes plagued by disease because of the large number of fish confined to a small area. Defining an epizootic can be subjective; it is based upon the number of new cases in a given animal population, during a given period, and must be judged to be a rate that substantially exceeds what is expected based on recent experience (''i.e.'' a sharp elevation in the incidence rate). Because it is based on what is "expected" or thought normal, a few cases of a very rare disease (like a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy outbreak in a cervid population) might be classified as an "epizootic", while many ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gall
Galls (from the Latin , 'oak-apple') or ''cecidia'' (from the Greek , anything gushing out) are a kind of swelling growth on the external tissues of plants, fungi, or animals. Plant galls are abnormal outgrowths of plant tissues, similar to benign tumors or warts in animals. They can be caused by various parasites, from viruses, fungi and bacteria, to other plants, insects and mites. Plant galls are often highly organized structures so that the cause of the gall can often be determined without the actual agent being identified. This applies particularly to some insect and mite plant galls. The study of plant galls is known as cecidology. In human pathology, a gall is a raised sore on the skin, usually caused by chafing or rubbing. Causes of plant galls Insects and mites Insect galls are the highly distinctive plant structures formed by some herbivorous insects as their own microhabitats. They are plant tissue which is controlled by the insect. Galls act as both the habitat a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aspergillosis
Aspergillosis is a fungal infection of usually the lungs, caused by the genus ''Aspergillus'', a common mould that is breathed in frequently from the air around, but does not usually affect most people. It generally occurs in people with lung diseases such as asthma, cystic fibrosis or tuberculosis, or those who have had a stem cell or organ transplant, and those who cannot fight infection because of medications they take such as steroids and some cancer treatments. Rarely, it can affect skin. Aspergillosis occurs in humans, birds and other animals. Aspergillosis occurs in chronic or acute forms which are clinically very distinct. Most cases of acute aspergillosis occur in people with severely compromised immune systems, e.g. those undergoing bone marrow transplantation. Chronic colonization or infection can cause complications in people with underlying respiratory illnesses, such as asthma, cystic fibrosis, sarcoidosis, tuberculosis, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Most ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aspergillus Sydowii
''Aspergillus sydowii'' is a pathogenic fungus that causes several diseases in humans. It has been implicated in the death of sea fan corals (''Gorgonia'' spp.) in the Caribbean Sea. Taxonomy The species was first described in 1913 as ''Sterigmatocystis sydowii'' by Georges Bainier and Auguste Theodore Sartory. Charles Thom and Margaret Brooks Church transferred it to ''Aspergillus'' in 1926. Description When grown in pure culture on agar plates, ''A. sydowii'' produces blue-green colonies with reddish-brown shades. The conidial heads are effuse (spread out), while the stalks of the conidiophores are hyaline (translucent), smooth, and measure up to 500 μm. Swollen cells (vesicles) are spherical or nearly so, and the conidiogenous cells (cells that produce conidia) are biseriate—having phialides that arise from metulae (sterile cells below the phialides). The conidia are echinulate (spiky), roughly spherical, and measure 2.5–4.0 μm in diameter. Habitat an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tritonia Hamnerorum
''Tritonicula hamnerorum'' is a species of dendronotid nudibranch. It is a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Tritoniidae. A number of Caribbean species of ''Tritonia'' were moved to a new genus ''Tritonicula'' in 2020 as a result of an integrative taxonomic study of the family Tritoniidae. Distribution ''Tritonicula hamnerorum'' is found in the Caribbean area with its range extending from the Gulf of Mexico to Curaçao and the Cayman Islands.Rudman, W.B., 2002 (January 20''Tritonia hamnerorum'' Gosliner & Ghiselin, 1987. nSea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney.MolluscaBase eds. (2021)MolluscaBase. ''Tritonicula hamnerorum'' (Gosliner & Ghiselin, 1987).Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species on 2021-01-05 The distribution of ''Tritonicula hamnerorum'' includes Florida, Mexico, Belize, Bahamas, Cayman Islands and Panama. Description The shape of the body is elongate and narrow. Rhinophores are long with branched tips. Rhinophoral sheaths are elevated with an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nudibranch
Nudibranchs () are a group of soft-bodied marine gastropod molluscs which shed their shells after their larval stage. They are noted for their often extraordinary colours and striking forms, and they have been given colourful nicknames to match, such as "clown", "marigold", "splendid", "dancer", "dragon", or "sea rabbit". Currently, about 3,000 valid species of nudibranchs are known.Ocean Portal (2017)A Collage of Nudibranch Colors Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Retrieved 17 April 2018. The word "nudibranch" comes from the Latin "naked" and the Ancient Greek () "gills". Nudibranchs are often casually called sea slugs, as they are a family of opistobranchs (sea slugs), within the phylum Mollusca (molluscs), but many sea slugs belong to several taxonomic groups which are not closely related to nudibranchs. A number of these other sea slugs, such as the photosynthetic ''Sacoglossa'' and the colourful Aglajidae, are often confused with nudibranchs. Distribut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secondary Metabolite
Secondary metabolites, also called specialised metabolites, toxins, secondary products, or natural products, are organic compounds produced by any lifeform, e.g. bacteria, fungi, animals, or plants, which are not directly involved in the normal growth, development, or reproduction of the organism. Instead, they generally mediate ecological interactions, which may produce a selective advantage for the organism by increasing its survivability or fecundity. Specific secondary metabolites are often restricted to a narrow set of species within a phylogenetic group. Secondary metabolites often play an important role in plant defense against herbivory and other interspecies defenses. Humans use secondary metabolites as medicines, flavourings, pigments, and recreational drugs. The term secondary metabolite was first coined by Albrecht Kossel, a 1910 Nobel Prize laureate for medicine and physiology in 1910. 30 years later a Polish botanist Friedrich Czapek described secondary metabolit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Predation
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the host) and parasitoidism (which always does, eventually). It is distinct from scavenging on dead prey, though many predators also scavenge; it overlaps with herbivory, as seed predators and destructive frugivores are predators. Predators may actively search for or pursue prey or wait for it, often concealed. When prey is detected, the predator assesses whether to attack it. This may involve ambush or pursuit predation, sometimes after stalking the prey. If the attack is successful, the predator kills the prey, removes any inedible parts like the shell or spines, and eats it. Predators are adapted and often highly specialized for hunting, with acute senses such as vision, hearing, or smell. Many predatory animals, both vertebrate and inv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sclerite
A sclerite (Greek , ', meaning "hard") is a hardened body part. In various branches of biology the term is applied to various structures, but not as a rule to vertebrate anatomical features such as bones and teeth. Instead it refers most commonly to the hardened parts of arthropod exoskeletons and the internal spicules of invertebrates such as certain sponges and soft corals. In paleontology, a scleritome is the complete set of sclerites of an organism, often all that is known from fossil invertebrates. Sclerites in combination Sclerites may occur practically isolated in an organism, such as the sting of a cone shell. Also, they can be more or less scattered, such as tufts of defensive sharp, mineralised bristles as in many marine Polychaetes. Or, they can occur as structured, but unconnected or loosely connected arrays, such as the mineral "teeth" in the radula of many Mollusca, the valves of Chitons, the beak of Cephalopod, or the articulated exoskeletons of Arthropoda. When ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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