Louisiana Pinesnake
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Louisiana Pinesnake
The Louisiana pine snake (''Pituophis ruthveni'') is a species of large, nonvenomous, constrictor in the family Colubridae. This powerful snake is notable because of its large eggs and small clutch sizes. The Louisiana pine snake is indigenous to west-central Louisiana and East Texas, where it relies strongly on Baird's pocket gophers for its burrow system and as a food source. The Louisiana pine snake is rarely seen in the wild, and is considered to be one of the rarest snakes in North America. The demise of the species is due to its low fecundity coupled with the extensive loss of suitable habitat - the longleaf pine savannas in the Gulf coastal plain of the southeastern United States. Management activities are being conducted to promote the species' recovery. Taxonomy and etymology The species was first described by Olive Griffith Stull in 1929 as a subspecies of '' P. melanoleucus''. In 1940, the Louisiana pine snake was promoted to the rank of species in another of ...
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Olive Griffith Stull
Olive Griffith Stull (Davis) (February 10, 1905 – June 15, 1969) was an American herpetologist. Stull was born in Rochester, New York. She married Loy Davis in 1930, one year after completing her degree at the University of Michigan. She worked in the field of veterinary medicine and contributed to research in a variety of fields. Her appointments included fellowships at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology and at her alma mater, where she was a student of Alexander Grant Ruthven. She published an important revision of the colubrid snake genus ''Pituophis'',Variations and relationships in the snakes of the genus Pituophis. ''Bulletin of the United States National Museum'' (175): 1-225 and is the author of the species '' Pituophis ruthveni'' whose name honours her professor at Michigan. In a review of her revision in ''Copeia'', Klauber was critical of her indiscriminate acceptance of reported localities of specimens in the genus. Stull also described a subspecies, '' Py ...
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Alexander Grant Ruthven
Alexander Grant Ruthven (April 1, 1882 – January 19, 1971) was a herpetologist, zoologist and the President of the University of Michigan from 1929 to 1951. Biography Alexander Grant Ruthven was born in 1882 in Hull, Iowa. He graduated from Morningside College in 1903. In 1906, he received a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Michigan. He worked as a professor, director of the University Museum, and Dean. He became the President in 1929. As such, he promoted a corporate administrative structure. He also approved of police raids against rum-running, bootleggers at fraternities. He retired in 1951, and died in 1971. He is buried at Forest Hill Cemetery (Ann Arbor, Michigan), Forest Hill Cemetery which is adjacent to the university. The work of Ruthven on the familiar garter snakes, published in 1908, may be regarded as founding an essentially new school of herpetology in the United States. This was a revision of a genus, carried out by the examination of large numbers of s ...
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Piney Woods
The Piney Woods is a temperate coniferous forest terrestrial ecoregion in the Southern United States covering of East Texas, southern Arkansas, western Louisiana, and southeastern Oklahoma. These coniferous forests are dominated by several species of pine as well as hardwoods including hickory and oak. Historically the most dense part of this forest region was the Big Thicket though the lumber industry dramatically reduced the forest concentration in this area and throughout the Piney Woods during the 19th and 20th centuries. The World Wide Fund for Nature considers the Piney Woods to be one of the critically endangered ecoregions of the United States. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines most of this ecoregion as the South Central Plains. Setting The Piney Woods cover a area of eastern Texas, northwestern Louisiana, southwestern Arkansas and the southeastern corner of Oklahoma. They are bounded on the east by the Mississippi lowland forests, on the s ...
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Bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. B ...
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Amphibian
Amphibians are tetrapod, four-limbed and ectothermic vertebrates of the Class (biology), class Amphibia. All living amphibians belong to the group Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terrestrial animal, terrestrial, fossorial, arboreal or freshwater aquatic ecosystems. Thus amphibians typically start out as larvae living in water, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this. The young generally undergo metamorphosis from larva with gills to an adult air-breathing form with lungs. Amphibians use their skin as a secondary respiratory surface and some small terrestrial salamanders and frogs lack lungs and rely entirely on their skin. They are superficially similar to reptiles like lizards but, along with mammals and birds, reptiles are amniotes and do not require water bodies in which to breed. With their complex reproductive needs and permeable skins, amphibians are often ecological indicators; in re ...
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Cottontail
Cottontail rabbits are the leporid species in the genus ''Sylvilagus'', found in the Americas. Most ''Sylvilagus'' species have stub tails with white undersides that show when they retreat, giving them their characteristic name. However, this feature is not present in all cottontails nor is it unique to the genus. The genus is widely distributed across North America, Central America and northern and central South America, though most species are confined to some particular regions. Most species live in nests called forms, and all have altricial young. An adult female averages three litters per year, which can occur in any season; occurrence, and litter size depend on several factors including time of the year, weather, and location. The average litter size is four but can range from as few as two to as many as eight, most of whom do not go on to survive to adulthood. Cottontail rabbits show a greater resistance to myxomatosis than European rabbits. Evolution Cottontails ar ...
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Rodent
Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are native to all major land masses except for New Zealand, Antarctica, and several oceanic islands, though they have subsequently been introduced to most of these land masses by human activity. Rodents are extremely diverse in their ecology and lifestyles and can be found in almost every terrestrial habitat, including human-made environments. Species can be arboreal, fossorial (burrowing), saltatorial/richochetal (leaping on their hind legs), or semiaquatic. However, all rodents share several morphological features, including having only a single upper and lower pair of ever-growing incisors. Well-known rodents include mice, rats, squirrels, prairie dogs, porcupines, beavers, guinea pigs, and hamsters. Rabbits, hares, and pikas, whose i ...
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Oviparity
Oviparous animals are animals that lay their eggs, with little or no other embryonic development within the mother. This is the reproductive method of most fish, amphibians, most reptiles, and all pterosaurs, dinosaurs (including birds), and monotremes. In traditional usage, most insects (one being ''Culex pipiens'', or the common house mosquito), molluscs, and arachnids are also described as oviparous. Modes of reproduction The traditional modes of reproduction include oviparity, taken to be the ancestral condition, traditionally where either unfertilised oocytes or fertilised eggs are spawned, and viviparity traditionally including any mechanism where young are born live, or where the development of the young is supported by either parent in or on any part of their body. However, the biologist Thierry Lodé recently divided the traditional category of oviparous reproduction into two modes that he named ovuliparity and (true) oviparity respectively. He distinguished the tw ...
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Sublabial Scale
In reptiles, the sublabial scales, also called lower-labials or infralabials, are those scales that border the mouth opening along the lower jaw. They do not include the median scaleWright AH, Wright AA. 1957. ''Handbook of Snakes''. Comstock Publishing Associates (7th printing, 1985). 1105 pp. . (mental scale). The term ''labial'' originates from ''labium'' (Latin for "lip"), which refers to any lip-like structure. The numbers of these scales present, and sometimes the shapes and sizes, are some of many characteristics used to differentiate species from one another. Related scales * Supralabial scales * Rostral scale * Mental scale See also * Labial scales * Snake scales * Anatomical terms of location Standard anatomical terms of location are used to unambiguously describe the anatomy of animals, including humans. The terms, typically derived from Latin or Greek roots, describe something in its standard anatomical position. This position pro ... References {{Reflist Snake ...
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Supralabial Scale
In reptiles, the supralabial scales, also called upper-labials, are those scales that border the mouth opening along the upper jaw. They do not include the median scaleWright AH, Wright AA. 1957. Handbook of Snakes. Comstock Publishing Associates (7th printing, 1985). 1105 pp. . (rostral scale). The term ''labial'' originates from ''Labium'' (Latin for "lip"), which refers to any lip-like structure. The numbers of these scales present, and sometimes the shapes and sizes, are some of many characteristics used to differentiate species from one another. Related scales * Sublabial scales * Rostral scale * Mental scale See also * Labial scales * Snake scales * Anatomical terms of location Standard anatomical terms of location are used to unambiguously describe the anatomy of animals, including humans. The terms, typically derived from Latin or Greek roots, describe something in its standard anatomical position. This position pro ... References {{Reflist Snake scales ...
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Rostral Scale
The rostral scale, or rostral, in snakes and other scaled reptiles is the median plate on the tip of the snout that borders the mouth opening. Wright AH, Wright AA (1957). ''Handbook of Snakes of the United States and Canada''. Ithaca and London: Comstock Publishing Associates. (7th printing, 1985). 1,105 pp. (in two volumes). . It corresponds to the mental scale in the lower jaw. The term pertains to the rostrum, or nose. In snakes, the shape and size of this scale is one of many characteristics used to differentiate species from one another. Related scales *Nasorostral scale *Mental scale *Labial scales See also *Snake scales *Anatomical terms of location Standard anatomical terms of location are used to unambiguously describe the anatomy of animals, including humans. The terms, typically derived from Latin or Greek roots, describe something in its standard anatomical position. This position pro ... References {{Reflist Snake scales ...
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Ventral Scales
In snakes, the ventral scales or gastrosteges are the enlarged and transversely elongated scales that extend down the underside of the body from the neck to the anal scale. When counting them, the first is the anteriormost ventral scale that contacts the paraventral (lowermost) row of dorsal scales on either side. The anal scale is not counted.Campbell JA, Lamar WW. 2004. The Venomous Reptiles of the Western Hemisphere. 2 volumes. Comstock Publishing Associates, Ithaca and London. 870 pp. 1500 plates. . Related scales * Preventral scales * Anal scale * Subcaudal scales * Paraventral scales See also * Snake scale Snakes, like other reptiles, have skin covered in scale (zoology), scales.Boulenger, George A. 1890 The Fauna of British India. p. 1 Snakes are entirely covered with scales or scutes of various shapes and sizes, known as snakeskin as a whole. A ... References {{Reflist Snake scales ...
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