Neopetrosia Subtriangularis
''Neopetrosia subtriangularis'' is a species of marine petrosiid sponges native to the waters off Florida and the Caribbean Sea. They superficially resemble staghorn corals. Taxonomy ''Neopetrosia subtriangularis'' was originally described by the French naturalist Édouard Placide Duchassaing de Fontbressin in 1850 as ''Spongia subtriangularis''. It is classified under the genus ''Neopetrosia'' of the family Petrosiidae in the order Haplosclerida. Description ''Neopetrosia subtriangularis'' superficially resemble the staghorn coral (''Acropora cervicornis'') in appearance. They form clusters of interconnecting solid branches that tend to sprawl along the substrate (repent), though these branches may sometimes be solitary (arising from a flattened base) and erect. The branches are brown, beige, yellow or orange in coloration on the external surfaces, though they may possess a greenish tinge. Internal surfaces are tan to off-white in coloration. They are usually around long an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Édouard Placide Duchassaing De Fontbressin
Édouard Placide Duchassaing de Fontbressin (1819 in Moule, Guadeloupe – 1873 in PĂ©rigueux) was a French naturalist. He is noted for his work in botany and spongiology. A native of Guadeloupe, he studied zoology, geology and medicine in Paris. Afterwards, he returned to Guadeloupe as a physician, spending his free time conducting research of the island's flora. Subsequently, he visited several other islands of the Antilles, eventually relocating as a physician to Santa Marta, Panama (1848), from where he studied the natural history of the isthmus, sending his plant specimens to Wilhelm Gerhard Walpers, a botanist in Berlin (these specimens later became the property of August Grisebach).JSTOR Global Plants biography Around 1850, he obtained a medical degree at [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Acropora Cervicornis
The staghorn coral (''Acropora cervicornis'') is a branching, stony coral with cylindrical branches ranging from a few centimetres to over two metres in length and height. It occurs in back reef and fore reef environments from depth. The upper limit is defined by wave forces, and the lower limit is controlled by suspended sediments and light availability. Fore reef zones at intermediate depths were formerly dominated by extensive single-species stands of staghorn coral until the mid-1980s. This coral exhibits the fastest growth of all known western Atlantic fringe corals, with branches increasing in length by per year. This has been one of the three most important Caribbean corals in terms of its contribution to reef growth and fishery habitat. Distribution Staghorn coral is found throughout the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean islands. This coral occurs in the western Gulf of Mexico, but is absent from U.S. waters in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as Bermuda and t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Zootaxa
''Zootaxa'' is a peer-reviewed scientific mega journal for animal taxonomists. It is published by Magnolia Press (Auckland, New Zealand). The journal was established by Zhi-Qiang Zhang in 2001 and new issues are published multiple times a week. From 2001 to 2020, more than 60,000 new species have been described in the journal accounting for around 25% of all new taxa indexed in The Zoological Record in the last few years. Print and online versions are available. Temporary suspension from JCR The journal exhibited high levels of self-citation and its journal impact factor of 2019 was suspended from ''Journal Citation Reports'' in 2020, a sanction which hit 34 journals in total. Biologist Ross Mounce noted that high levels of self-citation may be inevitable for a journal which publishes a large share of new species classification. Later that year this decision was reversed and it was admitted that levels of self-citation are appropriate considering the large proportion of papers f ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Synalpheus
''Synalpheus'' is a genus of snapping shrimp of the family Alpheidae, presently containing more than 100 species; new ones are described on a regular basis, and the exact number even of described species is disputed. ''Zuzalpheus'' The genus ''Zuzalpheus'' was established for ''S. gambarelloides'', ''S. brooksi'', and their closest relatives, which contain several notably eusocial species. While these do seem to form a clade, it is not fully resolved whether or not they are indeed the sister taxon of all the remaining ''Synalpheus''. However, a detailed cladistic study of morphological characters found well marked differences between the proposed two genera and concluded that the supposed species groups around ''S. biunguiculatus''/''S. coutierei'', ''S. brevicarpus'' and ''S. neomeris'' are neither clearly defined nor, as it seems, monophyletic, while the group separated in ''Zuzalpheus'' was clearly distinct in characters of the minor first walki ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Snapping Shrimp
Alpheidae is a family of caridean snapping shrimp, characterized by having asymmetrical claws, the larger of which is typically capable of producing a loud snapping sound. Other common names for animals in the group are pistol shrimp or alpheid shrimp. The family is diverse and worldwide in distribution, consisting of about 1,119 species within 38 or more genera. The two most prominent genera are ''Alpheus'' and ''Synalpheus'', with species numbering well over 250 and 100, respectively. Most snapping shrimp dig burrows and are common inhabitants of coral reefs, submerged seagrass flats, and oyster reefs. While most genera and species are found in tropical and temperate coastal and marine waters, ''Betaeus'' inhabits cold seas and ''Potamalpheops'' is found only in freshwater caves. When in colonies, the snapping shrimp can interfere with sonar and underwater communication. The shrimp are considered a major source of sound in the ocean. Description The "Pistol Shrimp" grows to o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Eusocial
Eusociality (from Greek εὖ ''eu'' "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping generations within a colony of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and non-reproductive groups. The division of labor creates specialized behavioral groups within an animal society which are sometimes referred to as 'castes'. Eusociality is distinguished from all other social systems because individuals of at least one caste usually lose the ability to perform at least one behavior characteristic of individuals in another caste. Eusocial colonies can be viewed as superorganisms. Eusociality exists in certain insects, crustaceans, and mammals. It is mostly observed and studied in the Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps) and in Blattodea (termites). A colony has caste differences: queens and reproductive males take the roles of the so ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Host (biology)
In biology and medicine, a host is a larger organism that harbours a smaller organism; whether a parasite, parasitic, a mutualism (biology), mutualistic, or a commensalism, commensalist ''guest'' (symbiont). The guest is typically provided with nourishment and shelter. Examples include animals playing host to parasitic worms (e.g. nematodes), cell (biology), cells harbouring pathogenic (disease-causing) viruses, a Fabaceae, bean plant hosting mutualistic (helpful) Rhizobia, nitrogen-fixing bacteria. More specifically in botany, a host plant supplies nutrient, food resources to micropredators, which have an evolutionarily stable strategy, evolutionarily stable relationship with their hosts similar to ectoparasitism. The host range is the collection of hosts that an organism can use as a partner. Symbiosis Symbiosis spans a wide variety of possible relationships between organisms, differing in their permanence and their effects on the two parties. If one of the partners in an ass ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Seagrass
Seagrasses are the only flowering plants which grow in marine environments. There are about 60 species of fully marine seagrasses which belong to four families (Posidoniaceae, Zosteraceae, Hydrocharitaceae and Cymodoceaceae), all in the order Alismatales (in the clade of monocotyledons). Seagrasses evolved from terrestrial plants which recolonised the ocean 70 to 100 million years ago. The name ''seagrass'' stems from the many species with long and narrow leaves, which grow by rhizome extension and often spread across large "meadows" resembling grassland; many species superficially resemble terrestrial grasses of the family Poaceae. Like all autotrophic plants, seagrasses photosynthesize, in the submerged photic zone, and most occur in shallow and sheltered coastal waters anchored in sand or mud bottoms. Most species undergo submarine pollination and complete their life cycle underwater. While it was previously believed this pollination was carried out without pollinators ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Reef
A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes— deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock outcrops, etc.—but there are also reefs such as the coral reefs of tropical waters formed by biotic processes dominated by corals and coralline algae, and artificial reefs such as shipwrecks and other anthropogenic underwater structures may occur intentionally or as the result of an accident, and sometimes have a designed role in enhancing the physical complexity of featureless sand bottoms, to attract a more diverse assemblage of organisms. Reefs are often quite near to the surface, but not all definitions require this. Earth's largest coral reef system is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, at a length of over . Biotic There is a variety of biotic reef types, including oyster reefs and sponge reefs, but the most massive and widely ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sponge Spicule
Spicules are structural elements found in most sponges. The meshing of many spicules serves as the sponge's skeleton and thus it provides structural support and potentially defense against predators. Sponge spicules are made of calcium carbonate or silica. Large spicules visible to the naked eye are referred to as megascleres, while smaller, microscopic ones are termed microscleres. The composition, size, and shape of spicules are major characters in sponge systematics and taxonomy. Overview Sponges are a species-rich clade of the earliest-diverging (most basal) animals. They are distributed globally, with diverse ecologies and functions, and a record spanning at least the entire Phanerozoic. Most sponges produce skeletons formed by spicules, structural elements that develop in a wide variety of sizes and three dimensional shapes. Among the four sub-clades of Porifera, three (Demospongiae, Hexactinellida, and Homoscleromorpha) produce skeletons of amorphous silica and on ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oscule
The osculum (plural "oscula") is an excretory structure in the living sponge, a large opening to the outside through which the current of water exits after passing through the spongocoel. Wastes diffuse into the water and the water is pumped through the osculum carrying away with it the sponge's wastes. Sponges pump large volumes of water: typically a volume of water equal to the sponge's body size is pumped every five seconds. The size of the osculum is regulated by contractile myocytes. Its size, in turn, is one of the factors which determines the amount of water flowing through the sponge Sponges, the members of the phylum Porifera (; meaning 'pore bearer'), are a basal animal clade as a sister of the diploblasts. They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through t .... It can be closed completely in response to excess silt in the water. References Sponge anatomy {{animal-anatomy-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |