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Oligophagy
Oligophagy refers to the eating of only a few specific foods, and to monophagy when restricted to a single food source. The term is usually associated with insect dietary behaviour.''Oligophagy'' on Dictionary.com Accessed on 9 January 2010. Organisms may exhibit narrow or specific oligophagy where the diet is restricted to a very few foods or broad oligophagy where the organism feeds on a wide variety of specific foods but none other.Huffaker & Gutierrez ''Ecological Entomology'', pg 201. , on the contrary, refers to eating a broad spectrum of foods. In the insect world it refers usually to insects that feed on plants belonging to different families. |
Foods
Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism's cells to provide energy, maintain life, or stimulate growth. Different species of animals have different feeding behaviours that satisfy the needs of their unique metabolisms, often evolved to fill a specific ecological niche within specific geographical contexts. Omnivorous humans are highly adaptable and have adapted to obtain food in many different ecosystems. The majority of the food energy required is supplied by the industrial food industry, which produces food with intensive agriculture and distributes it through complex food processing and food distribution systems. This system of conventional agriculture relies heavily on fossil fuels, which means that the food and agricultural ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes and one pair of antennae. Their blood is not totally contained in vessels; some circulates in an open cavity known as the haemocoel. Insects are the most diverse group of animals; they include more than a million described species and represent more than half of all known living organisms. The total number of extant species is estimated at between six and ten million; In: potentially over 90% of the animal life forms on Earth are insects. Insects may be found in nearly all environments, although only a small number of species reside in the oceans, which are dominated by another arthropod group, crustaceans, which recent research has indicated insects are nested within. Nearly all insects hatch from eggs. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polyphagy
Feeding is the process by which organisms, typically animals, obtain food. Terminology often uses either the suffixes -vore, -vory, or -vorous from Latin ''vorare'', meaning "to devour", or -phage, -phagy, or -phagous from Greek φαγεῖν (), meaning "to eat". Evolutionary history The evolution of feeding is varied with some feeding strategies evolving several times in independent lineages. In terrestrial vertebrates, the earliest forms were large amphibious piscivores 400 million years ago. While amphibians continued to feed on fish and later insects, reptiles began exploring two new food types, other tetrapods (carnivory), and later, plants (herbivory). Carnivory was a natural transition from insectivory for medium and large tetrapods, requiring minimal adaptation (in contrast, a complex set of adaptations was necessary for feeding on highly fibrous plant materials). Evolutionary adaptations The specialization of organisms towards specific food sources is one of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yucca Moth
The Prodoxidae are a family of moths, generally small in size and nondescript in appearance. They include species of moderate pest status, such as the currant shoot borer, and others of considerable ecological and evolutionary interest, such as various species of "yucca moths". Description and affinities Prodoxidae are a family of primitive monotrysian Lepidoptera. Some of these small-to-medium-sized moths are day flying, like '' Lampronia capitella'', known to European gardeners as the currant shoot borer. Others occur in Africa and Asia. The other common genera are generally confined to dry areas of the United States. '' Tetragma gei'' feeds on mountain avens (''Geum triflorum'') in the US. '' Greya politella'' lay eggs in the flowers of Saxifragaceae there. '' Prodoxoides asymmetra'' occurs in Chile and Argentina, but all other prodoxid moth genera have a northern distribution. The enigmatic genus '' Tridentaforma'' is sometimes placed here and assumed to be close to '' La ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yucca
''Yucca'' is a genus of perennial shrubs and trees in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Agavoideae. Its 40–50 species are notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal panicles of white or whitish flowers. They are native to the hot and dry (arid) parts of the Americas and the Caribbean. Early reports of the species were confused with the cassava (''Manihot esculenta''). Consequently, Linnaeus mistakenly derived the generic name from the Taíno word for the latter, ''yuca''. The Aztecs living in Mexico since before the Spanish arrival, in Nahuatl, call the local yucca species (''Yucca gigantea'') , which gave the Spanish . is also used for ''Yucca filifera''. Distribution The natural distribution range of the genus ''Yucca'' (49 species and 24 subspecies) covers a vast area of the Americas. The genus is represented throughout Mexico and extends into Guatemala (''Yucca guatemalensis''). It also extends to the north through Baja Cali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sea Hare
The clade Anaspidea, commonly known as sea hares (''Aplysia'' species and related genera), are medium-sized to very large opisthobranch gastropod molluscs with a soft internal shell made of protein. These are marine gastropod molluscs in the superfamilies Aplysioidea and Akeroidea. The common name "sea hare" is a direct translation from la, lepus marinus, as the animal's existence was known in Roman times. The name derives from their rounded shape and from the two long rhinophores that project upward from their heads and that somewhat resemble the ears of a hare. Taxonomy Many older textbooks and websites refer to this suborder as "Anaspidea". The original author Paul Henri Fischer described the taxon Anaspidea at unspecified rank above family. In 1925 Johannes Thiele established the taxon Anaspidea as a suborder. 2005 taxonomy Since the taxon Anaspidea was not based on an existing genus, this name is no longer available according to the rules of the ICZN. Anaspidea ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aplysia Juliana
''Aplysia juliana'', the walking sea hare, is a species of sea hare, a marine gastropod in the family Aplysiidae. Distribution Distribution of this species is cosmopolitan, circumtropical in all warm seas. Description This sea hare has no purple gland and therefore cannot produce ink, just milky secretions. The posterior end of the foot in this species can act as a sucker. The color of this sea hare is very often brown with paler spots, but it can be various other shades including plain black all over. The maximum recorded length is 300 mm.Welch J. J. (2010). "The "Island Rule" and Deep-Sea Gastropods: Re-Examining the Evidence". '' PLoS ONE'' 5(1): e8776. . ''A. juliana'' inhabits tidal pools and seagrass beds, to a depth of 20 metres. References Further reading * Bebbington A. (1974) ''Aplysiid species from East Africa with notes on the Indian Ocean Aplysiomorpha (Gastropoda: Opisthobranchia)''. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 54(1): 63-99. * Bebbington ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alga
Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular microalgae, such as ''Chlorella,'' ''Prototheca'' and the diatoms, to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelp, a large brown alga which may grow up to in length. Most are aquatic and autotrophic (they generate food internally) and lack many of the distinct cell and tissue types, such as stomata, xylem and phloem that are found in land plants. The largest and most complex marine algae are called seaweeds, while the most complex freshwater forms are the ''Charophyta'', a division of green algae which includes, for example, ''Spirogyra'' and stoneworts. No definition of algae is generally accepted. One definition is that algae "have chlorophyll ''a'' as their primary photosynthetic pigment and lack a sterile covering of cells around t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ulva Lactuca
''Ulva lactuca'', also known by the common name sea lettuce, is an edible green alga in the family Ulvaceae. It is the type species of the genus ''Ulva''. A synonym is ''U. fenestrata'', referring to its "windowed" or "holed" appearance. Description ''Ulva lactuca'' is a thin flat green alga growing from a discoid holdfast. The margin is somewhat ruffled and often torn. It may reach or more in length, though generally much less, and up to across. The membrane is two cells thick, soft and translucent, and grows attached, without a stipe, to rocks or other algae by a small disc-shaped holdfast. Green to dark green in colour, this species in the Chlorophyta is formed of two layers of cells irregularly arranged, as seen in cross-section. The chloroplast is cup-shaped in some references but as a parietal plate in others with one to three pyrenoids. There are other species of ''Ulva'' which are similar and not always easy to differentiate. Distribution The distribution is worldwi ... [...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] |
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a Megadiverse countries, megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with Deserts of Australia, deserts in the centre, tropical Forests of Australia, rainforests in the north-east, and List of mountains in Australia, mountain ranges in the south-east. The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately Early human migrations#Nearby Oceania, 65,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Period, last i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Migratory Locust
The migratory locust (''Locusta migratoria'') is the most widespread locust species, and the only species in the genus ''Locusta''. It occurs throughout Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. It used to be common in Europe but has now become rare there. Because of the vast geographic area it occupies, which comprises many different ecological zones, numerous subspecies have been described. However, not all experts agree on the validity of some of these subspecies. Many other species of grasshopper with gregarious and possibly migratory behaviour are referred to as 'locusts' in the vernacular, including the widely distributed desert locust. At 6.5 Gbp, the migratory locust possesses one of the largest known insect genomes. This article contains quotations from this source, which is available under thCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)license Polyphenism The migratory locust is polyphenic. It transitions between two main phenotypes in response to popu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
