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Parental Care
Parental care is a behavioural and evolutionary strategy adopted by some animals, involving a parental investment being made to the evolutionary fitness of offspring. Patterns of parental care are widespread and highly diverse across the animal kingdom.Kokko, H. & Jennions, M.D. (2008) Parental investment, sexual selection and sex ratios. ''Journal of Evolutionary Biology,'' 21, pp.919–948. doi: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2008.01540.x. There is great variation in different animal groups in terms of how parents care for offspring, and the amount of resources invested by parents. For example, there may be considerable variation in the amount of care invested by each sex, where females may invest more in some species, males invest more in others, or investment may be shared equally. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed to describe this variation and patterns in parental care that exist between the sexes, as well as among species.Gonzalez-Voyer, A. and Kolm, N. (2010). Parental Care and I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hirundo Rustica (Linnaeus, 1758)
The barn swallow (''Hirundo rustica'') is the most widespread species of swallow in the world. In fact, it appears to have the largest natural distribution of any of the world's passerines, ranging over 251 million square kilometres globally. It is a distinctive passerine bird with blue upperparts and a long, deeply forked tail. It is found in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. In Anglophone Europe it is just called the swallow; in northern Europe it is the only common species called a "swallow" rather than a "martin". There are six subspecies of barn swallow, which breed across the Northern Hemisphere. Four are strongly migratory, and their wintering grounds cover much of the Southern Hemisphere as far south as central Argentina, the Cape Province of South Africa, and northern Australia. Its huge range means that the barn swallow is not endangered, although there may be local population declines due to specific threats. The barn swallow is a bird of open country that no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eusociality
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 s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hemiptera
Hemiptera (; ) is an order of insects, commonly called true bugs, comprising over 80,000 species within groups such as the cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, assassin bugs, bed bugs, and shield bugs. They range in size from to around , and share a common arrangement of piercing-sucking mouthparts. The name "true bugs" is often limited to the suborder Heteroptera. Entomologists reserve the term ''bug'' for Hemiptera or Heteroptera,Gilbert Waldbauer. ''The Handy Bug Answer Book.'' Visible Ink, 1998p. 1. which does not include other arthropods or insects of other orders such as ants, bees, beetles, or butterflies. In some variations of English, all terrestrial arthropods (including non-insect arachnids, and myriapods) also fall under the colloquial understanding of ''bug''. Many insects with "bug" in their common name, especially in American English, belong to other orders; for example, the lovebug is a fly and the Maybug and ladybug are beetles. The term is also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IUniverse
iUniverse, founded in October 1999, is an American self-publishing company based in Bloomington, Indiana.Kevin Abourezk"iUniverse to move to Indiana" incoln Journal Star, January 22, 2008 History iUniverse focuses on print-on-demand self-publishing and a service the company refers to as "assisted self-publishing" which critics say is indicative of vanity press since authors are asked to pay from to $15,000 for additional services. Soon after they were founded, Barnes & Noble purchased a 49% stake in the company. As part of the agreement, Barnes & Noble offered select iUniverse titles both in their online bookstore and at their physical stores. In 2004, Amy Fisher's memoir, ''If I Knew Then'', about serving seven years in prison on first-degree aggravated assault charges for shooting Mary Jo Buttafuoco, became the best-selling book in iUniverse's history, selling more than 32,000 copies up to 2004. According to a 2005 ''Publishers Weekly'' article, out of the more than 18,000 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bledius Spectabilis
''Bledius spectabilis'', commonly known as the magnificent salt beetle, is a species of small rove beetle. Description This beetle is 5 to 7 millimetres long and has brightly coloured legs. The wing covers are brownish and as wide as they are long. Distribution ''B. spectabilis'' inhabits the sea shores of the Caspian and Black Seas, the coasts of the Mediterranean from Asia Minor to Spain and Morocco, and the Atlantic coast as far north as the Irish Sea and the North Sea. Behaviour ''Bledius spectabilis'', shows very unusual behaviour for an insect in that it actively protects its larvae from the parasitic wasp Parasitoid wasps are a large group of hymenopteran superfamilies, with all but the wood wasps (Orussoidea) being in the wasp-waisted Apocrita. As parasitoids, they lay their eggs on or in the bodies of other arthropods, sooner or later causin ... '' Barycnemis blediator'' and from the predatory '' Dicheirotrichus gustavi''. References External linksImages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burying Beetle
Burying beetles or sexton beetles, genus ''Nicrophorus'', are the best-known members of the family Silphidae ( carrion beetles). Most of these beetles are black with red markings on the elytra (forewings). Burying beetles are true to their name—they bury the carcasses of small vertebrates such as birds and rodents as a food source for their larvae. They are unusual among insects in that both the male and female parents take care of the brood. They are carnivores. The genus name is sometimes spelled ''Necrophorus'' in older texts: this was an unjustified emendation by Carl Peter Thunberg (1789) of Fabricius's original name, and is not valid under the ICZN. The American burying beetle ('' Nicrophorus americanus'') has been on the U.S. endangered species list since 1989. Reproduction Burying beetles have large club-like antennae equipped with chemoreceptors capable of detecting a dead animal from a long distance. After finding a carcass (most usually that of a small bird or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Honeybee
A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect within the genus ''Apis'' of the bee clade, all native to Afro-Eurasia. After bees spread naturally throughout Africa and Eurasia, humans became responsible for the current cosmopolitan distribution of honey bees, introducing multiple subspecies into South America (early 16th century), North America (early 17th century), and Australia (early 19th century). Honey bees are known for their construction of perennial colonial nests from wax, the large size of their colonies, and surplus production and storage of honey, distinguishing their hives as a prized foraging target of many animals, including honey badgers, bears and human hunter-gatherers. Only eight surviving species of honey bee are recognized, with a total of 43 subspecies, though historically 7 to 11 species are recognized. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees. The best known honey bee is the wester ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Potter Wasp
Potter wasps (or mason wasps), the Eumeninae, are a cosmopolitan wasp group presently treated as a subfamily of Vespidae, but sometimes recognized in the past as a separate family, Eumenidae. Recognition Most eumenine species are black or brown, and commonly marked with strikingly contrasting patterns of yellow, white, orange, or red (or combinations thereof), but some species, mostly from tropical regions, show faint to strong blue or green metallic highlights in the background colors. Like most vespids, their wings are folded longitudinally at rest. They are particularly recognized by the following combination of characteristics: # a posterolateral projection known as a parategula on both sides of the mesoscutum; # tarsal claws cleft; # hind coxae with a longitudinal dorsal carina or folding, often developed into a lobe or tooth, and; # fore wings with three submarginal cells. Biology Eumenine wasps are diverse in nest building. The different species may either use exist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hymenoptera
Hymenoptera is a large order of insects, comprising the sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants. Over 150,000 living species of Hymenoptera have been described, in addition to over 2,000 extinct ones. Many of the species are parasitic. Females typically have a special ovipositor for inserting eggs into hosts or places that are otherwise inaccessible. This ovipositor is often modified into a stinger. The young develop through holometabolism (complete metamorphosis)—that is, they have a wormlike larval stage and an inactive pupal stage before they mature. Etymology The name Hymenoptera refers to the wings of the insects, but the original derivation is ambiguous. All references agree that the derivation involves the Ancient Greek πτερόν (''pteron'') for wing. The Ancient Greek ὑμήν (''hymen'') for membrane provides a plausible etymology for the term because species in this order have membranous wings. However, a key characteristic of this order is that the hindwings are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PubMed Identifier
PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintain the database as part of the Entrez system of information retrieval. From 1971 to 1997, online access to the MEDLINE database had been primarily through institutional facilities, such as university libraries. PubMed, first released in January 1996, ushered in the era of private, free, home- and office-based MEDLINE searching. The PubMed system was offered free to the public starting in June 1997. Content In addition to MEDLINE, PubMed provides access to: * older references from the print version of ''Index Medicus'', back to 1951 and earlier * references to some journals before they were indexed in Index Medicus and MEDLINE, for instance ''Science'', ''BMJ'', and '' Annals of Surgery'' * very recent entries to records for an article befo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digital Object Identifier
A digital object identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier or handle used to uniquely identify various objects, standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). DOIs are an implementation of the Handle System; they also fit within the URI system (Uniform Resource Identifier). They are widely used to identify academic, professional, and government information, such as journal articles, research reports, data sets, and official publications. DOIs have also been used to identify other types of information resources, such as commercial videos. A DOI aims to resolve to its target, the information object to which the DOI refers. This is achieved by binding the DOI to metadata about the object, such as a URL where the object is located. Thus, by being actionable and interoperable, a DOI differs from ISBNs or ISRCs which are identifiers only. The DOI system uses the indecs Content Model for representing metadata. The DOI for a document remains fixed over t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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