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Armadillo Girdled Lizard
The armadillo girdled lizard (''Ouroborus cataphractus''), www.reptile-database.org. also commonly known as the armadillo lizard, the armadillo spiny-tailed lizard, and the golden-armadillo lizard, is a species of lizard in the family Cordylidae. The species is endemic to desert areas along the western coast of South Africa. In 2011, it was moved to its own genus based on molecular phylogeny, but formerly it was included in the genus ''Cordylus''. Description The armadillo girdled lizard can be a light brown to dark brown in coloration. The underbelly is yellow with a blackish pattern, especially under the chin. Its size can range from in snout-vent length (SVL). It may grow to a maximum size of SVL."''Cordylus cataphractus'' "Arkive Distribution and habitat ''O. cataphractus'' is endemic to the Succulent Karoo biome in the Northern and the Western Cape provinces of South Africa, where it occurs from the southern Richtersveld to the Piketberg Mountains and the southern Ta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wuppertal Zoo
Wuppertal Zoo (german: Zoologischer Garten Wuppertal or ''Zoo Wuppertal'') is a zoo in Wuppertal, Germany. About 5,000 animals representing about 500 species from around the world live at the zoo, including apes, monkeys, bears, big cats, elephants, as well as birds, reptiles, and fish. History The zoo was founded on 5 December 1879 by a joint-stock company, Gesellschaft Zoologischer Garten. The central building opened together with the zoo itself on 8 September 1881. It featured 34 animals, among them a pair of wolves and a bear. Since then, the zoo has been steadily expanded. In 1937, the joint-stock company who owned the zoo struggled due to economic hardships, and operations were transferred to the Wuppertal city council since then. During world War II, Zoo Wuppertal was not as badly damaged compared to other German zoos. At that time, a majority of the animals were evacuated to the Berlin and Poznan zoos and did not return. In 1946, the Zoo Banqueting Hall hosted Britis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phylogeny
A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities based upon similarities and differences in their physical or genetic characteristics. All life on Earth is part of a single phylogenetic tree, indicating common ancestry. In a ''rooted'' phylogenetic tree, each node with descendants represents the inferred most recent common ancestor of those descendants, and the edge lengths in some trees may be interpreted as time estimates. Each node is called a taxonomic unit. Internal nodes are generally called hypothetical taxonomic units, as they cannot be directly observed. Trees are useful in fields of biology such as bioinformatics, systematics, and phylogenetics. ''Unrooted'' trees illustrate only the relatedness of the leaf nodes and do not require the ancestral root to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hodotermes
''Hodotermes'' (from Greek ὁδός (hodós), travelling; Latin '' termes'', woodworm) is a genus of African harvester termites in the Hodotermitidae. They range from Palaearctic North Africa, through the East African savannas to the karroid regions of southern Africa. As with harvester termites in general, they have serrated inner edges to their mandibles, and all castes have functional compound eyes. They forage for grass at night and during the day, and their pigmented workers are often observed outside the nest. Nests They nest by excavating in the soil, and the diffuse subterranean system of ''H. mossambicus'' may contain several spherical hives which may be 60 cm in diameter. They are interconnected by galleries and are located from near the surface to more than 6 m deep. Loose particles of excavated soil are brought to the surface and dumped at various points around the nest. Diet The diet of ''H. mossambicus'' consists primarily of ripe and/or frost- or drou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microhodotermes
''Microhodotermes'' is a genus of southern African harvester termites in the Hodotermitidae. As with harvester termites in general, they have serrated inner edges to their mandibles, and all castes have functional compound eyes. Species of this genus are desert specialists of the Namib, Kalahari and Karoo, where their ranges overlap with ''Hodotermes''. They forage at night and during daylight hours, and their pigmented workers are often observed outside the nest. The workers of '' M. viator'' collect mostly woody material, with ''Pteronia'' and vygie species being favoured. Colonies of ''M. viator'' produce initially small, conical mounds on soil with sufficient clay content. These are speculated to cause the formation of increasingly large heuweltjies. Widespread foraging and burrowing activity of aardvark The aardvark ( ; ''Orycteropus afer'') is a medium-sized, burrowing, nocturnal mammal native to Africa. It is the only living species of the order Tubulidentata, alt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spider
Spiders ( order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all orders of organisms. Spiders are found worldwide on every continent except for Antarctica, and have become established in nearly every land habitat. , 50,356 spider species in 132 families have been recorded by taxonomists. However, there has been debate among scientists about how families should be classified, with over 20 different classifications proposed since 1900. Anatomically, spiders (as with all arachnids) differ from other arthropods in that the usual body segments are fused into two tagmata, the cephalothorax or prosoma, and the opisthosoma, or abdomen, and joined by a small, cylindrical pedicel, however, as there is currently neither paleontological nor embryological evidence that spiders ever had ... [...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] |
Invertebrate
Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate subphylum Vertebrata. Familiar examples of invertebrates include arthropods, mollusks, annelids, echinoderms and cnidarians. The majority of animal species are invertebrates; one estimate puts the figure at 97%. Many invertebrate taxa have a greater number and variety of species than the entire subphylum of Vertebrata. Invertebrates vary widely in size, from 50 μm (0.002 in) rotifers to the 9–10 m (30–33 ft) colossal squid. Some so-called invertebrates, such as the Tunicata and Cephalochordata, are more closely related to vertebrates than to other invertebrates. This makes the invertebrates paraphyletic, so the term has little meaning in taxonomy. Etymology The word "invertebrate" comes from the Latin word ''vertebra'', whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tankwa Karoo
Tankwa Karoo National Park is a national park in South Africa. The park lies about 70 km due west of Sutherland near the border of the Northern Cape and Western Cape, in one of the most arid regions of South Africa, with areas receiving less than 100 mm of average annual precipitation, moisture-bearing clouds from the Atlantic Ocean being largely stopped by the Cederberg mountains. Other low areas receive little more, as the Roodewerf station (co-ordinates: S32°14’27.9” E20°05’44.5”) with 180 mm of mean annual rainfall. In the hottest areas of the park, the mean maximum temperature in January is 38.9 °C, and in July the mean minimum temperature ranges from about 5 to 7 °C. Before this Park's proclamation, the only protected area of Succulent Karoo was the 2 square kilometre patch of the Gamkaberg Nature Reserve. Succulent Karoo has, together with the Cape Floral Kingdom, been declared a Biodiversity Hotspot by Conservation International. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piketberg Mountains
Piketberg (also sometimes spelt Piquetberg in the past) is a town in the Western Cape, South Africa, located about 80 km east of Saldanha Bay. The original spelling of the name was "Piquetberg". The town is in the foothills of the Piketberg mountains, a range of low mountains formed from Table Mountain Sandstone. The area around the mountains is conducive to the farming of wheat, while the area on top of the mountains, being cooler and generally frost-free, is suited to the farming of fruit and Rooibos Tea. Piketberg possesses a large Dutch Reformed Church designed by the architect Carl Otto Hager in his trademark neo-Gothic style. History The area was inhabited by the Khoikhoi and the San before the arrival of 21 Dutch, Huguenot and German families in 1705-06, and there is still well-preserved San rock art in the mountains. There was once a small military post in the town to protect the livestock of farmers from raids by the Khoikhoi. By the 1730s the population had grown to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richtersveld
The Richtersveld is a desert landscape characterised by rugged kloofs and high mountains, situated in the north-western corner of South Africa’s Northern Cape province. It is full of changing scenery from flat, sandy, coastal plains, to craggy sharp mountains of volcanic rock and the lushness of the Orange River, which forms the border with neighboring Namibia. The area ranges in altitude from sea level, to at Cornellberg. Located in the north-western side of the Northern Cape province in South Africa, the Richtersveld is regarded as the only arid biodiversity hotspot on earth and the majority of the area is inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List due to its cultural values. The Nama people of Richtersveld claimed title to their traditional land and set aside this conservancy for future research and tourism. The northern part of the area was proclaimed in 1991 after 18 years of negotiations between the National Parks Board and the local Nama people who continue to liv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Succulent Karoo
The Succulent Karoo is a ecoregion defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature to include regions of desert in South Africa and Namibia, and a biodiversity hotspot. The geographic area chosen by the WWF for what they call 'Succulent Karoo' does not correspond to the actual Karoo. Geography The Succulent Karoo stretches along the coastal strip of southwestern Namibia and South Africa's Northern Cape Province, where the cold Benguela Current offshore creates frequent fogs. The ecoregion extends inland into the uplands of South Africa's Western Cape Province. It is bounded on the south by the Mediterranean climate fynbos, on the east by the Nama Karoo, which has more extreme temperatures and variable rainfall, and on the north by the Namib Desert. Flora The Succulent Karoo is notable for the world's richest flora of succulent plants, and harbours about one-third of the world’s approximately 10,000 succulent species. 40% of its succulent plants are endemic. The region is extraordin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cloaca
In animal anatomy, a cloaca ( ), plural cloacae ( or ), is the posterior orifice that serves as the only opening for the digestive, reproductive, and urinary tracts (if present) of many vertebrate animals. All amphibians, reptiles and birds, and a few mammals ( monotremes, tenrecs, golden moles, and marsupial moles), have this orifice, from which they excrete both urine and feces; this is in contrast to most placental mammals, which have two or three separate orifices for evacuation. Excretory openings with analogous purpose in some invertebrates are also sometimes referred to as cloacae. Mating through the cloaca is known as cloacal copulation, commonly referred to as cloacal kiss. The cloacal region is also often associated with a secretory organ, the cloacal gland, which has been implicated in the scent-marking behavior of some reptiles, marsupials, amphibians, and monotremes. Etymology The word is from the Latin verb ''cluo'', "(I) cleanse", thus the noun ''cloaca'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
