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Blackback Butterflyfish
The black-backed butterflyfish or blackback butterflyfish (''Chaetodon melannotus'') is a species of butterflyfish (family Chaetodontidae). It is widespread through the Indo-Pacific area from the Red Sea and East Africa to Samoa, to southern Japan and throughout Micronesia. This fish grows up to 18 cm (ca. 7 in) long, and may live for up to 20 years. When observed at night or when frightened, this species changes color; the dorsal portion of the body turns black except for two white patches. It belongs to the large subgenus ''Rabdophorus'' which might warrant recognition as a distinct genus. In this group, it appears a close relative of the spot-tailed butterflyfish (''C. ocellicaudus'') and somewhat less close to the yellow-dotted butterflyfish (''C. selene''). These are all of oval shape, silvery with yellow fins and snout, ascending diagonal stripes, and black markings around the eyes, on the caudal peduncle, and sometimes on the back. Next closest seem the saddle but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcus Elieser Bloch
Marcus Elieser Bloch (1723–1799) was a German physician and naturalist who is best known for his contribution to ichthyology through his multi-volume catalog of plates illustrating the fishes of the world. Brought up in a Hebrew-speaking Jewish family, he learned German and Latin and studied anatomy before settling in Berlin as a physician. He amassed a large natural history collection, particularly of fish specimens. He is generally considered one of the most important ichthyology, ichthyologists of the 18th century, and wrote many papers on natural history, comparative anatomy, and physiology. Life Bloch was born at Ansbach in 1723 where his father was a Torah writer and his mother owned a small shop. Educated at home in Hebrew literature he became a private tutor in Hamburg for a Jewish surgeon. Here he learned German, Latin and anatomy. He then studied medicine in Berlin and received a doctorate in 1762 from Frankfurt (Oder), Frankfort on the Oder with a treatise on skin dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spot-tailed Butterflyfish
The Spot-tailed Butterflyfish, ''Chaetodon ocellicaudus'', is a species of marine ray-finned fish, a butterflyfish belonging to the family Chaetodontidae. It is found in the central Indo- west Pacific region from Malaysia to New Guinea, north to the Philippines and Palau in Micronesia. It grows to a maximum of long. Nearly identical to the Black-backed Butterflyfish (''C. melannotus''), it differs only in the shape of the black mark on the caudal peduncle, in lacking a black mark on the chest, a lighter back, and in having an average of 14 rather than 15 pectoral fin rays. ''C. ocellicaudus'' belongs to the large subgenus ''Rabdophorus'' which might warrant recognition as a distinct genus. In this group, it appears to be a close relative of the Black-backed Butterflyfish and somewhat less close to the Yellow-dotted Butterflyfish (''C. selene''). These are all of oval shape, silvery with yellow fins and snout, ascending diagonal stripes, and black markings around the eyes, on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aquarium
An aquarium (plural: ''aquariums'' or ''aquaria'') is a vivarium of any size having at least one transparent side in which aquatic plants or animals are kept and displayed. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, aquatic reptiles, such as turtles, and aquatic plants. The term ''aquarium'', coined by English naturalist Philip Henry Gosse, combines the Latin root , meaning 'water', with the suffix , meaning 'a place for relating to'. The aquarium principle was fully developed in 1850 by the chemist Robert Warington, who explained that plants added to water in a container would give off enough oxygen to support animals, so long as the numbers of animals did not grow too large. The aquarium craze was launched in early Victorian England by Gosse, who created and stocked the first public aquarium at the London Zoo in 1853, and published the first manual, ''The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea'' in 1854.Katherine C. Grier (2008) "Pet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coral
Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton. A coral "group" is a colony of very many genetically identical polyps. Each polyp is a sac-like animal typically only a few millimeters in diameter and a few centimeters in height. A set of tentacles surround a central mouth opening. Each polyp excretes an exoskeleton near the base. Over many generations, the colony thus creates a skeleton characteristic of the species which can measure up to several meters in size. Individual colonies grow by asexual reproduction of polyps. Corals also breed sexually by spawning: polyps of the same species release gametes simultaneously overnight, often around a full moon. Fertilized eggs form planulae, a mobile early form of the coral polyp which, when m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soft Coral
Alcyonacea, or soft corals, are an order of corals. In addition to the fleshy soft corals, the order Alcyonacea now contains all species previously known as "gorgonian corals", that produce a more or less hard skeleton, though quite different from "true" corals (Scleractinia). These can be found in suborders Holaxonia, Scleraxonia, and Stolonifera. They are Sessility (zoology), sessile colony (biology), colonial cnidarians that are found throughout the oceans of the world, especially in the deep sea, polar waters, tropics and subtropics. Common names for subsets of this order are sea fans and sea whips; others are similar to the sea pens of related order Pennatulacea. Individual tiny polyp (zoology), polyps form colonies that are normally erect, flattened, branching, and reminiscent of a fan (implement), fan. Others may be whiplike, bushy, or even encrusting. A colony can be several feet high and across, but only a few inches thick. They may be brightly coloured, often purple, r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polyp (zoology)
A polyp in zoology is one of two forms found in the phylum Cnidaria, the other being the medusa. Polyps are roughly cylindrical in shape and elongated at the axis of the vase-shaped body. In solitary polyps, the aboral (opposite to oral) end is attached to the substrate by means of a disc-like holdfast called a pedal disc, while in colonies of polyps it is connected to other polyps, either directly or indirectly. The oral end contains the mouth, and is surrounded by a circlet of tentacles. Classes In the class Anthozoa, comprising the sea anemones and corals, the individual is always a polyp; in the class Hydrozoa, however, the individual may be either a polyp or a medusa, with most species undergoing a life cycle with both a polyp stage and a medusa stage. In class Scyphozoa, the medusa stage is dominant, and the polyp stage may or may not be present, depending on the family. In those scyphozoans that have the larval planula metamorphose into a polyp, the polyp, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Staghorn Coral
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] |
Oviparous
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saddle Butterflyfish
The saddle butterflyfish (''Chaetodon ephippium'') is a species of marine ray-finned fish, a butterflyfish belonging to the family Chaetodontidae. It is found in the Indian and Pacific Oceans from Sri Lanka and the Cocos-Keeling Islands to the Hawaiian, Marquesan and Tuamotu islands, north to southern Japan, south to Rowley Shoals and New South Wales in Australia. It is a large butterflyfish, at up to 30 cm (nearly 12 in) long together with the Lined Butterflyfish (''C. lineolatus'') the giant among its genus. In shape it resembles certain angelfishes more than most of its relatives. The overall color is yellowish grey, with a large black spot bordered below by a broad white band on the back and wavy blue lines on the lower sides. The throat and the outline of the hind parts is bright yellow. Adults have a filament extending posteriorly from the upper part of the soft portion of the dorsal fin. The Saddle Butterflyfish is found at depths between 0 and 30 m in coral reef ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caudal Peduncle
Fins are distinctive anatomical features composed of bony spines or rays protruding from the body of a fish. They are covered with skin and joined together either in a webbed fashion, as seen in most bony fish, or similar to a flipper, as seen in sharks. Apart from the tail or caudal fin, fish fins have no direct connection with the spine and are supported only by muscles. Their principal function is to help the fish swim. Fins located in different places on the fish serve different purposes such as moving forward, turning, keeping an upright position or stopping. Most fish use fins when swimming, flying fish use pectoral fins for gliding, and frogfish use them for crawling. Fins can also be used for other purposes; male sharks and mosquitofish use a modified fin to deliver sperm, thresher sharks use their caudal fin to stun prey, reef stonefish have spines in their dorsal fins that inject venom, anglerfish use the first spine of their dorsal fin like a fishing rod to lu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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