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Culicidae
Mosquitoes, the Culicidae, are a Family (biology), family of small Diptera, flies consisting of 3,600 species. The word ''mosquito'' (formed by ''Musca (fly), mosca'' and diminutive ''-ito'') is Spanish and Portuguese for ''little fly''. Mosquitoes have a slender segmented body, one pair of wings, three pairs of long hair-like legs, and specialized, highly elongated, piercing-sucking mouthparts. All mosquitoes drink nectar from flowers; females of some species have in addition adapted to drink blood. The group diversified during the Cretaceous period. Evolutionary biology, Evolutionary biologists view mosquitoes as micropredators, small animals that Parasitism, parasitise larger ones by drinking their blood without immediately killing them. Parasitology, Medical parasitologists view mosquitoes instead as Disease vector, vectors of disease, carrying protozoan parasites or bacterial or virus, viral pathogens from one Host (biology), host to another. The mosquito life cycle cons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aedes Aegypti
''Aedes aegypti'' ( or from Greek 'hateful' and from Latin, meaning 'of Egypt'), sometimes called the Egyptian mosquito, dengue mosquito or yellow fever mosquito, is a mosquito that spreads diseases like dengue fever, yellow fever, malaria, and chikungunya. The mosquito can be recognized by black and white markings on its legs and a marking in the form of a lyre on the upper surface of its thorax. This mosquito originated in Africa, but is now a common invasive species that has spread to tropical, subtropical, and temperate regions throughout the world. Biology ''Aedes aegypti'' is a , dark mosquito which can be recognized by white markings on its legs and a marking in the form of a lyre on the upper surface of its thorax. Females are larger than males. Microscopically females possess small palps tipped with silver or white scales, and their antennae have sparse short hairs, whereas those of males are feathery. ''Aedes aegypti'' can be confused with ''Aedes albopic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Culicinae
The Culicinae are the most extensive subfamily of mosquitoes (Culicidae) and have species in every continent except Antarctica, but are highly concentrated in tropical areas. Mosquitoes are best known as parasites to many vertebrate animals and vectors for disease. They are holometabolous insects, and most species lay their eggs in stagnant water, to benefit their aquatic larval stage. Introduction The subfamily Culicinae is the largest subfamily of Culicidae, a family of Nematocera dipterans. There are 3,046 species of Culicinae mosquitoes, in 108 genera and 11 tribes. Members of the Culicinae subfamily are small flies with fore wings for flight and hind wings reduced to halteres for balance. The mosquitoes also have long, slender, legs and proboscis-style mouth parts for feeding on vertebrate blood or plant fluids. Only the females are blood feeders, requiring a high quality protein meal before they can oviposit. Because the mosquitoes are well adapted for finding hosts, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diptera
Flies are insects of the order Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwings having evolved into advanced mechanosensory organs known as halteres, which act as high-speed sensors of rotational movement and allow dipterans to perform advanced aerobatics. Diptera is a large order containing more than 150,000 species including horse-flies, crane flies, hoverflies, mosquitoes and others. Flies have a mobile head, with a pair of large compound eyes, and mouthparts designed for piercing and sucking (mosquitoes, black flies and robber flies), or for lapping and sucking in the other groups. Their wing arrangement gives them great manoeuvrability in flight, and claws and pads on their feet enable them to cling to smooth surfaces. Flies undergo complete metamorphosis; the eggs are often laid on the larval food-source and the larvae, which lack true ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piercing-sucking Mouthpart
Insects have mouthparts that may vary greatly across insect species, as they are adapted to particular modes of feeding. The earliest insects had chewing mouthparts. Most specialisation of mouthparts are for piercing and sucking, and this mode of feeding has evolved a number of times independently. For example, mosquitoes (which are true flies) and aphids (which are true bugs) both pierce and suck, though female mosquitoes feed on animal blood whereas aphids feed on plant fluids. Evolution Like most external features of arthropods, the mouthparts of Hexapoda are highly derived. Insect mouthparts show a multitude of different functional mechanisms across the wide diversity of insect species. It is common for significant homology to be conserved, with matching structures forming from matching primordia, and having the same evolutionary origin. However, even if structures are almost physically and functionally identical, they may not be homologous; their analogous functions and a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Wilhelm Meigen
Johann Wilhelm Meigen (3 May 1764 – 11 July 1845) was a German entomologist famous for his pioneering work on Diptera. Life Early years Meigen was born in Solingen, the fifth of eight children of Johann Clemens Meigen and Sibylla Margaretha Bick. His parents, though not poor, were not wealthy either. They ran a small shop in Solingen. His paternal grandparents, however, owned an estate and hamlet with twenty houses. Adding to the rental income, Meigen's grandfather was a farmer and a guild mastercutler in Solingen. Two years after Meigen was born, his grandparents died and his parents moved to the family estate. This was already heavily indebted by the Seven Years' War, then bad crops and rash speculations forced the sale of the farm and the family moved back to Solingen. Meigen attended the town school but only for a short time. He had learned to read and write on his grandfather's estate and he read widely at home as well as taking an interest in natural history. A l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bacteria
Bacteria (; : bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one Cell (biology), biological cell. They constitute a large domain (biology), domain of Prokaryote, prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among the first life forms to appear on Earth, and are present in most of its habitats. Bacteria inhabit the air, soil, water, Hot spring, acidic hot springs, radioactive waste, and the deep biosphere of Earth's crust. Bacteria play a vital role in many stages of the nutrient cycle by recycling nutrients and the nitrogen fixation, fixation of nitrogen from the Earth's atmosphere, atmosphere. The nutrient cycle includes the decomposition of cadaver, dead bodies; bacteria are responsible for the putrefaction stage in this process. In the biological communities surrounding hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, extremophile bacteria provide the nutrients needed to sustain life by converting dissolved compounds, suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Micropredator
Parasitism is a Symbiosis, close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives (at least some of the time) on or inside another organism, the Host (biology), host, causing it some harm, and is Adaptation, adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson characterised parasites' way of feeding as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one". Parasites include single-celled protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as Armillaria mellea, honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the Orobanchaceae, broomrapes. There are six major parasitic Behavioral ecology#Evolutionarily stable strategy, strategies of exploitation of animal hosts, namely parasitic castration, directly transmitted parasitism (by contact), wikt:trophic, trophicallytransmitted parasitism (by being eaten), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parasitism
Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives (at least some of the time) on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson characterised parasites' way of feeding as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one". Parasites include single-celled protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the broomrapes. There are six major parasitic strategies of exploitation of animal hosts, namely parasitic castration, directly transmitted parasitism (by contact), trophicallytransmitted parasitism (by being eaten), vector-transmitted parasitism, parasitoidism, and micropredation. One major axis of classification concerns invasiveness: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parasitology
Parasitology is the study of parasites, their host (biology), hosts, and the relationship between them. As a List of biology disciplines, biological discipline, the scope of parasitology is not determined by the organism or environment in question but by their way of life. This means it forms a synthesis of other disciplines, and draws on techniques from fields such as cell biology, bioinformatics, biochemistry, molecular biology, immunology, genetics, evolution and ecology. Fields The study of these diverse organisms means that the subject is often broken up into simpler, more focused units, which use common techniques, even if they are not studying the same organisms or diseases. Much research in parasitology falls somewhere between two or more of these definitions. In general, the study of prokaryotes falls under the field of bacteriology rather than parasitology. Medical The parasitologist F. E. G. Cox noted that "Humans are hosts to nearly 300 species of parasitic worms a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protozoa
Protozoa (: protozoan or protozoon; alternative plural: protozoans) are a polyphyletic group of single-celled eukaryotes, either free-living or parasitic, that feed on organic matter such as other microorganisms or organic debris. Historically, protozoans were regarded as "one-celled animals". When first introduced by Georg Goldfuss, in 1818, the taxon Protozoa was erected as a class within the Animalia, with the word 'protozoa' meaning "first animals", because they often possess animal-like behaviours, such as motility and predation, and lack a cell wall, as found in plants and many algae. This classification remained widespread in the 19th and early 20th century, and even became elevated to a variety of higher ranks, including phylum, subkingdom, kingdom, and then sometimes included within the paraphyletic Protoctista or Protista. By the 1970s, it became usual to require that all taxa be monophyletic (derived from a common ancestor that would also be regarded as protozo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pathogen
In biology, a pathogen (, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of"), in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a Germ theory of disease, germ. The term ''pathogen'' came into use in the 1880s. Typically, the term ''pathogen'' is used to describe an ''infectious'' microorganism or agent, such as a virus, bacterium, protozoan, prion, viroid, or fungus. Small animals, such as helminths and insects, can also cause or Transmission (medicine), transmit disease. However, these animals are usually referred to as parasites rather than pathogens. The scientific study of microscopic organisms, including microscopic pathogenic organisms, is called microbiology, while parasitology refers to the scientific study of parasites and the organisms that host them. There are several pathways through which pathogens can invade a host. The principal pathways have different episodic time ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virus
A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living Cell (biology), cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Viruses are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth and are the most numerous type of biological entity. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's 1892 article describing a non-bacterial pathogen infecting tobacco plants and the discovery of the tobacco mosaic virus by Martinus Beijerinck in 1898, more than 16,000 of the millions of List of virus species, virus species have been described in detail. The study of viruses is known as virology, a subspeciality of microbiology. When infected, a host cell is often forced to rapidly produce thousands of copies of the original virus. When not inside an infected cell or in the process of infecting a cell, viruses exist in the form of independent viral particles, or ''virions'', consisting of (i) genetic material, i.e., long ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
