|
Spruce–fir Moss Spider
The spruce-fir moss spider (''Microhexura montivaga'') is an endangered species of spider found at high elevations in the southern Appalachian Mountains. First identified in 1923, it inhabits moss that grows on rocks underneath the forest canopy. Description ''M. montivaga'' is one of the smallest mygalomorph spiders, with adults measuring only 3 to 4 mm (about 1/8 inch). The coloration varies from light brown to yellow-brown to a darker reddish brown, with no markings on the abdomen. The chelicerae project forward, and one pair of spinnerets is very long. It possesses a second pair of book lungs, which appear as light patches behind the genital furrow. Distribution and habitat ''M. multivaga'' is known from Fraser fir and red spruce forests on mountain peaks at and above in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. It has been recorded from Kuwohi and Mount Collins (both very small populations), Mount Le Conte, Mount Mitchell (wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyrus R
Cyrus () is a Persian-language masculine given name. It is historically best known as the name of several Persian kings, most notably including Cyrus the Great, who founded the Achaemenid Empire in 550 BC. It remains widespread among Zoroastrians, particularly in India, and is also relatively common in the Anglophone world. Etymology Cyrus, as a word in English, is the Latinized form of the Greek Κῦρος, ''Kȳros'', from Old Persian ''Kūruš''. According to the inscriptions, the name is reflected in Elamite ''Kuraš'', Babylonian ''Ku(r)-raš/-ra-áš'' and Imperial Aramaic ''kwrš''. The modern Persian form of the name is '' Kūroš''. The etymology of Cyrus has been and continues to be a topic of discussion amongst historians, linguists, and scholars of Iranology. The Old Persian name "kuruš" has been interpreted in various forms such as "the Sun", "like Sun", "young", "hero," and "humiliator of the enemy in verbal contest" and the Elamite "kuraš" has been trans ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Mitchell (North Carolina)
Mount Mitchell (''Attakulla'' in Cherokee) is the highest peak of the Appalachian Mountains and the highest peak in mainland North America east of the Mississippi River. It is located near Burnsville in Yancey County, North Carolina in the Black Mountain subrange of the Appalachians about northeast of Asheville. It is protected by Mount Mitchell State Park and surrounded by the Pisgah National Forest. Mount Mitchell's elevation is above sea level. Mount Mitchell is ranked 31st by topographic isolation. Geography The peak is the highest mountain in the United States east of the Mississippi River, and the highest in all of eastern North America south of the Arctic Cordillera. The nearest higher peaks are in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the highland foothills of Colorado. The mountain's topographic isolation is calculated from the nearest discernible single higher point: Lone Butte, which is 1,189 miles (1,913 km) away in southeastern Colorado. History Mount ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metabolism
Metabolism (, from ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run cellular processes; the conversion of food to building blocks of proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, and some carbohydrates; and the elimination of metabolic wastes. These enzyme-catalyzed reactions allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their Structures#Biological, structures, and respond to their environments. The word ''metabolism'' can also refer to the sum of all chemical reactions that occur in living organisms, including digestion and the transportation of substances into and between different cells, in which case the above described set of reactions within the cells is called intermediary (or intermediate) metabolism. Metabolic reactions may be categorized as ''catabolic''—the ''breaking down'' of compounds (for example, of glucose to pyruvate by c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microhabitat
In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ecological niche. Thus "habitat" is a species-specific term, fundamentally different from concepts such as environment or vegetation assemblages, for which the term "habitat-type" is more appropriate. The physical factors may include (for example): soil, moisture, range of temperature, and light intensity. Biotic factors include the availability of food and the presence or absence of predators. Every species has particular habitat requirements, habitat generalist species are able to thrive in a wide array of environmental conditions while habitat specialist species require a very limited set of factors to survive. The habitat of a species is not necessarily found in a geographical area, it can be the interior of a stem, a rotten log, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apex Predator
An apex predator, also known as a top predator or superpredator, is a predator at the top of a food chain, without natural predators of its own. Apex predators are usually defined in terms of trophic dynamics, meaning that they occupy the highest trophic levels. Food chains are often far shorter on land, usually limited to being secondary consumers – for example, Gray wolf, wolves prey mostly upon large herbivores (primary consumers), which eat plants (primary producers). The apex predator concept is applied in wildlife management, conservation biology, conservation, and ecotourism. Apex predators have a long evolutionary history, dating at least to the Cambrian period when animals such as ''Anomalocaris'' and ''Timorebestia'' dominated the seas. Humans have for many centuries interacted with other apex predators including the wolf, Bird of prey, birds of prey, and cormorants to hunt game animals, birds, and fish respectively. More recently, humans have started interacting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Springtail
Springtails (class Collembola) form the largest of the three lineages of modern Hexapoda, hexapods that are no longer considered insects. Although the three lineages are sometimes grouped together in a class called Entognatha because they have internal Arthropod mouthparts, mouthparts, they do not appear to be any more closely related to one another than they are to insects, which have external mouthparts. Springtails are omnivorous, free-living organisms that prefer moist conditions. They do not directly engage in the decomposition of organic matter, but contribute to it indirectly through the fragmentation of organic matter and the control of soil microbial communities. The word ''Collembola'' is from Ancient Greek 'glue' and 'peg'; this name was given due to the existence of the collophore, which was previously thought to stick to surfaces to stabilize the creature. Early DNA sequence studies suggested that Collembola represent a separate Lineage (evolution), evolutionary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spider Web
A spider web, spiderweb, spider's web, or cobweb (from the archaic word ''Wikt:coppe, coppe'', meaning 'spider') is a structure created by a spider out of proteinaceous spider silk extruded from its spinnerets, generally meant to catch its prey. Spider webs have existed for at least 100 million years, as witnessed in a rare find of Early Cretaceous amber from Sussex, in southern England. Many spiders build webs specifically to trap and catch insects to eat. However, not all spiders catch their prey in webs, and some do not build webs at all. The term "spider web" is typically used to refer to a web that is apparently still in use (i.e., clean), whereas "cobweb" refers to a seemingly abandoned (i.e., dusty) web. However, the word "cobweb" is also used by biologists to describe the tangled three-dimensional web of some spiders of the family Theridiidae. While this large family is known as the cobweb spiders, they actually have a huge range of web architectures; other names for thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marchantiophyta
Liverworts are a group of non-vascular plant, non-vascular embryophyte, land plants forming the division Marchantiophyta (). They may also be referred to as hepatics. Like mosses and hornworts, they have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, in which cells of the plant carry only a single set of genetic information. The division name was derived from the genus name ''Marchantia'', named after his father by French botanist Jean Marchant. It is estimated that there are about 9000 species of liverworts. Some of the more familiar species grow as a flattened leafless thallus, but most species are leafy with a form very much like a flattened moss. Leafy species can be distinguished from the apparently similar mosses on the basis of a number of features, including their single-celled rhizoids. Leafy liverworts also differ from most (but not all) mosses in that their leaves never have a costa (botany), costa (present in many mosses) and may bear marginal cilia (botany), cilia (very rare i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moss
Mosses are small, non-vascular plant, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic phylum, division Bryophyta (, ) ''sensu stricto''. Bryophyta (''sensu lato'', Wilhelm Philippe Schimper, Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, which comprise Marchantiophyta, liverworts, mosses, and hornworts. Mosses typically form dense green clumps or mats, often in damp or shady locations. The individual plants are usually composed of simple leaf, leaves that are generally only one cell thick, attached to a plant stem, stem that may be branched or unbranched and has only a limited role in conducting water and nutrients. Although some species have conducting tissues, these are generally poorly developed and structurally different from similar tissue found in vascular plants. Mosses do not have seeds and after fertilisation develop sporophytes with unbranched stalks topped with single capsules containing sporangium, spores. They are typically tall, though some species ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ice Age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages, and greenhouse periods during which there are no glaciers on the planet. Earth is currently in the ice age called Quaternary glaciation. Individual pulses of cold climate within an ice age are termed '' glacial periods'' (''glacials, glaciations, glacial stages, stadials, stades'', or colloquially, ''ice ages''), and intermittent warm periods within an ice age are called '' interglacials'' or ''interstadials''. In glaciology, the term ''ice age'' is defined by the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres. By this definition, the current Holocene epoch is an interglacial period of an ice age. The accumulation of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is projected to delay the next glacial period. History of research ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Picea Rubens
''Picea rubens'', commonly known as red spruce, is a species of spruce native to eastern North America, ranging from eastern Quebec and Nova Scotia, west to the Adirondack Mountains and south through New England along the Appalachians to western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.Farjon, A. (1990). ''Pinaceae. Drawings and Descriptions of the Genera''. Koeltz Scientific Books . This species is also known as yellow spruce, West Virginia spruce, eastern spruce, and he-balsam. Red spruce is the provincial tree of Nova Scotia. Description Red spruce is a perennial, shade-tolerant, late successional coniferous tree that under optimal conditions grows to tall with a trunk diameter of about , though exceptional specimens can reach tall and in diameter. It has a narrow conical crown. The leaves are needle-like, yellow-green, long, four-sided, curved, with a sharp point, and extend from all sides of the twig. The bark is gray-brown on the surface and red-brown on the inside, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sevier County, Tennessee
Sevier County ( ) is a county of the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 98,380. Its county seat and largest city is Sevierville. Sevier County comprises the Sevierville, TN Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the Knoxville- Morristown-Sevierville, TN Combined Statistical Area. History Prior to the arrival of white settlers in present-day Sevier County in the mid-18th century, the area had been inhabited for as many as 20,000 years by nomadic and semi-nomadic Native Americans. In the mid-16th century, Spanish expeditions led by Hernando de Soto (1540) and Juan Pardo (1567) passed through what is now Sevier County, reporting that the region was part of the domain of Chiaha, a minor Muskogean chiefdom centered around a village located on a now-submerged island just upstream from modern Douglas Dam. By the late 17th-century, however, the Cherokee, whose ancestors were living in the mountains at the time of the Spaniards' visit, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
