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Australian Smelt
The Australian smelt (''Retropinna semoni'') is a small, pelagic silvery freshwater fish found in large numbers in waters of the south eastern Australian mainland. Distribution The fish is endemic to Australia and widely distributed through the coastal drainages of the south eastern part of the mainland. The species is found in coastal drainages from the south east corner of South Australia through Victoria, New South Wales to the Fitzroy River in south east Queensland. It occurs widely in the Murray River and its tributaries and up the Darling as far upstream as Wilcannia. There are isolated populations in the Coopers Creek which drains into Lake Eyre and several smaller ones in north-western New South Wales and southern Queensland. Recent genetic research indicates Australian smelt stocks are composed of 5 highly genetically distinct and as yet undescribed species (Hammer ''et al.'', 2007). Description A small silvery fish to 75 mm total length, very occasionally to 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Carl Wilhelm Weber
Max Carl Wilhelm Weber van Bosse or Max Wilhelm Carl Weber (5 December 1852 – 7 February 1937) was a German- Dutch zoologist and biogeographer. Weber studied at the University of Bonn, then at the Humboldt University in Berlin with the zoologist Eduard Carl von Martens (1831–1904). He obtained his doctorate in 1877. Weber taught at the University of Utrecht then participated in an expedition to the Barents Sea. He became Professor of Zoology, Anatomy and Physiology at the University of Amsterdam in 1883. In the same year he received naturalised Dutch citizenship. His discoveries as leader of the Siboga Expedition led him to conclude that Wallace's Line was placed too far to the west. His studies, along with others, led to a series of alternative lines to be proposed to delimit two major biogeographic realms, the Australasian realm and the Indomalayan realm. These lines were based on the fauna and flora in general, including the mammalian fauna. Later, Pelseneer p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake
A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from the ocean, although they may be connected with the ocean by rivers. Lakes, as with other bodies of water, are part of the water cycle, the processes by which water moves around the Earth. Most lakes are fresh water and account for almost all the world's surface freshwater, but some are salt lakes with salinities even higher than that of seawater. Lakes vary significantly in surface area and volume of water. Lakes are typically larger and deeper than ponds, which are also water-filled basins on land, although there are no official definitions or scientific criteria distinguishing the two. Lakes are also distinct from lagoons, which are generally shallow tidal pools dammed by sandbars or other material at coastal regions of ocean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Freshwater Fish Of Australia
Freshwater fish of Australia are limited to approximately 280 species, even though the Australian continent is larger than the contiguous United States. The small scale of species found in Australian inland waters is in some part due to the dry conditions of the continent. Rainfall is sporadic over much of the continent, and fish cannot live in many of the desert regions of South Australia and Western Australia. Most freshwater species are found in tropical or subtropical regions. A large proportion of freshwater species are endemic to Australia. The family Percicthyidae (temperate perches) and other families suspected in reality to lie within it (e.g. Gadopsidae, Nannopercidae) have risen to prominence in and dominate many of its freshwater systems, in contrast to the Northern Hemisphere where freshwater fish faunas are overwhelmingly dominated by the carp family, Cyprinidae. (No cyprinid species is native to Australia). Due to the illegal introduction of carp (''Cyprinus carpio' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Retropinna
''Retropinna'' is a genus in the family Retropinnidae containing one species that is widespread in southeastern Australia, one from Tasmania and one from New Zealand. Species There are currently three recognized species in this genus: * '' Retropinna retropinna'' ( J. Richardson, 1848) (Cucumberfish, New Zealand smelt) * ''Retropinna semoni The Australian smelt (''Retropinna semoni'') is a small, pelagic silvery freshwater fish found in large numbers in waters of the south eastern Australian mainland. Distribution The fish is endemic to Australia and widely distributed through the ...'' ( M. C. W. Weber, 1895) (Australian smelt) * '' Retropinna tasmanica'' McCulloch, 1920 (Tasmanian smelt) References Ray-finned fish genera Taxa named by Theodore Gill {{Osmeriformes-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frog
A frog is any member of a diverse and largely semiaquatic group of short-bodied, tailless amphibian vertebrates composing the order (biology), order Anura (coming from the Ancient Greek , literally 'without tail'). Frog species with rough skin texture due to wart-like parotoid glands tend to be called toads, but the distinction between frogs and toads is informal and purely cosmetic, not from taxonomy (biology), taxonomy or evolutionary history. Frogs are widely distributed, ranging from the tropics to subarctic regions, but the greatest concentration of species diversity is in tropical rainforest and associated wetlands. They account for around 88% of extant amphibian species, and are one of the five most diverse vertebrate orders. The oldest fossil "proto-frog" ''Triadobatrachus'' is known from the Early Triassic of Madagascar (250Myr, million years ago), but molecular clock, molecular clock dating suggests their divergent evolution, divergence from other amphibians may exte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pond
A pond is a small, still, land-based body of water formed by pooling inside a depression (geology), depression, either naturally or artificiality, artificially. A pond is smaller than a lake and there are no official criteria distinguishing the two, although defining a pond to be less than in area, less than in depth and with less than 30% of its area covered by aquatic plant, emergent vegetation helps in distinguishing the ecology of ponds from those of lakes and wetlands.Clegg, J. (1986). Observer's Book of Pond Life. Frederick Warne, London Ponds can be created by a wide variety of natural processes (e.g. on floodplains as cutoff river channels, by glacial processes, by peatland formation, in coastal dune systems, by beavers). They can simply be isolated depressions (such as a Kettle (landform), kettle hole, vernal pool, Prairie Pothole Region, prairie pothole, or simply natural undulations in undrained land) filled by runoff, groundwater, or precipitation, or all three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mosquito
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] |
Aquarium
An aquarium (: 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. fishkeeping, 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 era, 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. Small aquariums are k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Planktonic
Plankton are the diverse collection of organisms that drift in water (or air) but are unable to actively propel themselves against currents (or wind). The individual organisms constituting plankton are called plankters. In the ocean, they provide a crucial source of food to many small and large aquatic organisms, such as bivalves, fish, and baleen whales. Marine plankton include bacteria, archaea, algae, protozoa, microscopic fungi, and drifting or floating animals that inhabit the saltwater of oceans and the brackish waters of estuaries. Freshwater plankton are similar to marine plankton, but are found in lakes and rivers. Mostly, plankton just drift where currents take them, though some, like jellyfish, swim slowly but not fast enough to generally overcome the influence of currents. Although plankton are usually thought of as inhabiting water, there are also airborne versions that live part of their lives drifting in the atmosphere. These '' aeroplankton'' include plant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crustacean
Crustaceans (from Latin meaning: "those with shells" or "crusted ones") are invertebrate animals that constitute one group of arthropods that are traditionally a part of the subphylum Crustacea (), a large, diverse group of mainly aquatic arthropods including decapods (shrimps, prawns, crabs, lobsters and crayfish), seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, opossum shrimps, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group can be treated as a subphylum under the clade Mandibulata. It is now well accepted that the hexapods (insects and entognathans) emerged deep in the Crustacean group, with the completed pan-group referred to as Pancrustacea. The three classes Cephalocarida, Branchiopoda and Remipedia are more closely related to the hexapods than they are to any of the other crustaceans ( oligostracans and multicrustaceans). The 67,000 described species range in size from '' Stygotantulus stocki'' at , to the Japanese ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aquatic Insect
Aquatic insects or water insects live some portion of their life cycle in the water. They feed in the same ways as other insects. Some ''diving'' insects, such as predatory diving beetles, can hunt for food underwater where land-living insects cannot compete. Breathing One problem that aquatic insects must overcome is how to get oxygen while they are under water. Almost all animals require a source of oxygen to live. Insects draw air into their bodies through spiracles, holes found along the sides of the abdomen. These spiracles are connected to tracheal tubes where oxygen can be absorbed. All aquatic insects have become adapted to their environment with the specialization of these structures ;Aquatic adaptations # Simple diffusion over a relatively thin integument # Temporary use of an air bubble # Extraction of oxygen from water using a plastron or blood gill # Storage of oxygen in hemoglobin and hemocyanin molecules in hemolymph # Taking oxygen from surface via brea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invertebrate
Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate subphylum Vertebrata, i.e. vertebrates. Well-known Phylum, phyla of invertebrates include arthropods, molluscs, annelids, echinoderms, flatworms, cnidarians, and sponges. The majority of animal species are invertebrates; one estimate puts the figure at 97%. Many invertebrate taxon, taxa have a greater number and diversity of species than the entire subphylum of Vertebrata. Invertebrates vary widely in size, from 10 Micrometre, μm (0.0004 in) myxozoans to the 9–10 m (30–33 ft) colossal squid. Some so-called invertebrates, such as the Tunicata and Cephalochordata, are actually sister chordate subphyla to Vertebrata, being more closely related to vertebrates than to other invertebrates. This makes the "invertebrates" para ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
