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Alpheus Heterochaelis
''Alpheus heterochaelis'', the bigclaw snapping shrimp, is a snapper or pistol shrimp in the family Alpheidae. It is found in the western Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Description The bigclaw snapping shrimp has a small rostrum and no spines on the edge of its carapace. The big claw or chela which gives it its common name can be either the right or left claw and is disproportionally large, measuring half the length of the body. It has a deep notch on either side beneath the finger joint. The other claw is unmodified and of normal size. The bigclaw is the largest species of snapping shrimp in its home range, growing to a maximum length of , but most adults are considerably smaller than this. Its colour is a translucent dark green with orange and blue tips to the uropods. Distribution and habitat The bigclaw snapping shrimp is found in tropical and semitropical waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the West Indies, Bermuda, and the western Atlantic Ocean from Cape Hatteras south t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Say
Thomas Say (June 27, 1787 – October 10, 1834) was an American entomologist, conchologist, and herpetologist. His studies of insects and shells, numerous contributions to scientific journals, and scientific expeditions to Florida, Georgia, the Rocky Mountains, Mexico, and elsewhere made him an internationally known naturalist. Say has been called the father of American descriptive entomology and American conchology. He served as librarian for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, curator at the American Philosophical Society (elected in 1817), and professor of natural history at the University of Pennsylvania. Early life and education Born in Philadelphia into a prominent Quaker family, Thomas Say was the great-grandson of John Bartram, and the great-nephew of William Bartram. His father, Dr. Benjamin Say, was brother-in-law to another Bartram son, Moses Bartram. The Say family had a house, "The Cliffs" at Gray's Ferry, adjoining the Bartram family farms in King ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops including birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation. Some insects, fish, amphibians, mollusks, crustaceans, cnidarians, echinoderms, and tunicates undergo metamorphosis, which is often accompanied by a change of nutrition source or behavior. Animals can be divided into species that undergo complete metamorphosis (" holometaboly"), incomplete metamorphosis (" hemimetaboly"), or no metamorphosis (" ametaboly"). Scientific usage of the term is technically precise, and it is not applied to general aspects of cell growth, including rapid growth spurts. Generally organisms with a larva stage undergo metamorphosis, and during metamorphosis the organism loses larval characteristics. References to "metamorphosis" in mammals are imprecise and only colloquial, but historically idealist ideas of transf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larva
A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. The larva's appearance is generally very different from the adult form (''e.g.'' caterpillars and butterflies) including different unique structures and organs that do not occur in the adult form. Their diet may also be considerably different. Larvae are frequently adapted to different environments than adults. For example, some larvae such as tadpoles live almost exclusively in aquatic environments, but can live outside water as adult frogs. By living in a distinct environment, larvae may be given shelter from predators and reduce competition for resources with the adult population. Animals in the larval stage will consume food to fuel their transition into the adult form. In some organisms like polychaetes and barnacles, adults are im ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egg (biology)
An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the animal hatches. Most arthropods such as insects, vertebrates (excluding live-bearing mammals), and mollusks lay eggs, although some, such as scorpions, do not. Reptile eggs, bird eggs, and monotreme eggs are laid out of water and are surrounded by a protective shell, either flexible or inflexible. Eggs laid on land or in nests are usually kept within a warm and favorable temperature range while the embryo grows. When the embryo is adequately developed it hatches, i.e., breaks out of the egg's shell. Some embryos have a temporary egg tooth they use to crack, pip, or break the eggshell or covering. The largest recorded egg is from a whale shark and was in size. Whale shark eggs typically hatch within the mother. At and up to , ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moult
In biology, moulting (British English), or molting (American English), also known as sloughing, shedding, or in many invertebrates, ecdysis, is the manner in which an animal routinely casts off a part of its body (often, but not always, an outer layer or covering), either at specific times of the year, or at specific points in its life cycle. In medieval times it was also known as "mewing" (from the French verb "muer", to moult), a term that lives on in the name of Britain's Royal Mews where the King's hawks used to be kept during moulting time before becoming horse stables after Tudor times. Moulting can involve shedding the epidermis (skin), pelage ( hair, feathers, fur, wool), or other external layer. In some groups, other body parts may be shed, for example, the entire exoskeleton in arthropods, including the wings in some insects. Examples In birds In birds, moulting is the periodic replacement of feathers by shedding old feathers while producing new ones. Feathe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monogamy In Animals
Monogamous pairing in animals refers to the natural history of mating systems in which species pair bond to raise offspring. This is associated, usually implicitly, with sexual monogamy. Monogamous mating Monogamy is defined as a pair bond between two adult animals of the same species – typically of the opposite sex. This pair may cohabitate in an area or territory for some duration of time, and in some cases may copulate and reproduce with only each other. Monogamy may either be short-term, lasting one to a few seasons or long-term, lasting many seasons and in extreme cases, life-long. Monogamy can be partitioned into two categories, social monogamy and genetic monogamy which may occur together in some combination, or completely independently of one another.Ophir, Alexander G., Phelps, Steven M., Sorin, Anna Bess & O. Wolff, J. (2008)Social but not genetic monogamy is associated with greater breeding success in prairie voles/ref> As an example, in the cichlid species ''Variabi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Panopeus Herbstii
''Panopeus herbstii'' (the ''black-fingered mud crab'', ''black-clawed mud crab'', ''Atlantic mud crab'' or sometimes ''common mud crab'') is a true crab, belonging to the infraorder Brachyura, and is the largest of the mud crabs. ''Panopeus herbstii'' is small, growing to about 4 cm, with black-tipped claws of unequal size. ''P. herbstii'' has a strong exoskeleton, with very thick and strong claws. The shell is a dull gray and brown color. ''Panopeus herbstii'' is found along the Atlantic coast of North America, from Boston, Massachusetts to Santa Catarina, Brazil and on Bermuda. It is the most common xanthid crab on the east coast of the United States. It is found on muddy bottoms, where it takes refuge under stones and shells or among sponges and weeds, but it is rarely seen in the open. It feeds mainly on young clams, oysters, and periwinkles; it cracks open their shells with its strong claws. Mud crabs are especially fond of hermit crab Hermit crabs are anom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weakfish
The weakfish, ''Cynoscion regalis'', is a marine fish of the drum family Sciaenidae. A medium-large, slender, marine fish, it is found along the east coast of North America. The head and back of this fish are dark brown in color with a greenish tinge. The sides have a faint silvery hue with dusky specks, and the belly is white. The origin of its name is based on the weakness of the mouth muscles, which often cause a hook to tear free, allowing the fish to escape. The weakfish grows to in length and in weight. It is found along the eastern coast of North America from Nova Scotia, Canada to northern Florida, where it is fished both commercially and recreationally. Weakfish are also known by the American Indian name Squeteague. In the mid-Atlantic states, the fish is sometimes referred to by the name sea trout, though it is not related to the fishes properly called trout, which are in the family Salmonidae. The weakfish is the state fish of Delaware. Management Weakfish st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pearlfish
Pearlfish are marine fish in the ray-finned fish family Carapidae. Pearlfishes inhabit the tropical waters of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans at depths to , along oceanic shelves and slopes. They are slender, elongated fish with no scales, translucent bodies, and dorsal fin rays which are shorter than their anal fin rays. Adults of most species live symbiotically inside various invertebrate hosts, and some live parasitically inside sea cucumbers. The larvae are free living. Characteristics Pearlfishes are slender, distinguished by having dorsal fin rays that are shorter than their anal fin rays. They have translucent, scaleless bodies reminiscent of eels. The largest pearlfish are about in length. They reproduce by laying oval-shaped eggs, about 1 mm in length. Ecology Pearlfishes are unusual in that the adults of most species live inside various types of invertebrates. They typically live inside clams, starfish, or sea squirts, and are simply commensal, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goby
Goby is a common name for many species of small to medium sized ray-finned fish, normally with large heads and tapered bodies, which are found in marine, brackish and freshwater environments. Traditionally most of the species called gobies have been classified in the order Perciformes as the suborder Gobioidei but in the 5th Edition of ''Fishes of the World'' this suborder is elevated to an order Gobiiformes within the clade Percomorpha. Not all the species in the Gobiiformes are referred to as gobies and the "true gobies" are placed in the family Gobiidae, while other species referred to as gobies have been placed in the Oxudercidae. Goby is also used to describe some species which are not classified within the order Gobiiformes, such as the engineer goby or convict blenny ''Pholidichthys leucotaenia''. The word goby derives from the Latin ''gobius'' meaning "gudgeon", and some species of goby, especially the sleeper gobies in the family Eleotridae Eleotridae is a family of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crustacean
Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, 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 emerged deep in the Crustacean group, with the completed group referred to as Pancrustacea. Some crustaceans ( Remipedia, Cephalocarida, Branchiopoda) are more closely related to insects and the other hexapods than they are to certain other crustaceans. The 67,000 described species range in size from '' Stygotantulus stocki'' at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span of up to and a mass of . Like other arthropods, crustaceans have an exoskeleton, which they moult to grow. They are distinguished from other groups of arthropods, such as insects, myriapods and chelicerates, by the possession of biramous (two-parted) l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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