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Mexcala Signata
''Mexcala signata'' is a species of jumping spider in the genus ''Mexcala'' that lives in Kenya and Tanzania. The spider was first defined in 2009 by Wanda Wesołowska, one of over 500 that the arachnologist described during her career. It mimics ants and ant-like wasps, living alongside and preying upon them. Only the female has been identified. The spider is medium-sized, with a dark carapace typically long and a black abdomen typically long. The abdomen has a distinctive pattern with a white stripe to the front, dark shape in the middle and orange marks on the sides, after which it is named. It can be most distinguished from other spiders in its genus by its short seminal ducts. Taxonomy ''Mexcala signata'' is a jumping spider that was first described by the Polish arachnologist Wanda Wesołowska in 2009, one of over 500 species she identified during her career. She allocated the species to the genus ''Mexcala'', first raised by George and Elizabeth Peckham in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mexcala Quadrimaculata
''Mexcala'' is a genus of jumping spiders that was first described by George and Elizabeth Peckham in 1902. The name is probably derived from the Nahuatl '' mezcal''. Species it contains twenty-one species, found only in Africa, Yemen, and Iran: *'' Mexcala agilis'' Lawrence, 1928 – Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Namibia *'' Mexcala angolensis'' Wesolowska, 2009 – Angola *'' Mexcala caerulea'' ( Simon, 1901) – West Africa *'' Mexcala elegans'' Peckham & Peckham, 1903 – Ivory Coast, Malawi, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa *'' Mexcala farsensis'' Logunov, 2001 – Iran *'' Mexcala fizi'' Wesolowska, 2009 – Congo, Tanzania *'' Mexcala formosa'' Wesolowska & Tomasiewicz, 2008 – Ethiopia *'' Mexcala kabondo'' Wesolowska, 2009 – Congo, Malawi, Tanzania *'' Mexcala macilenta'' Wesolowska & Russell-Smith, 2000 – Ethiopia, Tanzania *'' Mexcala meridiana'' Wesolowska, 2009 – South Africa *'' Mexcala monstrata'' Wesolowska & van Harten, 1994 – Egypt, Yemen *' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wayne Maddison
Wayne Paul Maddison , is a professor and Canada Research Chair at the departments of zoology and botany at the University of British Columbia, and the Director of the Spencer Entomological Collection at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. His research concerns the phylogeny, biodiversity, and evolution of jumping spiders (Salticidae), of which he has discovered new species and genera. He has also done research in phylogenetic theory, developing and perfecting various methods used in comparative biology, such as character state inference in internal nodes through maximum parsimony, squared-change parsimony, or character correlation through the concentrated changes test or pairwise comparisons. In collaboration with David R. Maddison, he worked on thMesquiteopen-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-sourc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diurnality
Diurnality is a form of plant and animal behavior characterized by activity during daytime, with a period of sleeping or other inactivity at night. The common adjective used for daytime activity is "diurnal". The timing of activity by an animal depends on a variety of environmental factors such as the temperature, the ability to gather food by sight, the risk of predation, and the time of year. Diurnality is a cycle of activity within a 24-hour period; cyclic activities called circadian rhythms are endogenous cycles not dependent on external cues or environmental factors except for a zeitgeber. Animals active during twilight are crepuscular, those active during the night are nocturnal and animals active at sporadic times during both night and day are cathemeral. Plants that open their flowers during the daytime are described as diurnal, while those that bloom during nighttime are nocturnal. The timing of flower opening is often related to the time at which preferred pollinators ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sclerotization
Sclerotization is a biochemical process that produces the rigid shell of sclerotin that comprises an insect's chitinous exoskeleton. It is prominent in the thicker, armored parts of insects and arachnids, especially in the biting mouthparts and sclerites of scorpions and beetles. Molecular mechanism Sclerotization entails crosslinking of oxygen-reactive derivatives of dopamine. The reaction of the dopamine derivatives toward oxygen is catalyzed by diverse enzymes such as laccase, which convert the catechol groups to quinones. The resulting quinones are susceptible to nucleophilic attack by amines and thiols, which decorate the side-chains of proteins. These reactions gives rise to color (typically brown), loss of solubility, and rigidification that accompany sclerotization.{{cite journal , doi=10.1007/s00726-005-0298-2, title=When Quinones Meet Amino Acids: Chemical, Physical and Biological Consequences, year=2006, last1=Bittner, first1=S., journal=Amino Acids, volume=30, issu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epigyne
The epigyne or epigynum is the external genital structure of female spiders. As the epigyne varies greatly in form in different species, even in closely related ones, it often provides the most distinctive characteristic for recognizing species. It consists of a small, hardened portion of the exoskeleton located on the underside of the abdomen, in front of the epigastric furrow and between the epigastric plates. Functions The primary function of the epigyne is to receive and direct the palpal organ of the male during copulation. The various specific forms of epigynes are correlated, in each case, with corresponding specific differences in the palpus of the male. This specialization prevents individuals of different species from mating. The epigyne covers or accompanies the openings of the spermathecae, which are pouches for receiving and retaining sperm. Frequently, the openings of the spermathecae are on the outer face of the epigyne and can be easily seen. A secondary funct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pedipalp
Pedipalps (commonly shortened to palps or palpi) are the second pair of appendages of chelicerates – a group of arthropods including spiders, scorpions, horseshoe crabs, and sea spiders. The pedipalps are lateral to the chelicerae ("jaws") and anterior to the first pair of walking legs. Overview Pedipalps are composed of six segments or articles: the coxa, the trochanter, the femur, the short patella, the tibia, and the tarsus. In spiders, the coxae frequently have extensions called maxillae or gnathobases, which function as mouth parts with or without some contribution from the coxae of the anterior legs. The limbs themselves may be simple tactile organs outwardly resembling the legs, as in spiders, or chelate weapons ( pincers) of great size, as in scorpions. The pedipalps of Solifugae are covered in setae, but have not been studied in detail. Comparative studies of pedipalpal morphology may suggest that leg-like pedipalps are primitive in arachnids. At present, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthropod Leg
The arthropod leg is a form of jointed appendage of arthropods, usually used for walking. Many of the terms used for arthropod leg segments (called podomeres) are of Latin origin, and may be confused with terms for bones: ''coxa'' (meaning hip, plural ''coxae''), ''trochanter'', ''femur'' (plural ''femora''), ''tibia'' (plural ''tibiae''), ''tarsus'' (plural ''tarsi''), ''ischium'' (plural ''ischia''), ''metatarsus'', ''carpus'', ''dactylus'' (meaning finger), ''patella'' (plural ''patellae''). Homologies of leg segments between groups are difficult to prove and are the source of much argument. Some authors posit up to eleven segments per leg for the most recent common ancestor of extant arthropods but modern arthropods have eight or fewer. It has been argued that the ancestral leg need not have been so complex, and that other events, such as successive loss of function of a ''Hox''-gene, could result in parallel gains of leg segments. In arthropods, each of the leg segments ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spinneret
A spinneret is a silk-spinning organ of a spider or the larva of an insect. Some adult insects also have spinnerets, such as those borne on the forelegs of Embioptera. Spinnerets are usually on the underside of a spider's opisthosoma, and are typically segmented. While most spiders have six spinnerets, some have two, four, or eight. They can move both independently and in concert. Most spinnerets are not simple structures with a single orifice producing a single thread, but complex structures of many microscopic spigots, each producing one filament. This produces the necessary orientation of the protein molecules, without which the silk would be weak and useless. Spigots can be singular or found in groups, which also permits spiders to combine multiple filaments in different ways to produce many kinds of silk for various purposes. Spinneret morphology can help arachnologists identify the taxon of a specimen and the specific morphology of a spigot can determine its use as well ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spider Vision
The eyes of spiders vary significantly in their structure, arrangement, and function. They usually have eight, each being a simple eye with a single lens (optics), lens rather than multiple units as in the compound eyes of insects. The specific arrangement and structure of the eyes is one of the features used in the identification and classification of different species, genera, and families. Most Haplogynae, haplogynes have six eyes, although some have eight (Plectreuridae), four (e.g., ''Tetrablemma'') or even two (most Caponiidae). In some cave species, there are no eyes at all (e.g. Stalita taenaria). Sometimes one pair of eyes is better developed than the rest. Several families of hunting spiders, such as jumping spiders and wolf spiders, have fair to excellent vision. The main pair of eyes in jumping spiders even sees in colour. Structure and anatomy Spiders' eyes are Simple eye in invertebrates, simple eyes, or ''ocelli'' (singular ''ocellus''), meaning their eyes have a si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heliophanus
''Heliophanus'' is a genus of the spider family Salticidae (jumping spiders). Most of the almost 170 described species occur in Africa, with many others found in the Palearctic region from Europe to Japan. Species , the World Spider Catalog accepted the following species: * '' Heliophanus abditus'' Wesołowska, 1986 – Syria * '' Heliophanus aberdarensis'' Wesołowska, 1986 – Kenya * '' Heliophanus activus'' ( Blackwall, 1877) – Seychelles * '' Heliophanus acutissimus'' Wesołowska, 1986 – Algeria * '' Heliophanus aeneus'' ( Hahn, 1832) – Palearctic * '' Heliophanus aethiopicus'' Wesołowska, 2003 – Ethiopia * '' Heliophanus africanus'' Wesołowska, 1986 – South Africa * '' Heliophanus agricola'' Wesołowska, 1986 – Algeria, Spain * '' Heliophanus agricoloides'' Wunderlich, 1987 – Canary Islands * '' Heliophanus alienus'' Wesołowska, 1986 – Cameroon * '' Heliophanus anymphos'' Wesołowska, 2003 – Kenya * '' Heliophanus apiatus'' Simon, 1868 – Spain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jerzy Prószyński
Jerzy Prószyński (born 1935 in Warsaw) is a Polish arachnologist specializing in systematics of jumping spiders (family Salticidae). He is a graduate of the University of Warsaw, a long-term employee of the Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities and the Institute of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Biography In 1957 he completed his biological studies at the University of Warsaw. During his studies he was employed at the Institute of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, where he conducted research on spiders in the Kampinos Forest. Between 1963 and 1967 he lectured on zoology at the University of Ghana. In 1966 he obtained his Ph.D. at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. A year later he was given the opportunity to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, but he was refused a passport. In 1972 he was employed at the Higher School of Education in Siedlce (later the Siedlce University of Natural Scie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
