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Microbivory
Microbivory (adj. microbivorous, microbivore) is a feeding behavior consisting of eating microbes (especially bacteria) practiced by animals of the mesofauna, microfauna and meiofauna. Microbivorous animals include some soil nematodes, springtails or flies such as '' Drosophila sharpi''. A well known example of microbivorous nematodes is the model roundworm '' Caenorhabditis elegans'' which is maintained in culture in labs on agar plates, fed with the 'OP50' ''Escherichia coli'' strain of bacteria. In food webs of ecosystems, microbivores can be distinguished from detritivores, generally thought playing the roles of decomposers, as they don't consume decaying dead matter but only living microorganisms. Use of term in robotics There is also use of the term 'microbivore' to qualify the concept of robot A robot is a machine—especially one Computer program, programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions Automation, automatically. A r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microbe
A microorganism, or microbe, is an organism of microscopic size, which may exist in its single-celled form or as a colony of cells. The possible existence of unseen microbial life was suspected from antiquity, with an early attestation in Jain literature authored in 6th-century BC India. The scientific study of microorganisms began with their observation under the microscope in the 1670s by Anton van Leeuwenhoek. In the 1850s, Louis Pasteur found that microorganisms caused food spoilage, debunking the theory of spontaneous generation. In the 1880s, Robert Koch discovered that microorganisms caused the diseases tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, and anthrax. Microorganisms are extremely diverse, representing most unicellular organisms in all three domains of life: two of the three domains, Archaea and Bacteria, only contain microorganisms. The third domain, Eukaryota, includes all multicellular organisms as well as many unicellular protists and protozoans that are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bacterivore
A bacterivore is an organism which obtains energy and nutrients primarily or entirely from the consumption of bacteria. The term is most commonly used to describe free-living, heterotrophic, microscopic organisms such as nematodes as well as many species of amoeba and numerous other types of protozoans, but some macroscopic invertebrates are also bacterivores, including sponges, polychaetes, and certain molluscs and arthropods. Many bacterivorous organisms are adapted for generalist predation on any species of bacteria, but not all bacteria are easily digested; the spores of some species, such as ''Clostridium perfringens'', will never be prey because of their cellular attributes. In microbiology Bacterivores can sometimes be a problem in microbiology studies. For instance, when scientists seek to assess microorganisms in samples from the environment (such as freshwater), the samples are often contaminated with microscopic bacterivores, which interfere with the growing of bacteria f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecosystem
An ecosystem (or ecological system) is a system formed by Organism, organisms in interaction with their Biophysical environment, environment. The Biotic material, biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Ecosystems are controlled by external and internal Environmental factor, factors. External factors—including climate—control the ecosystem's structure, but are not influenced by it. By contrast, internal factors control and are controlled by ecosystem processes; these include decomposition, the types of species present, root competition, shading, disturbance, and succession. While external factors generally determine which Resource (biology), resource inputs an ecosystem has, their availability within the ecosystem is controlled by internal factors. Ecosystems are wikt:dynamic, dynamic, subject to periodic disturbances and always in the process of recovering from past disturbances. The tendency of an ecosystem to remain clo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethology
Ethology is a branch of zoology that studies the behavior, behaviour of non-human animals. It has its scientific roots in the work of Charles Darwin and of American and German ornithology, ornithologists of the late 19th and early 20th century, including Charles Otis Whitman, Charles O. Whitman, Oskar Heinroth, and Wallace Craig. The modern discipline of ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s with the work of the Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and the Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, the three winners of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ethology combines laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to neuroanatomy, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Etymology The modern term ''ethology'' derives from the Greek language: wikt:ἦθος, ἦθος, ''ethos'' meaning "character" and , ''wikt:-logia, -logia'' meaning "the study of". The term was first popularized by the American entomologist William Mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Animals By Eating Behaviors
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the Biology, biological Kingdom (biology), kingdom Animalia (). With few exceptions, animals heterotroph, consume organic material, Cellular respiration#Aerobic respiration, breathe oxygen, have myocytes and are motility, able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of Cell (biology), cells, the blastula, during embryonic development. Animals form a clade, meaning that they arose from a single common ancestor. Over 1.5 million extant taxon, living animal species have been species description, described, of which around 1.05 million are insects, over 85,000 are molluscs, and around 65,000 are vertebrates. It has been estimated there are as many as 7.77 million animal species on Earth. Animal body lengths range from to . They have complex ecologies and biological interaction, interactions with each other and their environments, forming intricate food webs. The scientific study of animals is known as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biological Interactions
In ecology, a biological interaction is the effect that a pair of organisms living together in a community have on each other. They can be either of the same species (intraspecific interactions), or of different species (interspecific interactions). These effects may be short-term, or long-term, both often strongly influence the adaptation and evolution of the species involved. Biological interactions range from mutualism, beneficial to both partners, to competition, harmful to both partners. Interactions can be direct when physical contact is established or indirect, through intermediaries such as shared resources, territories, ecological services, metabolic waste, toxins or growth inhibitors. This type of relationship can be shown by net effect based on individual effects on both organisms arising out of relationship. Several recent studies have suggested non-trophic species interactions such as habitat modification and mutualisms can be important determinants of food web struc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Freitas
Robert A. Freitas Jr. (born 1952) is an American nanotechnologist. Early life and education Freitas was born in Camden, Maine. His father worked in agriculture, and his mother was a homemaker. Freitas married Nancy, his childhood sweetheart, in 1974. In 1974, Freitas earned a bachelor's degree in physics and psychology from Harvey Mudd College. In 1978, he received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from the Santa Clara University School of Law. He has written over 150 technical papers, book chapters, and popular articles on scientific, engineering, and legal topics. Career Freitas interests include nanorobotics, how nanotechnology can extend the life of humans, self-replicating machines, and Cryonics. Freitas introduced the concept of "sentience quotient" in the late 1970s. In 1980, Freitas and William Gilbreath were participants in a NASA study regarding "Advanced Automation for Space Missions," and presented the feasibility of self-replicating machines in space, using advan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robot
A robot is a machine—especially one Computer program, programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions Automation, automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the robot control, control may be embedded within. Robots may be constructed to evoke Humanoid robot, human form, but most robots are task-performing machines, designed with an emphasis on stark functionality, rather than expressive aesthetics. Robots can be autonomous robot, autonomous or semi-autonomous and range from humanoids such as Honda's ''Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility'' (ASIMO) and TOSY's ''TOSY Ping Pong Playing Robot'' (TOPIO) to industrial robots, robot-assisted surgery, medical operating robots, patient assist robots, dog therapy robots, collectively programmed Swarm robotics, ''swarm'' robots, UAV drones such as General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, and even microscopic Nanorobotics, nanorobots. By mimicking a lifelike appearance or automating mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Detritivore
Detritivores (also known as detrivores, detritophages, detritus feeders or detritus eaters) are heterotrophs that obtain nutrients by consuming detritus (decomposing plant and animal parts as well as feces). There are many kinds of invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants that eat detritus or carry out coprophagy. By doing so, all these detritivores contribute to decomposition and the nutrient cycles. Detritivores should be distinguished from other decomposers, such as many species of bacteria, fungi and protists, which are unable to ingest discrete lumps of matter. Instead, these other decomposers live by absorbing and metabolizing on a molecular scale (saprotrophic nutrition). The terms ''detritivore'' and ''decomposer'' are often used interchangeably, but they describe different organisms. Detritivores are usually arthropods and help in the process of remineralization. Detritivores perform the first stage of remineralization, by fragmenting the dead plant matter, allowing decomp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Escherichia Coli
''Escherichia coli'' ( )Wells, J. C. (2000) Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Harlow ngland Pearson Education Ltd. is a gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, rod-shaped, coliform bacterium of the genus '' Escherichia'' that is commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms. Most ''E. coli'' strains are part of the normal microbiota of the gut, where they constitute about 0.1%, along with other facultative anaerobes. These bacteria are mostly harmless or even beneficial to humans. For example, some strains of ''E. coli'' benefit their hosts by producing vitamin K2 or by preventing the colonization of the intestine by harmful pathogenic bacteria. These mutually beneficial relationships between ''E. coli'' and humans are a type of mutualistic biological relationship—where both the humans and the ''E. coli'' are benefitting each other. ''E. coli'' is expelled into the environment within fecal matter. The bacterium grows massi ... [...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] |
Caenorhabditis Elegans
''Caenorhabditis elegans'' () is a free-living transparent nematode about 1 mm in length that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the type species of its genus. The name is a Hybrid word, blend of the Greek ''caeno-'' (recent), ''rhabditis'' (rod-like) and Latin ''elegans'' (elegant). In 1900, Émile Maupas, Maupas initially named it ''Rhabditidae, Rhabditides elegans.'' Günther Osche, Osche placed it in the subgenus ''Caenorhabditis'' in 1952, and in 1955, Ellsworth Dougherty, Dougherty raised ''Caenorhabditis'' to the status of genus. ''C. elegans'' is an unsegmented pseudocoelomate and lacks respiratory or circulatory systems. Most of these nematodes are hermaphrodites and a few are males. Males have specialised tails for mating that include spicule (nematode), spicules. In 1963, Sydney Brenner proposed research into ''C. elegans,'' primarily in the area of neuronal development. In 1974, he began research into the molecular biology, molecular and developmental ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
