|
Mini Scule
''Mini scule'' is a species of microhylid frog endemic to Madagascar that was described in 2019. The scientific name of the species refers to its size, being a pun on the word ''miniscule'' (a misspelling of ''minuscule''). It is very small, measuring only in snout–vent length. It has bronze underparts with a brown groin and back of the thigh, cream upperparts with brown flecking, a dark brown side of the head, and a red iris. It is known only from the Sainte Luce Reserve, where it inhabits areas with deep leaf litter near semi-permanent water bodies. Specimens of frogs from Mandena, the Vohimena mountains, the southern Anosy Mountains, and Tsitongambarika may also be of this species. Like other species in the genus ''Mini'', it received media attention when first described due to the wordplay in its scientific name. Taxonomy and systematics ''Mini scule'' was described in 2019 by herpetologist Mark Scherz and his colleagues based on an adult specimen (presumed to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can reproduction, produce Fertility, fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology (biology), morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined. The most recent rigorous estimate for the total number of species of eukaryotes is between 8 and 8.7 million. However, only about 14% of these had been described by 2011. All species (except viruses) are given a binomial nomenclature, two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specifi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miniscule
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing systems that distinguish between the upper and lowercase have two parallel sets of letters, with each letter in one set usually having an equivalent in the other set. The two case variants are alternative representations of the same letter: they have the same name and pronunciation and are treated identically when sorting in alphabetical order. Letter case is generally applied in a mixed-case fashion, with both upper and lowercase letters appearing in a given piece of text for legibility. The choice of case is often prescribed by the grammar of a language or by the conventions of a particular discipline. In orthography, the uppercase is primarily reserved for special purposes, such as the first letter of a sentence or of a proper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cophyla
''Cophyla'' is a genus of microhylid frogs endemic to Madagascar. Species The following species are recognised in the genus ''Cophyla'': * '' Cophyla alticola'' (Guibé, 1974) * ''Cophyla ando'' (Scherz, Köhler, Vences, and Glaw, 2019) * ''Cophyla barbouri'' (Noble, 1940) * ''Cophyla berara'' Vences, Andreone, and Glaw, 2005 * ''Cophyla cowanii'' (Boulenger, 1882) * ''Cophyla fortuna'' Rakotoarison, Scherz, Bletz, Razafindraibe, Glaw, and Vences, 2019 * '' Cophyla grandis'' (Boulenger, 1889) * ''Cophyla karenae'' (Rosa, Crottini, Noel, Rabibisoa, Raxworthy, and Andreone, 2014) *'' Cophyla laetus'' ( Rakotoarison, Scherz, Köhler, Ratsoavina, Hawlitschek, Megson, Vences & Glaw, 2020) * ''Cophyla maharipeo'' Rakotoarison, Crottini, Müller, Rödel, Glaw, and Vences, 2015 * ''Cophyla mavomavo'' (Andreone, Fenolio, and Walvoord, 2003) * ''Cophyla milloti'' (Guibé, 1950) * ''Cophyla noromalalae'' Rakotoarison, Crottini, Müller, Rödel, Glaw, and Vences, 2015 * '' Coph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lumpers And Splitters
Lumpers and splitters are opposing factions in any discipline that has to place individual examples into rigorously defined categories. The lumper–splitter problem occurs when there is the desire to create classifications and assign examples to them, for example schools of literature, biological Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary in ... taxon, taxa and so on. A "lumper" is a person who assigns examples broadly, assuming that differences are not as important as signature similarities. A "splitter" is one who makes precise definitions, and creates new categories to classify samples that differ in key ways. Origin of the terms The earliest known use of these terms was by Charles Darwin, in a letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1857: ''It is good to have hair-splitters & lump ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monophyletic
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic groups are typically characterised by shared derived characteristics ( synapomorphies), which distinguish organisms in the clade from other organisms. An equivalent term is holophyly. The word "mono-phyly" means "one-tribe" in Greek. Monophyly is contrasted with paraphyly and polyphyly as shown in the second diagram. A ''paraphyletic group'' consists of all of the descendants of a common ancestor minus one or more monophyletic groups. A '' polyphyletic group'' is characterized by convergent features or habits of scientific interest (for example, night-active primates, fruit trees, aquatic insects). The features by which a polyphyletic group is differentiated from others are not inherited from a common ancestor. These definitions have t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phylogeny
A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities based upon similarities and differences in their physical or genetic characteristics. All life on Earth is part of a single phylogenetic tree, indicating common ancestry. In a ''rooted'' phylogenetic tree, each node with descendants represents the inferred most recent common ancestor of those descendants, and the edge lengths in some trees may be interpreted as time estimates. Each node is called a taxonomic unit. Internal nodes are generally called hypothetical taxonomic units, as they cannot be directly observed. Trees are useful in fields of biology such as bioinformatics, systematics, and phylogenetics. ''Unrooted'' trees illustrate only the relatedness of the leaf nodes and do not require the ancestral root ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stumpffia
''Stumpffia'' is a genus of microhylid frogs that are endemic to Madagascar. They are mostly brown frogs that typically live among leaf litter. ''S. contumelia'' has a snout–vent length of about , making it one of the world's smallest frogs, and several others in the genus are only slightly larger. The largest species is no more than . The majority of the species have only been described since 2010. Each species has a small range and many are seriously threatened. Taxonomy ''Stumpffia'' was first described from the single species ''Stumpffia psologlossa'' Boettger, 1881, based on a single specimen collected on Nosy Be, a large island off the northwest coast of Madagascar, by Anotonio Stumpff. By 2017, 15 species were recognised. In late 2017, a major revision of the genus was published. This study used integrative taxonomy, i.e. the combination of multiple different datasets, to delimit and describe new species: it combined morphological, morphometric, chromatic (c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morphology (biology)
Morphology is a branch of biology dealing with the study of the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features. This includes aspects of the outward appearance ( shape, structure, colour, pattern, size), i.e. external morphology (or eidonomy), as well as the form and structure of the internal parts like bones and organs, i.e. internal morphology (or anatomy). This is in contrast to physiology, which deals primarily with function. Morphology is a branch of life science dealing with the study of gross structure of an organism or taxon and its component parts. History The etymology of the word "morphology" is from the Ancient Greek (), meaning "form", and (), meaning "word, study, research". While the concept of form in biology, opposed to function, dates back to Aristotle (see Aristotle's biology), the field of morphology was developed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1790) and independently by the German anatomist and physiologist Karl Fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plethodontohyla
''Plethodontohyla'' is a genus of microhylid frogs endemic to Madagascar. Species There are at present 11 species: * '' Plethodontohyla alluaudi'' (Mocquard, 1901) * '' Plethodontohyla bipunctata'' (Guibé, 1974) * ''Plethodontohyla brevipes'' Boulenger, 1882 * '' Plethodontohyla fonetana'' Glaw, Köhler, Bora, Rabibisoa, Ramilijaona, and Vences, 2007 * '' Plethodontohyla guentheri'' Glaw and Vences, 2007 * '' Plethodontohyla inguinalis'' Boulenger, 1882 * ''Plethodontohyla laevis'' (Boettger, 1913) * '' Plethodontohyla mihanika'' Vences, Raxworthy, Nussbaum, and Glaw, 2003 * ''Plethodontohyla notosticta'' (Günther, 1877) * '' Plethodontohyla ocellata'' Noble and Parker, 1926 * ''Plethodontohyla tuberata'' (Peters, 1883) Taxonomy The following species were formerly classed as ''Plethodontoyhla'' species but have since been moved to the genus '' Rhombophryne'': * '' Rhombophryne coronata'' (Vences & Glaw, 2003) * '' Rhombophryne guentherpetersi'' (Guibé, 1974) * ''Rhombophryne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sister Group
In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and taxon B are sister groups to each other. Taxa A and B, together with any other extant or extinct descendants of their most recent common ancestor (MRCA), form a monophyletic group, the clade AB. Clade AB and taxon C are also sister groups. Taxa A, B, and C, together with all other descendants of their MRCA form the clade ABC. The whole clade ABC is itself a subtree of a larger tree which offers yet more sister group relationships, both among the leaves and among larger, more deeply rooted clades. The tree structure shown connects through its root to the rest of the universal tree of life. In cladistic standards, taxa A, B, and C may represent specimens, species, genera, or any other taxonomic units. If A and B are at the same ta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smithsonian Magazine
''Smithsonian'' is the official journal published by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The first issue was published in 1970. History The history of ''Smithsonian'' began when Edward K. Thompson, the retired editor of ''Life'' magazine, was asked by the then-Secretary of the Smithsonian, S. Dillon Ripley, to produce a magazine "about things in which the Smithsonian nstitutionis interested, might be interested or ought to be interested." Thompson would later recall that his philosophy for the new magazine was that it "would stir curiosity in already receptive minds. It would deal with history as it is relevant to the present. It would present art, since true art is never dated, in the richest possible reproduction. It would peer into the future via coverage of social progress and of science and technology. Technical matters would be digested and made intelligible by skilled writers who would stimulate readers to reach upward while not turning them off with jargon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mini Ature
''Mini ature'' is a species of very small microhylid frog endemic to Madagascar described in 2019. The scientific name of the species refers to its size, being a pun on the word ''miniature''. Although it measures only in snout–vent length, it is the largest species in its genus. The holotype of the species has a light brown back, beige sides, a dark brown underside with beige speckling that turns beige near the bottom, and a dark brown side and back of the head. It is known only from Andohahela National Park in Anosy, Madagascar. Like other species in its genus, it received media attention when first described due to the wordplay in its scientific name. Taxonomy and systematics ''Mini ature'' was described in 2019 by the herpetologist Mark Scherz and colleagues on the basis of an adult specimen collected in Andohahela National Park in Anosy in Madagascar in 2004. The name ''Mini ature'' is a pun on the word '' miniature'', referring to the extremely small size of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.svg "Click for more on -> Miniscule")
.png "Click for more on -> Sister Group")