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Tropicagama
''Tropicagama'' is a genus of large-bodied lizards in the Family (biology), family Agamidae. The genus is Monotypic taxon, monotypic, with only one species listed: ''Tropicagama temporalis'', commonly known as the swamplands lashtail or northern water dragon. This Arboreal locomotion, semi-arboreal species inhabits the Tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands, tropical savannah woodlands of northern Australia, as well as parts of New Guinea and southeastern Indonesia. Taxonomy From its original description in 1867 until 2017, genus ''Tropicagama'' has previously been included in multiple other genera, including ''Amphibolurus'', ''Gemmatophora'', ''Gowidon'', ''Grammatophora'', ''Lophognathus'', and ''Physignathus''. The new genus – ''Tropicagama'' – was created by Melville ''et al.'' in 2018, after an extensive analysis of three genera (''Amphibolurus'', ''Gowidon'' and ''Lophognathus'') that have had long-standing inconsistencies in their taxonomic clas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amphibolurinae
The Amphibolurinae are a subfamily of lizards in the family Agamidae. Members of this subfamily are found in Australia and New Guinea, although one species, the Chinese water dragon, is found in Southeast Asia. Genera Genera within the subfamily Amphibolurinae usually dwell in flat, sandy habitats. This subfamily includes: UniProt Taxonomy References Agamidae Taxa named by Johann Georg Wagler {{Agamidae-stub ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lophognathus
''Lophognathus'' is a genus of large-bodied agamid lizards, consisting of two species — ''L. gilberti'' and ''L. horneri'' — both of which are endemic to northern Australia. Along with several other closely related genera (e.g., ''Amphibolurus'', '' Gowidon'', and ''Tropicagama''), these lizards are commonly referred to as "dragons". In Australia, these lizards are also colloquially known as "Ta Ta" lizards, due to their habit of "waving" after running across hot surfaces. ''Lophognathus'' are slender, slightly compressed, semi-arboreal lizards. They occur in a variety of habitats, including sand dunes and arid regions, but frequently near watercourses. Taxonomy The genus ''Lophognathus'' was originally named and described by John Edward Gray in 1842. Gray JE (1842). "Description of some hitherto unrecorded species of Australian Reptiles and Batrachians". ''Zoological Miscellany'' (London: Treuttel, Würtz & Co.) ''2 51–57. (''Lophognathus'', new genus, p. 53). Species T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agamidae
Agamidae is a family containing 582 species in 64 genera of iguanian lizards indigenous to Africa, Asia, Australia, and a few locations in Southern Europe. Many species are commonly called dragons or dragon lizards. Overview Phylogenetically, they may be sister to the Iguanidae, and have similar appearances. Agamids usually have well-developed, strong legs. Their tails cannot be shed and regenerated like those of geckos (and several other families such as skinks), though a certain amount of regeneration is observed in some. Many agamid species are capable of limited change of their colours to regulate their body temperature. In some species, males are more brightly coloured than females, and colours play a part in signaling and reproductive behaviours. Although agamids generally inhabit warm environments, ranging from hot deserts to tropical rainforests, at least one species, the mountain dragon, is found in cooler regions. They are particularly diverse in Australia. This gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kakadu National Park
Kakadu National Park is a protected area in the Northern Territory of Australia, southeast of Darwin. It is a World Heritage Site. Kakadu is also gazetted as a locality, covering the same area as the national park, with 313 people recorded living there in the 2016 Australian census. Kakadu National Park is located within the Alligator Rivers Region of the Northern Territory, covering an area of , extending nearly from north to south and over from east to west. It is roughly the size of Wales or one-third the size of Tasmania, and is the second-largest national park in Australia, after the Munga-Thirri–Simpson Desert National Park. Most of the region is owned by the Aboriginal traditional owners, who have occupied the land for around 60,000 years and, today, manage the park jointly with Parks Australia. It is highly ecologically and biologically diverse, hosting a wide range of habitats and flora and fauna. It also includes a rich heritage of Aboriginal rock art, incl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller islands. It has a total area of , making it the list of countries and dependencies by area, sixth-largest country in the world and the largest in Oceania. Australia is the world's flattest and driest inhabited continent. It is a megadiverse countries, megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and Climate of Australia, climates including deserts of Australia, deserts in the Outback, interior and forests of Australia, tropical rainforests along the Eastern states of Australia, coast. The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south-east Asia 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Period, last glacial period. By the time of British settlement, Aboriginal Australians spoke 250 distinct l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miocene
The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern marine invertebrates than the Pliocene has. The Miocene followed the Oligocene and preceded the Pliocene. As Earth went from the Oligocene through the Miocene and into the Pliocene, the climate slowly cooled towards a series of ice ages. The Miocene boundaries are not marked by distinct global events but by regionally defined transitions from the warmer Oligocene to the cooler Pliocene Epoch. During the Early Miocene, Afro-Arabia collided with Eurasia, severing the connection between the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans, and allowing the interchange of fauna between Eurasia and Africa, including the dispersal of proboscideans and Ape, hominoids into Eurasia. During the late Miocene, the conn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molecular Clock
The molecular clock is a figurative term for a technique that uses the mutation rate of biomolecules to deduce the time in prehistory when two or more life forms diverged. The biomolecular data used for such calculations are usually nucleotide sequences for DNA, RNA, or amino acid sequences for proteins. Early discovery and genetic equidistance The notion of the existence of a so-called "molecular clock" was first attributed to Émile Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling who, in 1962, noticed that the number of amino acid differences in hemoglobin between different lineages changes roughly linearly with time, as estimated from fossil evidence. They generalized this observation to assert that the rate of evolutionary change of any specified protein was approximately constant over time and over different lineages (known as the molecular clock hypothesis). The genetic equidistance phenomenon was first noted in 1963 by Emanuel Margoliash, who wrote: "It appears that the number ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phylogenetics
In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical data and observed heritable traits of DNA sequences, protein amino acid sequences, and morphology. The results are a phylogenetic tree—a diagram depicting the hypothetical relationships among the organisms, reflecting their inferred evolutionary history. The tips of a phylogenetic tree represent the observed entities, which can be living taxa or fossils. A phylogenetic diagram can be rooted or unrooted. A rooted tree diagram indicates the hypothetical common ancestor of the taxa represented on the tree. An unrooted tree diagram (a network) makes no assumption about directionality of character state transformation, and does not show the origin or "root" of the taxa in question. In addition to their use for inferring phylogenetic pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wallacea
Wallacea is a biogeography, biogeographical designation for a group of mainly list of islands of Indonesia, Indonesian islands separated by deep-water straits from the Asian and Australia (continent), Australian continental shelf, continental shelves. Wallacea includes Sulawesi, the largest island in the group, as well as Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sumba, Timor, Halmahera, Buru, Seram Island, Seram, and many smaller islands. The islands of Wallacea lie between the Sunda Shelf (the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, Java (island), Java, and Bali) to the west, and the Sahul Shelf including Australia and New Guinea to the south and east. The total land area of Wallacea is . Geography Wallacea is defined as the series of islands stretching between the two continental shelves of Sunda Shelf, Sunda and Sahul Shelf, Sahul, but excluding the Philippines. Its eastern border (separating Wallacea from Sahul) is represented by a zoogeography, zoogeographical boundary known as Richard Lydekker ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA and mDNA) is the DNA located in the mitochondrion, mitochondria organelles in a eukaryotic cell that converts chemical energy from food into adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA is a small portion of the DNA contained in a eukaryotic cell; most of the DNA is in the cell nucleus, and, in plants and algae, the DNA also is found in plastids, such as chloroplasts. Mitochondrial DNA is responsible for coding of 13 essential subunits of the complex oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) system which has a role in cellular energy conversion. Human mitochondrial DNA was the first significant part of the human genome to be sequenced. This sequencing revealed that human mtDNA has 16,569 base pairs and encodes 13 proteins. As in other vertebrates, the human mitochondrial genetic code differs slightly from nuclear DNA. Since animal mtDNA evolves faster than nuclear genetic markers, it represents a mainstay of phylogenetics and evolutionary biology. It als ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morphology (biology)
Morphology (from Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ) "form", and λόγος (lógos) "word, study, research") is the study of the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features. This includes aspects of the outward appearance (shape, structure, color, pattern, size), as well as the form and structure of internal parts like bones and organs, i.e., anatomy. This is in contrast to physiology, which deals primarily with function. Morphology is a branch of life science dealing with the study of the overall 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 Fried ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
