Organism and habitat terminology Flashcards
Pelagic
Living in the water
Benthic
Living on the bottom
Littoral zone
Deals with tides. Effected by daily cycles.
Lacustrine environments
Lake environment. Most likely of the terrestrial environments to preserve.
Sub tidal zone
Below the range of the tides. More likely to preserve than the littoral zone.
Infaunal
Within the substrate. Very likely to preserve.
Epifaunal
Lives on the substrate
Neritic
Above the continental shelf
Mineral hard parts
Bio minerals often embedded in an organic matrix.
Most common mineral hard parts
Calcareous (CaCO3) in the form of calcite or aragonite.
Siliceous (ex glass sponge) phosphatic (ex humans)
Which preserves better calcite that is low or high in Mg?
Low Mg
Organic hard parts
Generally composed if crystalline polymers that form high stiffness and tensile strength, usually embedded in an organic matrix (ex-exoskeleton of insects)
Sessile
A benthic organism that stays in one place (ex-anemone)
Planktonic
A pelagic organism that is wave and current transported.
Nektonic
A pelagic organism that swims
A mobile benthic organism
An organism that lives on the bottom, but is able to move itself.
deposit feeders
Do not subdue or dismember. Get their food from the substrate.
Grazers
Scrape plant material from surfaces (ex-Urchin)
Suspension feeders
aka filter feeders. Remove food from the water column but do not dismember.
ventral
Towards the bottom
bauplan
blueprint. Generally considered to represent features posessed by the ancestor.
phylum
Largest division of the animal kingdom.
morphology
The shape of an organism and it’s meaning.
No definite geologic form (a type of symmetry)
assymetrical (ex-sponge)
Parts arranged radially around a central point, an infinite number of planes of symmetry pass through the center.
spherical (ex- some protists)
Body generally cylindrical. Body parts arranged around the main axis. All plains passing through longitudinal axis are mirror planes. (a type of symmetry)
Radial symmetry (ex-jellyfish, corals)
pentaradial symmetry
5 planes of symmetry (ex-seastar)
proximal
toward the body
distal
Away from the body
metamerism
repeated body parts (ex-centipedes)
biradial
only 1 mirror plane the same at each end.
Bilateral
Only 1 mirror plane may be different at each end (ex-Darwin the cat)
coelum
An internal fluid filled cavity
monophylitic
Same common ancestor. All related
polyphylitic
Unrelated organisms in the same group usually based on shared primitive characteristics. (ex putting birds and insects together because they both fly)
Spindle diagram
shows number of families over time scales. The wider it is the more families there were.
Also shows the earliest appearance.
synamorphy
A shared derived characteristic (modified from the condidtion in the ancestors)
ex-gastropods
iterative evolution
Repeated re-evolution of similar morphology
High Volativity
repeated history of diversification and extinctions
cladograms
Branching diagram that represent hypotheses about the actual evolution between the taxa.
Node
A branching point on a cladogram
*Groups that meet at a node share an evolutionary innovation that is not shared by other groups
Crown Groups
Everyone that is alive and all of their ancestors. A crown group can contain extinct animals
Stem Groups
Consists entirely of extinct organisms that display some, but not all the morphological features of their closest crown group. (ex-dinosaurs are a stem group with birds as the crown group)
phylogenemics
relationships as inferred from genetic studies
theoretical morphology
- develop a model
- Use model to generate the spectrum of possible forms
- Theoretical morphospace is then compared with actual forms
- Which parts of the morphospace are actually occupied?
- ask why or why not?
L-Systems
Model the development of multicellular organisms such as plants
*A form of a rewriting system where the parts of a simple object are successively replaced using a certain set of rules
functional morphology
Study of relationships form and function
Functional analysis
How can we reconstruct how ancient organisms lived?
- Are all features of organisms a result of adaptation or are there other controls?
- What is the evolutionary history and consequences of adaptations?
Arguments from homology as an approach to functional morphology
Function fossil organisms same as living relative. Example ammonoids from nautilus
Arguments from phylogeny as an approach to functional morphology
Primitive function inferred from relationships. Example parental care in dinosaurs inferred from alligators and birds.
