Vertebrate Exam 3 Flashcards
What is the habitat and distribution of Class Aves?
Everywhere
Name the 7 Major Features of Aves.
- Four-Part Body
- Anterior limbs modified for flight
- Body covered with feathers
- Legs covered with scales
- Beak (jaw covered with sheath), no teeth.
- Endothermic and homeothermic
- Well-developed nervous system, including highly developed cerebellum
Name the Four-Part body of Aves.
Head, neck, body, and tail
What are the 7 adaptations of flight?
- Limitations to size
- Unique respiration
- Pneumatic Bone
- Skeleton
- Muscles
- Streamline body
- Integument
Flight Limitations on Size
Muscle Power
Larger birds have lower wing beat frequencies
Large birds require longer takeoff runs
Largest Extinct Flying Bird
Giant Condor
Largest Living Bird
Ostrich
Largest Extinct Non-flying Bird
Giant Elephant Bird
Bird Respiratory Cycle
1st Inhalation: ~75% of the air goes directly to posterior air sac
1st Expiration: Oxygenated air is shunted through lungs
2nd Inhalation: Deoxygenated air is passed onto anterior air sacs
2nd Expiration: Deoxygenated air exits
Bird Countercurrecnt exchange
Blood flow of capillaries is in the opposite direction to air flow
Functions of Bird Respiratory System
- Respiration with efficient unidirectional air flow
- Cooling: Air sac system helps cool the bird when flying
- Vocalization: syrinx at base of trachea where the two bronchi diverge
Bird Pneumatic Bones
extremely light but strong, contain air cavities
- -More developed in larger birds
- -Distribution varies, but usually in the skull
Sternum
Greatly enlarged bone that bears the keel (not in flightless), which allows for attachment of muscles in flight
Clavicle
Usually fused to form furcula (wishbone). Adds bracing for scapula
Bird Vertebral Column
Rigid. Most vertebrae (except neck) are fused together with the pelvic girdle to form stiff frame work for flight
Muscle Distribution of Strong Fliers
Flight muscles make up 25-35% of total body mass, little leg muscle
Muscle Distribution of Predatory Birds
Use legs to capture prey. Flight muscles may makeup 20% of total body mass and leg muscles 10%
Muscle Distribution of Swimming Birds
Roughly equal distribution of muscle. Muscles makes up 30-60% of mass.
Dark Meat
myoglobin with high capacity for aerobic metabolism (Breast in sustained fliers)
White Meat
Lack of myoglobin, more short distance fliers, little capacity for aerobic metabolism.
Specificity of Songs
Species specific and Learned Dialects varies.
Individual Variation: some distinguish their songs from neighbors to establish territory
ex: New World Flycatchers- song develops innately
White-crowned Sparrow: learn in first 50 days of life
Why do birds make calls?
Not a song, a response to stimuli.
Produced by both sexes in and out of breeding season
Alarm, feeding, flocking, aggression, agonistic
Bird Visual Displays
- Often associated with Songs
- Males are have brightly colored breeding plumage
- Cryptic color in ground birds
Streamlined body Shape
For speed: Passerines: Up to 50km/hr Ducks and Geese: 80-90 km/hr Peregrine falcons: 200 km/hr when diving Slow Fliers- Flamingos....
Bird Integument
Feathers: Modified reptilian epidermal scales
Biochem: Over 90% is beta-keration, 1% lipid, 8% water
Feathers may weigh more than skeleton
Arranged in tracts
Functions: flexible, strong flight surface, insulation, shed water, visual display
Crop
At lower end of esophagus (in many birds), serves as storage chamber
In some birds it produces milk by the breakdown of epithelial cells of the lining. Regurgitated by males and females for young, higher fat than cow’s milk
Gizzard
Lower part of the stomach lined with horny plates for grinding food. Some birds swallow coarse objects or pellets to help breakdown food
Bird Repro
Oviparous
Internal Fertilization
Eggs with calcareous shell and large amount of yolk
Precocial (Active) or Altricial (Helpless) young
Timed by day length
Most sexual mature at 1
Major Features of Mammals
- Mammary Glands
- Covered with Hair
- 3 Middle Ear Bones
- Endothermic and Homeothermic
- Internal fertilization
Largest Mammal
Blue Whale
Smallest Mammal
Kitti’s hognose (bat)
Human influences on Mammals
Domestication, biomedical research, introductions (Intentional and Unintentional), Harvesting (food)
Adaptation
Hair- a new development, not a modification of reptilian scales
Vibrissae
A type of hair, like a whisker
Found in adult whales
Hair Growth
Hair grows from a follicle. Although the follicle is epidermal, it extends into the dermis
- Continuous by rapid cell division at the base
- As new cells grow, the old cells are pushed up and die
- become keratinized
Under hair
soft and dense, insulates by trapping a layer of air
Guard hair
coarse and longer, provides color (cryptic or warning)
–In water, forms protective layer
3 Shedding Patterns
- Once a year (fox, seal)
- Twice a year (norm)
- Thrice a year (hare)
Color and texture my vary. Changes in season.
Modifications of Guard hair
- Spines: Porcupines, hedgehogs, echidnas
2. Vibrissae: Whiskers, sensory in function (tactile), long for burrowing and for nocturnal animals
True Horns
Found in ruminates (sheep, cattle… some Artiodactyla)
Hollow keratinized epidermis around a core of bone arising from skull
NOT shed, NOT branched
In both sexes
Rhinoceros Horn
Hair-like filaments are cemented together (Keratinized)
Center has mineral deposits consisting of calcium and melanin
Structurally, they are similar to horse hooves and turtles beaks
Antlers
Found in the Deer Family
All Bone when mature
Velvet covering- grow annually by developing beneath a cover of highly vascularized soft skin called “velvet”
Antlers are dropped after breeding season, nest set will grow a few months later. Each set is more elaborate than the previous
Cost- Mineral metabolism
Only in males, except one genus
Mammal Glands
- Sweat
- Scent
- Sebaceous
- Mammary
Two types of Sweat glands
- Temperature Regulatory: Produce a watery sweat for temp regulation. Located in hairless regions in most (except horses, some apes, and humans). Reduced or absent in whales, rodents, rabbits
- Those always open into a hair follicle: Secretions associated with certain aspects of sex cycles, not temp regulation. Develop at puberty
Scent Glands
In nearly all vertebrates.
Functions Vary- mark territory boundaries, warning, defense, mating signals (seasonal)
Location:
-Wolves and Foxes- at base of tail
-Skunks and Minks- anal region; open into the anus and can be discharged forcefully
-Humans- usually hidden by deodorants
Sebaceous Glands
Associated with hair follicles, although some are free and open to surface Soften skin and hair Location: -Humans- numerous on scalp and face -Most mammals- all over
Mammal Insectivores
Shrews, Moles, Most bats
Small, opportunistic
3 Types of Mammalian Herbivores
- Browsers: eat leaves and branches (deer)
- Grazers: eat grasses (Horses, cattle, sheep)
- Gnawers: Rodents with chisel-like, sharp incisors that gnaw throughout life and must be worn away (rodents and rabbits)
Problem with being a Herbivore and Solution
Cellulose cannot be broken up by enzymes vertebrates have.
Solution: Symbiotic anaerobic bacteria and protozoa in “fermentation chambers”
Cecum
side pocket off the gut (diverticulum) that serves as a fermentation chamber and absorption (Horses, hares, rodents…)
Coprophacy
some eat fecal pellets (Horses, dogs, hares)
Ruminants
Deer, cattle, sheep
Have four-chambered stomach
Ruminant Four-chambered Stomach
- Rumen: large, 1st chamber which serves as the fermentation chamber with symbiotic prokaryotes and protists. Grasses are formed into boluses that enter the rumen.
- Reticulum: As in the rumen, there are symbiotic prokaryotes and protists
- -The cud is periodically regurgitates and returned to the mouth and chewed to crush the fibers further
- -Swallowed again to go on to the 3rd chamber - Omasum: The cud is swallowed again and moves to the omasum, water is removed
- Abomasum: The cud, along with huge numbers of microbes, is passed to the abomasum for normal digestion by the cow’s own enzymes
Mammalian Carnivals
Mainly eat herbivores
- Protein is easier to digest, the have shorter tracts and shorter cecum
- More active
- More intelligent for catching prey, protein fuel brain
- Depend on: Keen senses and agility, large size
Mammalian Repro
- Seasonal- most mammals have a definite mating season. Females mate based on Estrous Cycle.
- Timing- Mating season coincides with optimal time to rear young after birth
- Socially- since juveniles depend on one or both parents for periods of weeks or months after birth, associations with parents and sibling are formed early and this may be an important reason why sociality is so developed in mammals
Elephant Repro
Sexual maturity 8-13 years
Gestation 22 months
“Aunties” help with delivary
Calf 170-300 lbs, drink 2.5 gallons of milk a day and weaning can take up to 10 years
In a lifetime (50-80 yr), female produce 7-8 offspring
Long generation and low repro outputs more susceptible to extinction
Protherian Lineage
Egg-Laying Mammals
–Eggs incubate and hatch outside the body
Metatherian Lineage
Marsupials
–Young are born in a small, feeble state after a short gestation (within Marsupian)
Eutherian Lineage
Placental Mammals
- -Placental attachment nourishes young
- -Young are born relatively well developed
Order Monotremata
(Subclass Prototheria) spiny anteaters and duc-billed platypus
- -one breeding season per year
- -produce eggs with lots of yolk
- —fertilized within the fallopian tubes, begin to differentiate and are covered with shell in uterus, nutrients from egg only
- -Young reared on milk
Order Didelphimorphia
(Subclass Theria, Infraclass Metatheria): Marsupial mammals -embryo does not implant in the uterus
Red kangaroo Repro
1st Preg: includes 33 day gestation. Joey is born and crawls to pouch without help and attaches to a nipple
2nd Preg: Mother immediately becomes preg again, but the development of this embryo is arrested to about 100-cell stages as long as the 1st joey is suckling. Embryonic diapause last 235 days
3rd Preg: immediately after 2nd leaves the pouch
Infraclass Eutheria
(Subclass Theria): Placental Mammals
- Fertilization generally takes place in fallopian tubes
- Parental investment is great during the gestation period
- Embryo remains in the uterus and is nourished by a supply of food through and attachment called the placenta (counter current exchange involved)
- Larger species have smaller litters
hemipenes
paired copulatory organs of male squamates, only one used at a time
Squmata Repro
All forms of Repro:
oviparous- ancestral
viviparous- found in snakes and lizards
Parthenogenesis
Asexual repro
–All- females species: 6 families of lizards and 1 family of snake
Dewlap of Anoles
orange-red or pink flap of tissue beneath the chin
- -can be voluntarily extended or retracted
- -plays role in courtship and territorial defenses
Differences between snakes and lizards
Lizards have movable eyelids
Lizards have external ears
Most lizards have legs
Jacobson’s Organ
A pair of pit-like organs in the roof of the mouth, lined with olfactory epithelia
