Lygodactylus capensis (Smith, 1849)

We're going to start with a taxonomically irrelevant discussion for this one.

Some years ago, a university friend of a friend said, upon learning that my primary interest in vertebrates was amphibians and reptiles, "What, the relict groups?"

I should note that he was British.

It is easy to get the impression, in the temperate zones and particularly in Western Europe, that amphibians and reptiles as world-wide groups are insignificant and composed entirely of a few species that are clinging on. Bearing in mind that each group on its own is more diverse than the mammals, and the amphibians almost rival the birds in terms of sheer number of species, this is clearly a false impression. Having considered this, I believe that it can only be perpetuated because of two euro-centric factors:

1) Both groups are composed primarily of ectothermic species, which are usually dependant upon periods of warm weather for breeding, so relatively few species have colonised our cold and geographically (but NOT historically) insignificant peninsula since the beginning of this most recent interglacial.

2) Members of both groups suffer disproportionately (among vertebrates) around human settlements, as they lack the dispersive ability of many birds, and unlike mammals, which have popular appeal, amphibians and reptiles both suffer (quite unjustified) persecution at the hands of many ill-informed persons who variously think they are unsightly, dangerous or even evil.

Which is why snakes could make a very good case suing the Vatican for slander.

Before this becomes a religious argument, though, onto the good news: the kind of news that has large, unblinking eyes, a scaly tail and four (often adhesive) feet.

Geckos. (Eukaryota, Animalia, Eumetazoa, Bilateralia, Nephrozoa, Deuterostomia, Chordata, Craniata, Vertebrata, Gnathostomata, Teleostomi, Osteichthys, Sarcopterygii, Tetrapoda, Reptiliomorpha, Amniota, Reptilia, Romeriida, Diapsida, Sauria, Lepidosauromorpha, Lepidosauria, Squamata, Scleroglossa, Gekkota, Gekkonidae)

Many geckos, particularly in the tropics, enjoy a much greater respect from the human population than their less adhesive relatives elsewhere, and a number of species have come to thrive not only on the edges of human settlements, but actually within the concrete hearts, where their habits of eating various pest insects earns them a welcome place in the disused corners of the human home.

Today's species is an imperfect synanthrope, meaning that it can do well out of a certain level of human settlement, but eventually (usually at the point at which people start poisoning ants), it can no longer survive in that environment (in case you didn't work it out, it eats ants. Poisoning ants kills the individuals that then eat those ants, and starves the survivors, who have nothing left to eat. Don't poison ants if you have lizards, frogs or threadsnakes in the area).

Anyway, without further ado;

Lygodactylus capensis

(Smith, 1849)

(Photographed wild in Chongwe District, Lusaka, Zambia in September 2011, Using an Olympus E-420) 

Otiorhynchus (Arammichnus) atroapterus (De Geer, 1775)

You knew it had to happen eventually. After all, three quarters of all known life on earth is made up of insects, and half of those are beetles, and about two thirds of those... are weevils.

We'll skim the the taxonomy today:
Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa
      Nephrozoa
        Bilateralia
          Protostomia
            Hexapoda
              Insecta
                Dicondylia
                  Pterygota
                    Metapterygota
                      Neoptera
                        Eumetabola (Grouping the true bugs in Hemiptera with the following taxon)
                                              Endopterygota, the insects that undergo 'complete' metamorphosis.
                            Coleopterida (Beetles and their closest chums)
                              Coleoptera (Beetles)
                                Polyphaga (most beetles excluding Carabids and water beetles)
                                  Cucujiformia (flat bark beetles and relatives)
                                    Curculionoidea (weevils)
                                      Curculionidae ('True' weevils)
                                        Entiminae (broad-nosed weevils)
                                          Phyllobini (leaf weevils)
                                            

Otiorhynchus (Arramichnus) atroapterus

(De Geer, 1775)

Otherwise known as the Black Marram Weevil. Behold:

Although quite closely related to a number of pest species (most notably the Black Vine Weevil, Otiorhynchus sulcatus), this weevil, as the common name suggests, is a specialist feeder on marram grass and a handful of closely related plants.

Its flightlessness, common in its genus, ensures that it does suddenly zoom out of its narrow band of preferred habitat and into the sea (which is a simplification of an explanation as to why a lot of island animals become flightless). It also has reasonably enlarged feet to allow it to walk without undue difficulty on the sandy dunes where its food-plants grow.

This lovely little individual was found on the successional dunes between salt-marsh and the Solent, at East Head, West Wittering, West Sussex, UK, back in March 2012. 

Sibylla pretiosa, Stal, 1856

You may - or may not, I suppose - notice that today's entry is missing the second part (specific epithet) of its 'binomial'. That's because, with my limited resources (A handful of outdated books and Google), it's very difficult to identify an awful lot of the world's wildlife with any real accuracy.

Let's start with what we have got.

We'll skip through Eukaryota,
                               Animalia
                          and  Eumetazoa (still no sponges, so my apologies to any Poriferophiles), and into
                                   Bilateralia (no corals, either... sad times),
                           Nephrozoa and get straight down to business in:
                            Protostomia - which, I would like to note, contains in addition to the dominant life-forms (in terms of ecological importance, diversity and sheer annual biomass) on earth, the vast majority of the diversity of land and the very first truly successful animal colonists of the land. But that's not important, because we're now heading into
                                         Ecdysozoa, and those earliest colonists are stuck over in its sister taxa, Lophotrochozoa, where they have rasping tongues but do not (generally) shed their skins. Onwards to
                                            Arthropoda, Phylum of the jointed exoskeleton, but arachnophobes need not fear because today we're heading into:
                                              Hexapoda, which, for those of you whose Greek is letting them down, means "Six Footed". Which, as you may remember from primary school science classes, is a trait commonly associated with the  
                                                Insecta (or insects to their friends), which constitute well over half of the diversity of life on Earth. Who knew? Well, most people. At this point, some people like to note that everything alive on earth is full of nematodes, and so Nematoda are really the dominant life form on the planet in simple terms of their ubiquity (and that really is a word), but in terms of amateur photography, most nematodes don't offer any exciting opportunities. So I'm going to stick with diversity, annual biomass and ecological significance.
                                                  Dicondylia is our next stopping point, where we say goodbye to the most ancestrally divergent insect group, the 'jumping bristletails' of Archaeognatha (Not to be confused with the Bristletails of Thysanura, which we now say goodbye to as we head into the
                                                    Pterygota, or winged insects. Fleas and lice, by the way, are counted within the Pterygota because their ancestors had wings, but learned to live without them as they hopped and blood-sucked their way through life.
                                                       Metapterygota excludes a handful of primitive flying insects, most notable of which are probably the mayflies in Ephemeroptera, which are unique amongst winged insects for many reasons, not least that they are the only insect to shed their skin while possessing usable wings (all other insects have their final shed at metamorphosis, and never grow or, in any real term, heal after that. Be nice to insects. They're fragile.
                                                          Neoptera excludes another, but radically different, group of primitive flying insects, the dragonflies. Unlike the Ephemeroptera, which take to the air for a few hours to weeks to mate and breed before starving to death (they physically cannot feed as adults), the Odonata take to the wing after months to years as the minute masters of the pond and become, on their scale, masters of the skies. Their scale is a little less impressive now than it once was, as in the relative low oxygen of our modern atmosphere, even the largest tropical species cannot grow beyond a twenty centimetre wingspan, and don't reach a fraction of the weight of their crow-sized relatives of prehistory. But enough about them, because now we're heading into the
                                                            Polyneoptera, sometimes grouped with several unrelated clades in the Exopterygota (literally "outside wings", referring to the external development of wings through the nymphal stages of development), but incomplete metamorphosis seems to be an ancestral state, so I'm sticking with Polyneoptera for now. But the contentiousness continues, as we take another step into:
                                                              Dictyoptera, which is either a superorder or an order, depending on your preferences, and unites, essentially, three orders of cockroaches. Blattophobes beware.
Fortunately for said Blattophobes, cockroach is here used in its very broadest sense, to encompass the three (rather disparate) groups of cockroaches which are often given separate orders of their own; the cockroaches as traditionally defined in Blattodea, which are commonly held to be the ancestral group from which the colonial, herbivorous cockroaches in Isoptera (otherwise known as termites) sprang, and (probably) also the parent group to the solitary, predatory third order of, admittedly not-very-cockroachy after all insects in the:
                                                                  Mantodea, which you might guess comprises the animals commonly known as Mantises. As far as insect orders go, it's not all that huge (2400-odd species), which is part of the reason that it's not been consistently divided into superfamilies just yet. The vast majority of its species are within the (possibly over-assigned) family Mantidae, but we're heading into the much smaller:
                                                                     Sybillidae, which has three genera and a mere sixteen described species. That should make things easy but, turns out, it doesn't. I'm going to venture (at this point - and I hope to be able to commit further at a later date) is that our current subject is in the only subfamily:
                                                                       Sibyllinae, and the only tribe:
                                                    Sibyllini, and the largest of the three genera:

Sibylla (Sibylla) pretiosa

Stal, 1856

[UPDATED 28-03-2014 - a lot of what follows was written before the specimen was narrowed down to a species, in March 2014] 

So, before you notice that I'm not even committing to a subgenus, let's meet the lovely Sibyl...la. 

If anyone feels like pointing out that it is a dead ringer for the one reasonably well known species of the family (Sibylla (Sibylla) pretiosa), I'll be obliged to counterpoint that in fact, the trade in exotic insects as pets is not known for its attention to taxonomy. So I am waiting for the Bulletin du Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Section A: Zoologie, Biologie et Ecologie Animales to become available online, specifically part one of their 1996 issue, and then I may have more to tell you... 

This nymph - and its teddy-bear head ornament - was one of dozens seen on walls, branches and occasionally rocks around Chongwe, Lusaka Province, Zambia in September 2011, and could be trusted to eat as many of the endless mosquitoes as they got their jagged little claws into. By late October, adults had begun to appear, which added to the suspicion that this is not S. pretiosa, which is often touted as having green wings;

Whereas this individual - and its compatriots - sported dead-leaf pink instead.


BUT [update 28/03/2014]

When this was originally written, I had not yet managed to find the Mantodea species file - a fantastic resource approaching openly-available information from the same angle as the oft-cited Orthoptera species file, although as yet in the significantly younger stages of its development.

While not as user-friendly as its parent project, it nevertheless indicates that of all the various species of Sibylla, only one extends down into our area of interest, and that is Sibylla pretiosa. While I didn't completely rule out that species based on the green-ness of wings, I am going to remind myself and anyone who reads this that a single colour character really is not a valid species dismissal tool - because, pink though the adults of the ploughing rains were, by December-January, most of them looked more like this:

Photographed in Chongwe, December 2013, using Olympus E-420 DSLR, Zuiko 40-150mm and 3 KOOD magnifiers.

Note the green wings.

So, yes, Sibylla pretiosa, and the rest of it is now update to reflect this.

Chalcophaps indica (Linnaeus, 1758)

NOTE: Vertebrate taxonomy is in a constant state of flux as vertebrate specialists (not mentioning any names, but it's always the ornithologists)  compete to make their taxon seem the most topical and diverse. Precise taxonomy, particularly regarding orders and below, and in the region where birds, mammals and the various other groups or amniotes split, remains unsatisfactorily resolved. This taxonomy, therefore, while influenced by genetic studies that I consider valid, is in parts both subjective and outdated. 

Now that you've skimmed past the small print, let's dive into the taxonomy at the really deep (and I do mean precambrian) end. 

Eukaryota - the species has a nuclear membrane, a DNA based genetic system, and may be multicellular.
  Animalia - the species is not a plant, fungus or a member of the various protist (single celled or simple-tissued organisms) kingdoms
    Eumetazoa - the animal is not a sponge, and probably has (or evolved from something with) multiple, complex tissue layers.
      Bilateralia - the animal has two-way symmetry at some stage in its life, as opposed to the radial symmetry of corals, anemones, jellyfish and friends...
        Nephrozoa - possibly excludes some marine flatworm-like creatures. Possibly a redundant level. Who knows?
           Deuterostomia - a member of the group containing vertebrates, sea-urchins and friends...
            Chordata - not a sea-urchin. Has a 'spinal' chord, but not necessarily a spine. Includes  sea-squirts, which lose this chord as they metamorphose into adults.
             Craniata - has a clear head.
              Vertebrata - has a backbone. Not a hagfish (which just has a sort-of backbone...)
                Gnathostomata - has jaws. Not a lamprey (which is almost identical to a hagfish, but has a true spine, but still no jaws...
                  Teleostomi - has - or evolved from something with - an operculum, which basically means that gills can pull water through them. So not a shark, ray, chimaera or guitarfish.
                    Osteichthyes - a bony fish. To my knowledge, the only difference between this and Teleostomi is that a group of extinct, shark-like fishes is excluded.
                      Sarcopterygii - lobe-finned fishes. Traditionally, this included only the lungfish and coelocanths. Be prepared for the first real curve-ball of evolutionary taxonomy.
                        Tetrapoda - four-legged creatures and their descendants. And yes, based on the evolutionarily unhelpful term "Fish", every species vertebrate and one invertebrate (hagfish) could be correctly identified as a fish. So apologise to any child you told that the Whale Shark was the biggest fish because, biologically, blue whales really are fish. But that's mostly because the word Fish is really not a useful definition of anything, and should really be redefined to only include the Acanthopterygii (ray-finned fishes). As an interesting aside, much as the word Conch was originally used to describe any large, shelled creature in the sea, crabs included, fish originally meant everything that lives in the sea.

Anyway, Tetrapoda. Four legged creatures and their descendants.
                          Reptiliomorpha - Excludes the amphibians (frogs, salamanders, caecilians), but includes some extinct groups which might be incautiously described as amphibians, as well as all other extant
                            Amniota - excludes said extinct groups. Marks a very important point in vertebrate taxonomy - the (more-or-less) watertight egg, which allowed vertebrates to truly conquer the land (although a Sri Lankan radiation of tree-frogs has evolved a similarly watertight egg to hatch directly into a froglet, allowing a second independence from the water. Watch this space...)
                              Reptilia - in my mind a fairly contentious group, but currently includes all Amniotes except the Synapsids, a complex-skulled group of (VERY) reptile-like animals which gave rise to Mammals.
                                Romeriida - traditionally, the point at which the Anapsids (tortoises, turtles and their ilk) split off from the reptilian lineage. However, a few recent genetic studies have indicated that the Anapsids and Archosaurs (see below) are in fact sister groups, so the validity of this grouping comes into question, as do both Diapsida and
                                  Sauria, which usually includes, lizards, birds, tuataras and their various extinct relatives.
                                    Archosauromorpha - the point at which the Lepidosauromorphs, that is to say the lizards (including snakes) and their extinct relatives, have split off from the bird and crocodile lineages.
                                      Archosauria - birds, crocodiles and their many extinct relatives.
                                        Avemetatarsalia - not crocodiles.
                                          Dinosauria - if you don't know what group this is, your childhood was wasted. Dinosaurs. Great big, lumbering reptiles (and some little darty ones) that were a dominant group in the megafauna of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and to a lesser extent in the earlier Triassic period (which was mostly dominated by extinct relatives of modern tortoises).
                                            Saurischia - Lizard hipped dinosaurs.
                                              Therapoda - the clade that included most, if not all, known predatory dinasaurs (a couple of primitive Sauropoda are of uncertain diet).
                                                Tetanurae - the "Stiff Tailed" therapods - excludes the Dilophosaurids (funky crested dinosaur which envenomated Nedry in Jurassic Park) and a few other primitive dinosaur groups.
                                                  Coelurosauria - the clade that includes the fan favourites such as Tyrannosaurus Rex and the various Raptors.
                                                     Maniraptora - excludes T-Rex, but includes Deinonychus, Velociraptor and (by now rather old) curveball, Archaeopteryx, often thought of as the first bird. Also includes all the modern dinosaur lineages - all of which are neatly contained in:

(moving this descending sequence so that it doesn't move off the page...)

Aves. Any young earth creationists are invited to take a few breaths and consider taking the bible in historical context, or just skim down to the picture. Kudos in reading this far into an evolutionary phylogeny, though.
  Euornithes - excludes a few more extinct groups...
    Neornithes - excludes the last toothed birds. Sad times. A moment of silence for all the lineages we've lost along the way, please.

...

....

      Neognathae - excludes, for the first time in a while, an extant (still going reasonably strong) group: the Paleognathae, comprised of the Struthioniformes, Tinamiformes, Rheiformes, and Casuariformes and closely allied Apterygiformes. Translation - the Ostriches (one species), Tinamous (the only flying Paleognaths... a couple of dozen species), Rheas (2 species), Cassowaries and Emus (four species) and the Kiwis (Five species)
        Neoaves - excludes a (currently more successful) extant lineage, the Galloanserae (waterfowl, pheasants and allies), but includes the vast majority of modern birds. Although the name literally means "New Birds", a good few of the orders of birds included here have been around for 65+ million years, and therefore are stretching the definition of New to its very limits.
          Columbiformes - one of the larger orders of birds, containing around three hundred species (although compared to the 5000 or more passerine birds, that's not all that many).
            Columbidae - the only family currently held within the Columbiformes, comprising the pigeons or doves. Although a large number of species are limited to tiny ranges, the Rock Dove, Columba livia, also known as the feral pigeon, through its exploitation of human developments as new nesting sites, has become one of the most widespread and successful birds in the world.
              Turturinae - subfamily name made up, to more tidily describe the (not made up) grouping of the Bronze-wings and relatives.

Chalcophaps indica (Linnaeus 1758)

(Common emerald Dove) 

Excusing the grainy image, this rather lovely specimen resides at Amazon World, an almost entirely indoor zoo on the Isle of Wight, UK, which has also had unusual success in the breeding of various Xenarthrans (Sloths, Anteaters and Armadillos, in a mammalian superorder almost entirely confined to South America). 

The lovely Common Emerald Dove is a smallish pigeon, similar in size to European collared doves (although calling males can appear enormous with their vocal sacs inflated and their feathers puffed out). They are native to a large area of South Asia, Indonesia and surrounding islands, and parts of Australia, and are currently listed as Least Concern.

This specimen is part of a Aviary population in Amazon World Zoo Park, on the Isle  of Wight (UK), where they seem to be breeding without interference.

Enoplognatha ovata (Clerck, 1757)

Let's start with taxonomy. It is a(n): Eukaryote (and until I either visit the Stromatolites in australia, or I can afford a camera that takes pictures of individual cells, they all will be); Animal (I didn't get a zoology degree to take pictures of plants), Eumetazoan (not a sponge, sorry, Poriferophiles), Bilateralian (so basically any higher animal that isn't an anemone, hydra, jellyfish or relative thereof), Nephrozoan (I'm sure I should know what that means), Protostome (so definitely not a vertebrate, sea-squirt or echinoderm), Ecdysozoan (it sheds its skin), Arthropod (It has - or evolved from something which had - a jointed exoskeleton), Chelicerate (it has feeding structures called chelicerae. They're recogniseable. Spiders and scorpions have them), Arachnomorph (Roughly spider shaped. Not a horseshoe crab. ), Arachnidan (still roughly spider shaped, and definitely not a horseshoe crab), Micruran (so not a scorpion or a harvestman either. Could still get in there as a tick, though), Megoperculatan (so not a tick, either. What could it possibly be?), Araneaean (... or however you turn "Araneae" into an adjective. It's a Spider, basically),  Opistotholaean (most diverse modern lineage of spiders. Includes most if not all of the familiar species), Araneomorph (so not a Tarantula), Neocribellate (it's modern, it's funky and it can make its silk funky), Araneocladan (it's a reasonably close relative of the orb-web spiders in Araneidae), Entelegyne (that refers to the structure of its, um, bits), Araneoid (it's really quite a close relative of the orb-web spiders in the araneidae, it quite possibly builds its own orb web), Theridiid (not an orb-web spider, then, but a comb-footed spider, a group which includes the widow spiders, button spiders, redbacks and various less venomous and less famous spiders), Pholcommatinae (So not a widow spider, false widow, button or redback spider...), and its Linnaean binomial (or "Scientific name") is...(drumroll please)...

Enoplognatha ovata (Clerck, 1757)

This Linnaean binomial tells us a few things:

Firstly, it was officially described by someone going by the surname of Clerck in 1757. This actually refers to Carl Alexander Clerck, a Swedish naturalist of some note. Wikipedia exists to tell you more, here. The brackets also let you know that the name is not exactly the one that he gave it, although I've been unable to find out precisely what he did call it.

Second, it is either a highly recognisable species, or European: The habit of assigning Linnaean binomials began with the very late, very great Carolus Linnaeus in 1753. Although European naturalists were heading all over the globe at this stage, they weren't delving into the deeper taxonomy of, for example, fruit flies, at least not in the far-flung places.

Third, and this is the iffy bit, you get to struggle to find the original root of the word; the binomial is often referred to as a Latin name, but actually it's a hodgepodge of Latin, Greek and, more recently, whatever language to author feels like throwing in there. Without reference to the original text (or in fact anything I have to pay to see), the generic name, that is to say, "Enoplognatha" (which should always be written with a capital E and, in conjunction with the specific epithet (ovata), should be italicised or underlined, to indicate that they form a species name), seems to be from the Greek ένοπλ γνάθ, (~Enopl gnath), meaning "Armed Jaw". The specific epithet "ovata" is Latin, and means egg-shaped, or egg-like.


There are other things we could tell, beyond that we have an armed-jawed creature which is in some way reminiscent of an egg, and if it isn't large and recognisable, is probably european, but we could take it to ridiculous lengths, and get extremely bored. Besides, this is a Photoblog.


Arachnophobes should either look away or grow up.

Enter the photo:

It's not a great picture. I hope it's not one I'm remembered for.

This one (more will be added as and when they are taken) was found in its more-or-less natural habitat of a hedgerow, within its natural range (specifically Bosham Railway station in the UK). It blessed me with its fleeting presence on the Eighth of July, 2012. And it's copyrighted me (image will be updated soon to include watermark. If you want to steal it, there really is no time like the present).