#taxonomic confusion

[stopandlook]

Scientific Name: Sapindus saponaria var. drummondii or Sapindus drummondii Common Name(s): Western soapberry Family: Sapindaceae (soapberry) Life Cycle: Perennial Leaf Retention: Deciduous Habit: Tree, shrub USDA L48 Native Status: Native Location: Allen, Texas Season(s): Winter

It’s called soapberry because you can make soap from it!

Soapberries are also offered commercially “soap nuts,” though the ones I’ve seen for sale are Sapindus mukorossi, which is a species native to Asia.

Speaking of species, the genus Sapindus comprises about 12 species. I’m guessing the exact number isn’t settled because, as in the case here, whether this plant is a subspecies or its own species depends on whom you ask. The USDA Plants Database shows that S. saponaria is native to the southern U.S., from the Atlantic coast to Arizona, whereas var. drummondii only exists west of the Mississippi River. This difference is apparently enough for iNaturalist and its taxon authority POWO to elevate it to the full species level.

The fruits are about ½″ (12 mm) in diameter and form in the summer; they are pale green and opaque when young before maturing to a translucent amber in the fall.

[nottoxicfr]

To be completely honest, I don’t really understand what t-boy or t-girl swag is but I think that’s generally because the common trait of the characters who have that tag is that they are characters. Anyone can have swag……..?

[informatikerin-freyja]

Biologists, I have a wonderful new metric to suggest to you for the classification of animals. It's rather simple, you place the animal into a large room and start rotating the room slowly. Once the animal appears confused or otherwise distressed, you stop the rotation, and write down the maximum rotational velocity which was achieved. You have now measured what I refer to as the spin number of the animal.

Animals with spin number greater than 2pi radians per second are called hyperspinners, and animals with spin number less than 2pi radians per second are called hypospinners. My belief is that the division into hyperspinners and hypospinners is probably more fundamental in understanding life than any other taxonomic division considered before. Observe, for instance, that all plant life are hyperspinners on merit of not being able to be distressed or confused in the first place. This neatly separates plant life from me, as I am definitely a hypospinner.

[foone]

I wonder if there's any Human Domestication Guide stories with pregnancy.

Because like, while I'm sure the Affini could rig it (being masters of biology and all), I can just imagine the confusion in the part of the floret.

"wait... How can I be pregnant? I'm trans... And we're both women... And we aren't the same species! Hell, you're not even in the same taxonomic kingdom as me!"

And the Affini just pats her florets head and assures her "love makes all things possible, little one".

[fishenjoyer1]

Fish of the Day

Today's fish of the day is the Pacific Hagfish!

The pacific hagfish, also known as the california hagfish, and scientific name  Eptatretus stoutii, is known for being the widest spread hagfish species, and one of the deepest living. Their range stretches from the Northern sections of Alaska all the way down to Baja, California, living at depths of 16-966 meters, or 50-3,200 feet. Along this range they prefer to live on fine silt and clay bottomed areas of the continental shelf, or upper shelves, their swimming skills are weak and so they spend much of their time along the sea bed. Although currently unproven, it is thought that during the fall these hagfish migrate to deeper waters, remaining until the winter, which is consistent with other hagfish migration patterns.

Hagfish first emerged in the fossil record as far back as 310 million years ago, with animals resembling the modern hagfish we know today 100 million years ago. To this day, hagfish still serve as a cause for confusion when it comes to defining fish as a taxonomic bracket. As a jawless fish that broke off just before the jaw was evolved, and sharing their infraphylum with lampreys, they break up a definition of fish that include the movement of the jaw as a definer. However, this lack of a jaw doesn't stop their hunting style from being just as interesting as us vertebrates who do contain a mouth that opens and closes.

Like all hagfish, the pacific hagfish establishes a hold onto prey before tying its body into knots and untying to generate a ripping force to tear off pieces of flesh. Due to this, a majority of their diet consists of already dead animals, forcing them into the scavenger role. Other than what the hagfish can scavenge, they also eat polychaete worms along the seabed, shrimp, other hagfishes eggs, and small cephalopods. Strangest of all, this animal can absorb amino acids through the skin. The other notable feature of hagfishes is their slime. When threatened, they can ooze a slime made of specialized mucus out of slime glands. This is known for expanding over 10,000 times its original size in less than a second. This slime can be used to slip away from predators who may have already gotten a hold on them, but also to clog the gills, choking out predators before they can get the chance to escape, and providing them with a meal.

The reproduction of hagfish is not well understood, but let's go over what we do know. Female hagfish will lay eggs within a muddy burrow it has formed or other structures it may find, and males will come to fertilize externally. After this, female hagfish will remain in the burrow to protect the eggs from any potential predators or other hagfish, until they hatch. Once they have emerged from their eggs, at a size of 6-8cm in length, they are already in the same shape they will remain the rest of their lives, as they lack a larval stage. Their life cycle lasts for up to 40 years in the wild, and they can get as large as 25 inches in length by sexual maturity, with a typical length of 17 inches.

That's the pacific hagfish, and have a wonderful Wednesday, everyone!

[is-the-snake-video-cute]

Are all crocodilians crocodiles?

I got asked if a tomistoma was an alligator or crocodile the other day (I work at a zoo) and it’s been bugging me. I’m pretty sure they were asking in terms of the species name not taxonomic specificity, so I said it was a tomistoma, but then realized in hindsight that I’m not actually sure what the classification is for this particular animal, so any insight would be appreciated.

(I think I may be misremembering but it might be a type of alligator or crocodile or something? But again I’m not sure and I realized that the term crocodilians can be confusing, hence the question)

Great question! You were right, tomistoma aren't considered crocodiles or alligators, they are gavialids. They're actually most closely related to gharials.

Here's crocodile taxonomy 101. Crocodiles are split into two families, Alligatoridae and Longirostres.

Alligatoridae includes true alligators:

And caimans:

And Longirostres includes true crocodiles:

And gavialids, which are gharials and tomistoma.

So tomistoma are more closely related to crocodiles than they are to alligators, but they're considered an entirely separate thing!

[vintagerpg]

Around 1987, Mayfair Games’ efforts at producing generic Dungeons & Dragons products switched from the Role Aids line to City-State of the Invincible Overlord, newly licensed from the remnants of Judges Guild. Between 1987 and 1989, Mayfair released eight City-State box sets, all shockingly dull. Unsurprisingly, the line wasn’t well-received, so in 1989, Role Aids once again emerged. I believe Ray Winninger (Underground) kick-started the revival; he was basically entirely in charge of Mayfair’s RPGs by 1990 (and would, amusingly, wind up working on D&D, most recently directing the development of 5E in 2020 through 2022).

This is the first sourcebook of the second wave, Monsters of Myth and Legend II. It still has some of the old trade dress and features a frankly gorgeous Boris Vallejo painting on the cover. The title treatment is fresh and, like a lot of Mayfair graphic design from about 1989 to 1992, reminds me of an AriZona Ice Tea can (how and why the Southwest art style crept into the design language of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s is a mystery to me). Inside Timothy Dzon. I find his work, in isolation, overly sketchy for my taste, but flipping through the whole book feels more cohesive. There is a funny aversion to nipples, though; I get not wanting to have partial nudity, but I dunno if just erasing nipples is better than adding implausible braziers.

Like the previous book, there is some taxonomical confusion between cultural groups and geographic regions, so the five sections are Africa, Central and South America, Japan, the Inuit and the Middle East. Three of those are overly broad, flattening the beliefs of many cultures and there quite a few insensitivities that are infuriatingly casual (mixing gods, actual monsters and regular people in a book explicitly about non-European monsters sure is a choice). On the other hand, I do think the selection of monsters is pretty good. The ‘90s, man.

[bowelfly]

Hi there! Discovered your work today and I love it!!! You have such a lovely style. Do you have any advice for how you interpret the complicated insect anatomy into something manageable that still makes it distinguishable?

I've been trying to get into drawing insects but sometimes the leg joints specifically really have me scratching my head.

hey thanks a lot, i'm glad you like my bugs.

as far as drawing bugs goes, i do really think that having a grasp of insect anatomy and how everything fits together is really the best way to start figuring out how to simplify their designs in a satisfying way. unfortunately insect anatomy is so varied between and even within taxonomic orders and families that knowledge of how one group fits together doesn't necessarily always translate to others. i've found that when i have confusion over how things fit together with a particular beast, doing an image search for it's scientific name + "anatomy diagram" or something along those lines is often very helpful

after that i feel like it's just a case of the more you practice drawing them the more you can intuit which parts are more necessary to distinguish than others and which ones can be de-emphasized.

as far as the legs go specifically, keeping in mind that there's a million variations on this formula, this is sort of the generic plan:

note how the segments tend to slot into each other like little gimbal joints or something. and from the diagrams above you can see how the legs tend to be attached to the ventral side of the insect and then sort of splay out to the side.

again really can't emphasize how much variation there is on this schematic, with every segment liable to be massively expanded or contracted or disappeared altogether

i hope that was at least a little helpful? i'm hilariously sleep deprived right now so can't really put as much effort into answering this as i did with my little bug mouthparts tutorial from a while back

[downtofragglerock]

Alright here's part 2, the one that requires more context

Daniel Lipkowitz was a lego employee when bionicle was first being developed and according to bs01 was actually a beta tester for MNOG

Lipkowitz actually made a number of bionicle mocs at this time and posted them to a personal site, The Sands of Mata Nui, which is what you did back in the early aughts internet-wise

Obviously from a fandom archeological perspective this old little website is extremely valuable both as a window into the past, but also as one of the oldest recorded instances of bionicle mocing you can find

Now why would a bunch of old mocs, even if they were made by someone who was a lego employee and involved in bionicle's early production to some extent, be important in this little series?

Because you might recognize a few of them, namely four: the Dikapi, the Mata Nui Cow, the Ranama, and the Kirikori Nui. All four of these rahi started out as mocs made by Lipkowitz that lego decided to make canon, albeit after some name changes

But what confuses me a little more is that The Sands of Mata Nui has 12 rahi mocs shown, but only four were made canon. Why only those four is a question I don't really know how answer, but let's look at the other eight, and see if we can taxonomically categorize them. Spoilers, to quite my relief, most of them are pretty easy.

The Mokonui seems to be a hadrosaur, probably a parasaurolophus

The Wehirua is another spider

The Kotonga is some carnivoran mammal of unknown specificity, its either some wolf or fox or snow leopard or something

The Make Kanohi is another crab

The Peki is an indiscernible bird of some kind

The Rarawhi is really the only rahi here that actually stumps me, mainly because its described as something in between a reptile and an insect, so I really got nothing here

The Kouroua actually gives us something interesting: It's a sloth! I'm honestly surprised there aren't any other sloth rahi

And lastly we have the Pakipaki, which seems to be a parrot large enough to ride like several other bird rahi in the mu

And there, that's it, every rahi, taxonomically organized to some extent

[stopandlook]

Scientific Name: Scabiosa atropurpurea, syn. Sixalix atropurpurea Common Name(s): Sweet scabious, pincushion flower, mourningbride Family: Caprifoliaceae (honeysuckle) Life Cycle: Annual, perennial Leaf Retention: Deciduous if perennial Habit: Forb USDA L48 Native Status: Introduced Location: Plano, Texas Season(s): Spring

On iNaturalist, there are 12 species listed under the genus Sixalix and another 50 or so under Scabiosa, but it’s not at all clear to me why they’ve been separated. Plants of the World Online (POWO), which iNaturalist uses as its taxon authority, regards Sixalix as a synonym for Scabiosa, and a search for Sixalix in the U.S. government’s Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) yields no results (i.e., it doesn’t even exist in ITIS). It seems to me that all the Sixalix species should be moved under Scabiosa, but what do I know.

The USDA PLANTS database shows this plant as a perennial, but from what I’ve been able to gather, that’s only under the most favorable growing conditions. Even then, it’s a short-lived perennial (perhaps 3 years or so), and it’s an annual otherwise.

[fleouriarts]

time for a jamie and co LORE POST!!!! here's them with their (immediate) families. all the actual lore and such below

JAMIE: only child with a single mom. since furries in this universe can only have kids within their taxonomic families, adoption is really common among smaller families like prionodontidae. however jamie's mom erica really wanted a bio kid, so she ended up marrying another linsang who she liked... well enough, but not that much. they get divorced when jamie's a little kid. she had jamie at an older age; by the time he's in college her markings have already started greying, which is why she looks a little dull next to him. nowadays she works as a teacher and she loves her son vewy much :3

SANTIAGO: santiago is the only one in the main cast with different species parents. cross-species kids are just the species of either parent with a 50/50 chance cus i don't feel like dealing with hybrids... HOWEVER sometimes genetic fuckshit happens. because of said genetic fuckshit, santiago grew to a cow size instead of a sheep size. i couldn't fit all the family relations shit on the actual image but emilio is santiago's OLDER brother (hes 25) but people always assume hes younger because santiago is a giant. magnolia and amapola are twins and both 8. mariana is either a teacher or a librarian (haven't figured it out yet) but she used to paint when she had more free time which is how santiago got interested in painting and eventually went into fine arts. jorge is a plumber and emilio is a graphic designer. santiago is the first in the family to leave their hometown (key west) for a degree (emilio went to a local college) and his mom + sisters were SOOOOOOOOOO SAD so he comes home to visit as often as he can. also since he is in family bovidae he has several cousins/aunts and uncles/etc that are different species. all i know for sure is that one of them lives near jamie and co's college and is some sort of antelope (leaning towards bongo bc i like them). also using this poast to announce that i changed santiagos outfit here is his new cute flowers and bees sweater look

JOHNNY: her family works on a chicken (and other assorted birds) farm, the chickens are for both eggs and meat while the other birds are just for eggs. this is actually a common set-up in the dorian furryverse, it's hard to farm livestock as a carnivore (because all the livestock are deathly afraid of you) so herbivores usually do the job even if they can't actually eat what they farm. johnny's parents are sorta "confused but got the spirit" about her being a butch lesbian. jimmy is an ass about it but he gets better. shoutout to this horse color calculator for helping me figure out which coat colors were plausible for them

NULL: null has an older brother and does not talk to their parents. sakichi is six years older than null and they were never very close; their parents treated sakichi as the "successful" child and null as the "problem" child. they're also quite conservative. null realized they were agender in high school but stayed closeted at home, they planned to come out to their parents immediately once they got to college and were able to support themselves. something happens that instead makes them come out a few days after their graduation and they get kicked out. null doesn't know where to go and ends up living at johnny's farm for the summer before college (sakichi lives far away doing some tech job and so can't take them in). the clantons are basically null's family at this point. once null legally changes their name they remove their last name entirely (it probably says X on their documents just cus there has to be SOMETHING there). sakichi and null see each other very occasionally, and sakichi still talks to their parents, but only when absolutely necessary. it's not malicious, he'd just feel too guilty cutting himself off from them completely

ARGYLE: argyle is an only child with well-off parents, his mom is a lawyer and his dad is a quirky ancient history professor. his parents are like EXTREMELY doting so they were secretly kinda glad that he came back home so they could see him more often. argyle was really scared that they would hate him for going into a less stable field, but his parents love him to death and are ready to support him in whatever. suzanne was probably a nightmare at pta meetings i'll be so real

[scavengerflight]

(This is 100% a ramble/shower thought type beat, so don't take me too seriously lmao)

As a conservation biology student, I've taken classes about taxonomy and how we classify living things. When we got to mammals, it got me thinking about the word "therian."

In biology, "Theria" refers to Metatherians and Eutherians (marsupials/pouch mammals and placental mammals, respectively). With this new lense on the word, it sometimes confuses me how it's used in the alterhumanity space.

If we combine the biology and alterhumanity contexts, "therian" should mean someone who identifies as a marsupial or a placental mammal, so someone identifying as a platypus (or a prototherian/monotreme) wouldn't be a therian.

For me, this makes me like words like "avianthrope" or "arthrothrope" (coined by @tomcatdiaries ) since they follow modern taxonomical systems.

Just me and my silly biology brain :> 🦴🪶

[old-acc-discourseisdumb]

I didn’t start identifying as queer so I could be diagnosed with a label. I’m not an animal being classified under a biological term, a taxonomic group which has a criteria so rigid it will only be changed with mind blowing biological evidence, only to be met with criticism and doubt still. These are feelings, language and culture.

Feelings can be straightforward, such as happy, feelings can be charged with layers and layers of experiences and years of history behind them, such as anger, and feelings can be conflicting or not quite fit with any known word. That’s how people make up new words based on old, well known concepts, such as bittersweet. Gender and attraction are feelings.

Language evolves, yes, but not in the same way as animals. It’s not coincidence after coincidence and survival of the fittest. Most of the time, it’s forced, purposeful changes. Take the word ‘okay’ — once upon a time a small group thought the feeling they were trying to communicate wasn’t properly explained with the phrase ‘all correct.’ People began to misspell it ironically as ‘orl korrect’, which was shortened to ‘OK’. A few decades later, ‘okay’ came about, because ‘OK’ wasn’t communicating what people wanted anymore. Language is changed and added to when someone wants something to be known and has no current way of articulating it. Sometimes it’s ridiculed, such as some slang, different dialects, and English variations. Gender and attraction are expressed through language because it’s a feeling.

Culture should be viewed through the lens of an anthropologist — someone who studies humanity. Witness without judgment people using whatever confusing and contradictory labels they like, if any at all, and together we can study those behaviours to discover why they bring such comfort. After all, you can’t properly study the behaviour of people who you’re forcing to act a certain way. Gender is a part of culture because of it’s significant role in language.

Queerness should not be about rigid criteria, exclusion, or checklists. It’s a beautiful, colourful feeling on a spectrum which can only be expressed through words in an attempt to summarise it.

I’d like to draw specific attention to the following:

Identities outside the binary, such as bigender people.

Contrasting identities, such as a woman who experiences gay love for men.

New and uncommon identities, such as xenogenders.

The use of the term ‘non-men’, which chooses to describe lesbian identities in relation to the exclusion of men instead of in relation to a unique, feminine love of women. Being a lesbian is least of all about men, so I don’t see why it should be defined in relation to them.

The arguments against such identities are recycled queerphobia. Men who are also lesbians—and others who don’t neatly fit into binary labels—do not need to pick a side, just like bisexual people don’t. Neopronoun users aren’t cisgender attention seekers trying to be special, just like the non-binary people attacked with those words or the binary transgender people before them. These are just some of the awful things I’ve heard about the less accepted side of our community.

Such people, including myself, may not be practicing queerness in a way well-known by the mainstream, but it should be expected that as more and more identities become common, more are discovered. If you want to take a torch into the darkness to welcome the people you know are hiding there, expect to see an entire world you were blinded to.

[akanemnon]

Mosses are small, non-vascular flowerless plantsin the taxonomic division Bryophyta(/braɪˈɒfətə/,[3] /ˌbraɪ.əˈfaɪtə/) sensu stricto. Bryophyta (sensu lato, Schimp. 1879[4]) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, which comprise liverworts, mosses, and hornworts.[5]Mosses typically form dense green clumps or mats, often in damp or shady locations. The individual plants are usually composed of simple leaves that are generally only one cell thick, attached to a stem that may be branched or unbranched and has only a limited role in conducting water and nutrients. Although some species have conducting tissues, these are generally poorly developed and structurally different from similar tissue found in vascular plants.[6] Mosses do not have seeds and after fertilisation develop sporophytes with unbranched stalks topped with single capsules containing spores. They are typically 0.2–10 cm (0.1–3.9 in) tall, though some species are much larger. Dawsonia, the tallest moss in the world, can grow to 50 cm (20 in) in height. There are approximately 12,000 species.[2]Moss

Temporal range: Carboniferous[1]–present  

PreꞒ

Ꞓ

O

S

D

C

P

T

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K

Pg

NClumps of moss on the ground and base of trees in the Allegheny National Forest, Pennsylvania, United StatesScientific classificationKingdom:PlantaeClade:EmbryophytesClade:SetaphytaDivision:Bryophyta Schimp. sensu strictoClasses[2]

Takakiopsida

Sphagnopsida

Andreaeopsida

Andreaeobryopsida

Oedipodiopsida

Polytrichopsida

Tetraphidopsida

Bryopsida

Synonyms

Musci L.

Muscineae Bisch.

Mosses are commonly confused with liverworts, hornworts and lichens.[7] Although often described as non-vascular plants, many mosses have advanced vascular systems.[8][9] Like liverworts and hornworts, the haploidgametophyte generation of mosses is the dominant phase of the life cycle. This contrasts with the pattern in all vascular plants (seed plantsand pteridophytes), where the diploid sporophyte generation is dominant. Lichens may superficially resemble mosses, and sometimes have common names that include the word "moss" (e.g., "reindeer moss" or "Iceland moss"), but they are fungal symbioses and not related to mosses.[7]: 3 

The main commercial significance of mosses is as the main constituent of peat (mostly the genus Sphagnum), although they are also used for decorative purposes, such as in gardens and in the florist trade. Traditional uses of mosses included as insulation and for the ability to absorb liquids up to 20 times their weight.

GUYS I FOUND BERDLY

[humanbyweight]

Okay so one of the leading Neotropical cicada experts just published a new key to cicadas in the Lesser Antilles which makes several pages of my book IMMEDIATELY dated. 🤣

We both also independently committed a few of the exact same taxonomic changes, which makes me feel good about myself. 🤣

I'm really glad I included a "date manuscript submitted to printer" in the foreword so the overlapping information from the staggered publication dates doesn't confuse anyone working in the field. It's just awesome to be living in a golden age of cicada science!

His paper is great btw. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5497.1.2

[kittycatboyhalo]

I have some lowkey demon lore that I’ve been revolving around in my head.

Despite Bad, Tina, and Mouse all being demons, they’re not the same at all which led to me to start world building a bit in my head.

Irl there’s different types of demons, but stepping back from demonology or religious sources and into Minecraft, I think Demons would be more of a taxonomical catagory, specifically a phylum. Im way too into biology and genetics, so I’ll spare all the science talk, but underneath that phylum of demons, there’s different classes and families. I think what defines the Demon phylum would be having infernal blood, which is different from being warm blooded, mammals birds and such, and cold blooded, reptiles fish etc.

That choice also made me start thinking of that means people like bird hybrids aren’t mammals or if some players who are cold blooded would be reptile, but that’s something to think of on a different day.

I think infernal blood is something a lot of demons are born with, but my running theory is that certain spells, experiments, or spending enough time in hell chemically, magically?, transforms a persons blood to become infernal. Or they die.

I don’t know exactly what type of demons Tina or Bagi are, but I think Bad would be a fallen angel. Fallen angels are somewhat rare, they’ve had to be cast from some pantheon to burn. Many of them die but those who make it have many struggles. They remember a life outside of hell, and often do whatever it takes to claw their way out, a painful and tedious procedure. Once they make it through hell and out of the nether, they find that humans and those in the over world tend to fear them. They’re powers that once protected and created now kill and destroy when they try to use it. I think they also have a bad reputation amongst other demons due to mistrust of them once being holy.

I don’t watch much of Tina’s pov, so forgive me and pls correct me if she already has lore, but Tina gives me the vibe of somebody who was once a human that was forcefully transformed into a demon. She gives me strong “girl raised in country village vibes who was subjected to the horrors”.

I feel like she was greatly content, with a happy upbringing. One day she gets kidnapped, dragged to hell, and transformed. They underestimate the kind village girl, and she kills her captors. She still looks very human, but now she has two horns and some unholy power running in her veins. She returns to her village only to be chased away with pitchforks, forever scarring her physically and psychologically. Humans can’t get past her horns, sharp teeth and claws, so she hides them.

Mouse is the only demon out of the three to have actually been born in hell. Not just born in hell but into royalty!! For a demon, she is kind, patient, highly educated, but naive. She’s always had power and protectors. When she’s visited the overworked she is simply too strong to recognize any attacks against her, though being royalty, she’s protected and somewhat above that. While she’s used to assassination attempts and crime, she’s never quite gone through discrimination for being a demon. She’s so confused as to why Bad and Tina hide what they are.

Other little things: holy weapons like crosses, holy water, and blessed items only hurt bad. Most demons have weakness to things like silver but they’re all very strong.

if anybody has more thoughts, pls lmk. I love to hear what people think!!