The Apicomplexa are organisms of a large phylum of mainly parasitic alveolates. Most possess a unique form of organelle structure that comprises a type of non-photosynthetic plastid called an apicoplast—with an apical complex membrane. The organelle's apical shape is an adaptation that the apicomplexan applies in penetrating a host cell.
Chondrichthyes is a class of jawed fish that contains the cartilaginous fish or chondrichthyans, which all have skeletons primarily composed of cartilage. They can be contrasted with the Osteichthyes or bony fish, which have skeletons primarily composed of bone tissue. Chondrichthyes are aquatic vertebrates with paired fins, paired nares, placoid scales, conus arteriosus in the heart, and a lack of opercula and swim bladders. Within the infraphylum Gnathostomata, cartilaginous fishes are distinct from all other jawed vertebrates.
Platanaceae, the "plane-tree family", is a family of flowering plants in the order Proteales. The family consists of only a single extant genus Platanus, with twelve known species. The plants are tall trees, native to temperate and subtropical regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The hybrid London plane is widely planted in cities worldwide.
Rhabditida is an order of free-living, zooparasitic, and phytoparasitic microbivorous nematodes living in soil.
Amniotes are tetrapod vertebrate animals belonging to the clade Amniota, a large group that comprises the vast majority of living terrestrial and semiaquatic vertebrates. Amniotes evolved from amphibian ancestors during the Carboniferous period and further diverged into two groups, namely the sauropsids and synapsids. They are distinguished from the other living tetrapod clade — the non-amniote lissamphibians — by the development of three extraembryonic membranes, thicker and keratinized skin, and costal respiration. Additional unique features are the presence of adrenocortical and chromaffin tissues as a discrete pair of glands near their kidneys, which are more complex, the presence of an astragalus for better extremity range of motion, and the complete loss of metamorphosis, gill and skin breathing, and any lateral line system.
Ranunculales is an order of flowering plants. Of necessity it contains the family Ranunculaceae, the buttercup family, because the name of the order is based on the name of a genus in that family. Ranunculales belongs to a paraphyletic group known as the basal eudicots. It is the most basal clade in this group; in other words, it is sister to the remaining eudicots. Widely known members include poppies, barberries, hellebores, and buttercups.
Whiskers or vibrissae are a type of stiff, functional hair used by most mammals to sense their environment. These hairs are finely specialised for this purpose, whereas other types of hair are coarser as tactile sensors. Although whiskers are specifically those found around the face, vibrissae are known to grow in clusters at various places around the body. Most mammals have them, including all non-human primates and especially nocturnal mammals.
Hydrozoa is a taxonomic class of individually very small, predatory animals, some solitary and some colonial, most of which inhabit saline water. The colonies of the colonial species can be large, and in some cases the specialized individual animals cannot survive outside the colony. A few genera within this class live in freshwater habitats. Hydrozoans are related to jellyfish and corals and belong to the phylum Cnidaria.
The Pterygota are a subclass of insects that includes all winged insects and the orders that are secondarily wingless.
Gleicheniales is an order of ferns in the subclass Polypodiidae. The Gleicheniales have records potentially as early as the Carboniferous, but the oldest unambiguous records date to the Permian.
Barbus is a genus of ray-finned fish in the family Cyprinidae. The type species of Barbus is the common barbel, first described as Cyprinus barbus and now named Barbus barbus. Barbus is the namesake genus of the subfamily Barbinae, but given their relationships, that taxon is better included in the Cyprininae at least for the largest part.
"Labyrinthodontia" is an informal grouping of extinct predatory amphibians which were major components of ecosystems in the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. Traditionally considered a subclass of the class Amphibia, modern classification systems recognize that labyrinthodonts are not a formal natural group (clade) exclusive of other tetrapods. Instead, they consistute an evolutionary grade, ancestral to living tetrapods such as lissamphibians and amniotes. "Labyrinthodont"-grade vertebrates evolved from lobe-finned fishes in the Devonian, though a formal boundary between fish and amphibian is difficult to define at this point in time.
The order Ascaridida includes several families of parasitic roundworms with three "lips" on the anterior end. They were formerly placed in the subclass Rhabditia by some, but morphological and DNA sequence data rather unequivocally assign them to the Spiruria. The Oxyurida and Rhigonematida are occasionally placed in the Ascaridida as superfamily Oxyuroidea, but while they seem indeed to be Spiruria, they are not as close to Ascaris as such a treatment would place them. These "worms" contain a number of important parasites of humans and domestic animals.
Secernentea was a class of nematodes in the Classical Phylogeny System and is no longer in use. This morphological-based classification system has been replaced by the Modern Phylogeny system, where taxonomy assignment is based on small subunit ribosomal DNA.
The Chromadorea are a class of the roundworm phylum, Nematoda. They contain a single subclass (Chromadoria) and several orders. With such a redundant arrangement, the Chromadoria are liable to be divided if the orders are found to form several clades, or abandoned if they are found to constitute a single radiation.
Subclass Spiruria comprises mostly parasitic secernentean nematodes. In an alternate classification, they are treated as suborder Spirurina, with the orders listed here being ranked as infraorders.
The nematodes, roundworms or eelworms constitute the phylum Nematoda. They are a diverse animal phylum inhabiting a broad range of environments. Most species are free-living, feeding on microorganisms, but there are many that are parasitic. The parasitic worms (helminths) are the cause of soil-transmitted helminthiases.
The suborder Ascaridina contains the bulk of the Ascaridida, parasitic roundworms with three "lips" on the anterior end. The Ascaridida were formerly placed in the subclass Rhabditia by some, but morphological and DNA sequence data rather unequivocally assigns them to the Spiruria. The Oxyurida and Rhigonematida are occasionally placed in the Ascaridina as superfamily Oxyuroidea, but while they seem indeed to be Spiruria, they are not as close to Ascaris as such a treatment would place them.
Cestoda is a class of parasitic worms in the flatworm phylum (Platyhelminthes). Most of the species—and the best-known—are those in the subclass Eucestoda; they are ribbon-like worms as adults, known as tapeworms. Their bodies consist of many similar units known as proglottids—essentially packages of eggs which are regularly shed into the environment to infect other organisms. Species of the other subclass, Cestodaria, are mainly fish infecting parasites.
Yinotheria is a proposed basal subclass clade of crown mammals uniting the Shuotheriidae, an extinct group of mammals from the Jurassic of Eurasia, with Australosphenida, a group of mammals known from the Jurassic to Cretaceous of Gondwana, which possibly include living monotremes. Today, there are only five surviving species of monotremes which live in Australia and New Guinea, consisting of the platypus and four species of echidna. Fossils of yinotheres have been found in Britain, China, Russia, Madagascar and Argentina. Contrary to other known crown mammals, they retained postdentary bones as shown by the presence of a postdentary trough. The extant members (monotremes) developed the mammalian middle ear independently.
