What's the Connection???

So, what's the connection between the following animals?



























A clue: don't concentrate too much on identifying the species, especially for a few of them, where the situation is more important. When the correct guess has been made, or it's been ages and no-one's guessed correctly in the comments, I'll reveal the answer.

British Wildlife: Q

Quinquecosta williamsi Tripp, 1965
Pliomeridae; Phacopida; Trilobita; Arthropoda

Quinquecosta is a trilobite of the family Pliomeridae, belonging to the order Phacopida. The phacopidans were capable of rolling into a ball, most likely for defence, and many fossils of this type of trilobite are found in such a shape. They had large eyes with visible lenses, the schizochroal eye, yet members of the Pliomeridae had the more typical holochroal eye, with much smaller lenses which are not separate from each other.



Purple hairstreak
Quercusia quercus (Linnaeus, 1758)
Lycaenidae; Lepidoptera; Insecta; Arthropoda

This is a female purple hairstreak: although she is wonderfully purple, the male is even more so. I wasn't aware of this when I was drawing Q for this alphabet! Quercus is Latin for 'oak', and the name reflects this insect's lifecycle. The female lays her eggs on oak buds, and the larva lives inside the buds. The adults then spend much of their time in the canopy of mature oak trees. The genus is also known as Neozephyrus, but that doesn't begin with 'Q', does it?



Quail
Coturnix coturnix (Linnaeus, 1758)
Phasianidae; Galliformes; Aves; Chordata

The common quail is Britain's only native migratory game bird. It only spends the summer months in the UK, but is often kept as a farm bird for its flesh, but more frequently for its eggs, which are considered a delicacy.



Adult common quail
Geçitköy, North Cyprus
April 2009

Quails are hard birds to spot in the wild. They are naturally shy and very cryptically-coloured, but can betray their presence with their distinctive call, often transcribed as 'wet my lips, wet my lips!' I don't see the similarity myself.



Common quail chick
Geçitköy, North Cyprus
April 2009

Quails of the genus Coturnix are commonly kept as ornamental and farmyard birds, with Asian members of the genus (Chinese, or blue-breasted quail, C. chinensis, and Japanese quail, C. japonica) the most popular. In Europe, however, it is predominantly the common quail which is kept.

Next week, R: a long-tailed purple pterosaur, a cryptic gruiform and Britain's national bird.

British Wildlife: F

Flexicalymene caractaci (Salter, 1865)
Calymenidae; Phacopida; Trilobita; Arthropoda

My favourite of all invertebrates, with the possible exception of the oribatid mites, are the trilobites. They came in a variety of forms, from the tiny, blind agnostids to ornately spined members of the Phacopidae (not to mention flying ones). They lived in marine environments throughout the Palaeozoic Era, being on Earth for a period of almost 300 million years.

The suborder Phacopina are known for their amazing eyes (Phacops means 'lens face'). In a good specimen, you can see, and even count, the individual lenses of each eye. This is because they are much larger than usual. This type of optic structure is known as schizochroism. The suborder Calymenina, to which Flexicalymene belongs, has a different eye structure, called holochroism. The lenses are smaller and much harder to count.



Flexicalymene ouzregui from Morocco, but bought from a museum gift shop

Flexicalymene is known from many parts of the world, and although being found in Britain, fossils are rare. Most of those for sale come from Morocco, which often yields beautiful trilobites. Flexicalymene lived during the Ordovician period (about 450 million years ago), a time when all animal life on Earth was marine, and the only lifeforms to colonise the land were primitive plants. Animals that may have predated trilobites in the Ordovician include the earliest sharks and nautiloids (both groups still being found on Earth today).



Scottish wildcat
Felis silvestris grampia Miller, 1907
Felidae; Carnivora; Mammalia; Chordata

Britain currently has only one native felid, the Scottish wildcat. Lynxes (Lynx lynx) were found here until they were hunted to extinction by humans, and some other exotic species, like the leopard (Panthera pardus), jungle cat (Felis chaus) and leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) have been sighted in remote, and not-so-remote, parts of the UK, obviously released by humans from captivity. But only the Scottish wildcat remains.

It clings on, just about, in conifer forests in northern Scotland. One of the main threats to its survival is hybridisation. There are many subtle differences between a true wildcat and the domestic cat, including size, cranial characteristics and teeth, but ultimately, both belong to the same species, so when two cats meet at the right place at the right time (and are of the right sex), they will ultimately try to reproduce, whether they are both wildcats, both domestic, or one of each. This dilutes the gene pool, and there are very few places in Scotland where domestic cats haven't reached.



Scottish wildcat in captivity
Highland Wildlife Park, Invernessshire, Scotland
June 2005

Their status as a unique subspecies is in doubt; they have very few differences with wildcats from continental Europe, known as Felis silvestris silvestris. They are obviously different from the African wildcats, generally known as F. s. lybica and those from western Asia, known as F. s. ornata. Because they may not be an exclusive to Britain, it may be possible to introduce wildcats from the Continent, where they are more plentiful and widespread, to boost the gene pool of the Scottish wildcats. The fact remains, however, that all populations of wildcats will interbreed with domestic cats, because wherever there are humans, their pets usually follow.



(Red) Fox
Vulpes vulpes Linnaeus, 1758
Canidae; Carnivora; Mammalia; Chordata

Most people in the UK have seen a fox. Many of those, if not most of them, have seen them a city or town. They seem to have replaced the hedgehog as the most common and ubiquitous urban mammal. I'm not complaining; a wild animal is a wild animal and I love seeing foxes when out at night.



Red fox cub in my back garden
August 2007

But as you can see, it doesn't even have to be dark to see them. When foxes have cubs, they are constantly active and on the search for food. The cubs, more curious than wary of humans now that hunting is (mostly) banned, are easy to watch, and I got within 3 metres of this youngster as it watched me snapping photos of it. Occasionally we get a glimpse of one of the adults; the dog fox (male) is a huge and impressive-looking animal in his full coat. Unfortunately, it is all too common to see foxes with manky-looking coats and thin, rat-like tails, probably from infection from scabies mites (Sarcoptes scabiei canis), causing mange. This year, the local foxes have been playing havoc in our garden, the cubs being extremely playful and uprooting plants, including my mum's prize dahlias! There's not an awful lot we can do about it, and anyway, the cubs will soon grow up and disperse.

Next week, G: a Mesozoic crocodylomorph, a brightly coloured corvid, and an endemic game bird.

Art #10: Acadoparadoxides

"Acadoparadoxides"

Coloured pencil illustration, August 2008

Acadoparadoxides Snajdr 1957

 

A drawing of what the wonderful Acadoparadoxides trilobite would have looked like in life, in colours I think are neat. Acadoparadoxides dates from an awe-inspiring 530 million years ago, and was found in Morocco (not by me, I purchased the above specimen from eBay). Of course, Morocco was then underwater, and must have remained so until at least the Devonian period millions of years later, as trilobites from that period have also been found there. 

Photo of the Day #14: Walliserops trifurcates

Walliserops trifurcates Morzadec, 2001
Acastidae; Phacopida; Trilobita; Arthropoda
Oxford Museum of Natural History
July 2008

Trilobites were amazing things, and if you believe the storyline in Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008), then they still are amazing things. But for the rest of us, trilobites became extinct way before the first dinosaurs even appeared. The W. trifurcates depicted is just one of c.17,000 known species, itself dating from the Devonian Period (about 420-360 million years ago), and was found in Morocco, where many unusual forms seem to have existed in shallow seas. Even Richard Fortey himself, a veteran trilobite expert based at the Natural History Museum, London, was surprised and amazed at such a bizarre looking animal. Just look at that projection! What the hell could that have been for?

Trilobites possessed very advanced eyes for arthropods (jointed-legged invertebrates), which you can see on Walliserops; the level of detail preserved in such fossils is just incredible.