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Definition of "Regime of selection"
How would you define Regime of selection (or Selection regime)?
In addition to a accurate definition, a developped example would be very welcome!

I'll kick this off with an attempt at a definition: a selection regime is
the set of selective pressures on a population

As in, "alteration of selection regime resulting from harvest" (Mooney & McGraw 2007)
or "Human-induced nutrient input can change the selection regime and lead to the loss of biodiversity. For example, eutrophication caused speciation reversal in polymorphic whitefish populations through a flattening of littoral–pelagic selection gradients." (Hirsch et al 2013)

 Hirsch PE, Eckmann R, Oppelt C, Behrmann-Godel J. 2013. Phenotypic and genetic divergence within a single whitefish form - detecting the potential for future divergence. Evolutionary Applications 6: 1119–1132.
 Mooney E, McGraw J. 2007. Alteration of selection regime resulting from harvest of American ginseng, Panax quinquefolius. Conserv Genet 8: 57–67.

The best answer so far I found is this one (see Baum and Larson 1991):

The criterion of historical genesis is applied using the concept of
"selective regime," the aggregation of organismal and environmental
factors that combine to determine the expected action of natural
selection on actual and potential character variation.

Baum, D. A., and A. Larson. 1991. Adaptation reviewed: a phylogenetic methodology for studying character macroevolution. Systematic biology 40:1.
In this article you can find this example:

For example, the hypothesis that a given floral trait is an adaptation
enhancing the efficiency of bird-pollination would be tested by
scoring subject taxa as having either the selective regime
"bird-pollinated" or an alternative one (e.g., "insect-pollinated").

Then, you would be able to determine part of the selective regime of the floral trait. I say part of it because it's almost impossible to know all the abiotic  and biotic factors that can trigger a change in a trait variation.
Hope that helps.


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Why doesn't human consumption of plants cause infectious diseases the way consumption of animals can?
At first I want to clarify that I do know that there are naturally poisonous plants and plants that can hold radioactive stuff or toxic material from the environment.
What I mean by "diseases" (I guess there is a special term for that in English) is Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and similar serious issues caused by eating animals, by that you cannot develop when consuming plants.
As far as I know there are no diseases causes by eating fruit and vegetables (of course, except parasites if you don't wash it properly and an infected cow or bunny pooped on it ;D)
Is it because the parasites and diseases infecting plants are so specialised for their "body-type and genetics" that they cannot operate inside an animal body?
Could somebody explain that to me in more depth why by eating plants you cannot get a disease (except allergic reaction/intolerance or toxicities as mentioned earlier)?

It is because every pathogen has a specific host range(organisms which it can  infect).

Food poisoning is caused by organisms which are symbiotic and adjusted to plants, that might be an exception.  the illness is not from animal contamination.

I think you can get salmonella from both animal products like eggs and plant products like flour.

There is an entire journal dedicated to harmful algae. Many land plants also produce potent toxins. (Diseases such as botulism, tetanus, cholera are effected mainly because of the toxin, rather than the bacterial growth).

If you mean if there are viruses, pathogenic bacteria or fungi that may cause diseases both in plants and in animals, the response would be that this is very unlikely (But even so, some fungi and bacteria could do it if some circumstances are given). This is due to some key factors:
First of all, the philogenetic distance between plants and animals is huge. Diseases transmitted by the consumption of animals are called zoonosis, and obviously it is more likely to catch a zoonosis by eating pork than eating shrimps or clams. While it's true that certain parasites have different hosts and use them to transmit themselves (for instance, many platyhelmintha uses mollusks or insects to spread themselves towards mammalian or avian hosts) parasites than have only one kind of host usually are adapted to live inside them, and they usually are unable to infect different organisms. Very few parasites can infect a human and a starfish, and even fewer can infect at the same time a human and a tomato plant.
Second, and related to the first, plant physiology differs completely from animal physiology. Plants usually defend themselves by their natural barriers (cuticles, cell walls), hypersensitive response (programmed cell death in order to limit the spread of a pathogen), isolation and/or outgrowing of the pathogen and accumulation of chemicals. Animals main mechanism is immune system. There are very different strategies and very few organisms can effectively avoid all of them at the same time. In the case of viruses, they would even have to face the fact that animals and plants have huge genetic differences.
Third even if they could, the pathogen will face competition against other pathogens that would be more specialized. Bacteria and fungi can be really hostile towards their microfoes, using a wide array of strategies. This hypothetical pathogen would be very unspecific, so they would have a hard time against more focused microbes. It should be noted, however, that unspecialized organisms usually have a great advantage if the environment have some perturbation, and they also are more resilient toward stress. Many plant pathogens are generalistic organisms that attacks when the plant is harmed or stressed. The same applies to many opportunistic infections in animals.
Despite all of this, there are some diseases that should be mentioned. Some fungi of the Clavyceps genera are plan pathogens, but they produce toxins than can affect the nervous system of animals, causing an intoxication called ergotism (the most famous of this chemicals is the lisergic acid, also known as LSD). Other fungi can produce toxins while they grow in plant tissue. Moreover, there are many fungi that can grow both in plant tissue and as animal parasites (mainly arthropods and nematodes), but in this case the plant pathogenesis usually occurs only when high fungal concentration is achieved or the plant is already damaged. While it's not a real infection, plant pathogens can cause allergic reactions. Finally, phytopathogenic fungi and some bacteria can cause infections in wounds or mucoses in individuals with a compromised immune system, but in this case the source seems to be the spores in the air.

The classical example of fungal toxins are aflatoxins, which are very nasty.

I think a main problem here is limiting logic.
By eliminating both toxic/poisonous plants, plants that have evolved to discourage you from eating them, and improperly "washed" plants, things which contain non-plant mater that can make you sick, you are not left with the possibility of diseases.
BSE is caused by prions, which are mater of serious debate and research in academics at the moment.  The leading cause of transmission is likely ingestion (1, 2), but it is quite possible that it arises as a mutation sporadically in certain mammals (3).
Coming back to your question, let's suppose two scenarios:
First let's suppose that a prion, or really any other pathogen, were to fall onto a piece a fruit from another mammal.  If you, or a cow, were to eat it in this unclean state you have the chance to develop disease.  But we would not eat the plant in this unclean state because we are to have it properly washed.  The same is true for pathogenic microorganisms that are naturally occurring on plants.  I think you addressed this well in the question.
But let us propose another situation where a plant evolves a new protein, or a new form of a protein as is the case in the prion.  For simplicity let's call this protein "X."  X may or may not be toxic to the plant, and cause disease in the plant.  If it does, it would likely have selective pressure against the population it was in (even if it was infectious to plants like a prion).  But we may not, at least in the beginning be able to tell if the plant has the protein in it, so we go ahead and eat it (and for the sake of argument, we won't cook it, which is bad news for all kinds of pathogens).
If that protein causes sickness in an animal (like humans) we would say that it is toxic, and we would exclude it per your preamble.  If it is stable enough, it would remain toxic in our bodies, and should anyone be unfortunate enough to eat us or roll around in are carcass, there would be a small but theoretical chance they could get sick as well.  Again it would likely be excluded from this question as a toxin.
I think these get at what you are asking, but I think there is a spirit of what you are asking which goes further:
Why aren't contagious agents produced by plants?
Miguel addresses the problem quite nicely.  First, the genetic distance between humans and plants is so vast that a prion-like protein developing is highly unlikely.  Second, plants themselves are unlikely to make good pathogens.  Finally, natural selection has favored the production of toxins and irritants when plants have sought chemical means to deter animals (as opposed to a physical deterrent like a thorn).
Prions work because of shared/similar proteins existing within species.  A similarly shared protein that we would had with plants would probably be so basic that it was shared by the vast majority of eukaryotes, and if it existed, would likely be capable of destroying a good deal of life, including the plant itself.  Thankfully most of the very basic proteins we make a well regulated, and have mechanisms in place to “throw away” miss folded questions.
If we move past the genetic distance, and ignore the conditions that would be needed to select for plant being pathogens, let’s look at other obstacles plants would face.  Plants aren’t very good at locomotion, so it would need to get on us by direct contact, carried to us from the elements, or by some other animal.
A good case example would be C. immitis, a fungus.  It needs the spores to be kicked up and inhaled by an individual who is in some way compromised (normally).  Once this happens, it can begin the next hard step which is to grow.
The immune system of a healthy individual would definitely recognize any fungal or plant matter as foreign object and try to get rid of it.  Also note that a pathogenic plant would be limited in size by our behavior.  I think even a sloth would not allow a flower or tree to grow out of its back or arm.  Anything big enough would cause itching and/or illicit a behavioral effort to physically remove it.  Many microbial infections do cause itching, which if you are larger than a microbe, is a good way to have your whole body scratched off your host.
But let’s assume that our pathogen has made it on a human, found a place where it can grow, found enough food to live there (presumably us), has matched our immune system, is small enough that we haven’t been able to physically remove it (think algae), and/or made it to an internal part of body like our lungs where we have a harder time getting rid of it.  After doing all that, it has to grow to the point where it can get back out of bodies, and then back into another human and start over.  A prion-like pathogen would also have to replicate to significant enough numbers to be transmitted host to host.  Transmission is a very difficult process, and as Miguel points out, normally requires a good deal of species dependent specialization and adaption
In summary:
I have hard time imaging how a plant, even a small one like alga, could undergo enough selective pressure to become an infectious agent.  It would be further complicated by that fact that you were eating it in your question, which means it would have to contend with the GI track.  The genetic distance makes a prion like pathogen highly improbable if not outright impossible.  Toxins, however, are in great abundance in the plant world, and seem to be a good way to get animals to leave you alone.
When I think about plant toxins, I always like to think of the Sumac family.  Cashews evolved to be delicious and were cultivated for it, poison ivy evolved to be painful and is destroyed for it, and when we think of the family, we always think of the pain first. [Sorry I know that’s entirely off topic, feel free to delete via edit.]
(1) Johnson CJ, Pedersen JA, Chappell RJ, McKenzie D, Aiken JM (2007) Oral Transmissibility of Prion Disease Is Enhanced by Binding to Soil Particles. PLoS Pathog 3(7): e93. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.0030093
(2) Bartelt-Hunt SL, Bartz JC (2013) Behavior of Prions in the Environment: Implications for Prion Biology. PLoS Pathog 9(2): e1003113. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1003113
(3) Liberski PP. (2012) Historical overview of prion diseases: a view from afar. Folia Neuropathol. 50(1):1-12.

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Why are dreams sometimes remembered and sometimes forgotten?
Why is it that sometimes, when we wake up, we are able to remember what we were just dreaming, but sometimes we don't remember any of it?

This kind of question are usually accepted on this site but I always think that the OPs would make a better fit and get better answers if they'd ask on CognitiveScience.SE.

@Remi.b true, i always get confused about partner sites. U r free to migrate it to CognitiveScience if needed.

Scientists say that people can have multiple dreams every night and the ones that are not very significant are easily forgotten. Only those experiences that elicit an emotional response (happy, frightened) seem to stick in memory. Suggestions have also been made that being anxious or depressed makes our dreams stick to memory too (reference). A study suggests that people woken up during REM sleep seem to recall their dreams more often (reference). Here is a link to some common questions about dreams.

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What does "fit" mean in "survival of the fittest"?
What does "fit" mean in "survival of the fittest"?

This is a very vague question. What aspect of fitness do you not understand?

'Survival of the fittest' has never really made sense, because it confuses the scientific (evo. biological) and colloquial definitions of the word - which some of the previous posters have also done.
Biological fitness simply refers to an individuals genetic contribution to the following generation. That is, a 'fitter' individual, in an evolutionary sense, is one whose genetic material is proportionally overrepresented in the next generation.
The mechanism by which an individual achieves this may include out-surviving competitors, but it's certainly not the only way to increase fitness. Two individuals may live for the same length of time, but one may successfully court more females, or out-compete the other for food resources, for example. So when we refer to a 'fitter' individual (or individuals), we're saying nothing about why they are so. It's not a comment on their 'fitness' in the human sense of the word (bigger, stronger, longer-living), it simply refers to how well they pass on their genetic material.
So you can see why the phrase is nonsense. If we're being precise, then 'survival of the fittest' translates to 'survival of the individual who is better able to pass on their genetic material to the next generation' - which is meaningless because it tangles up these different concepts.

+1 for paragraphs 2 and 3. However, I wonder, does being recursive/tautological still make it "nonsense"? Hesperus is Phosphorus

"Survival of the fittest" is a misnomer.  It's "Reproduction of the fittest".  Nobody survives in the end :)

I would have liked to write an answer, but the question is closed already. Anyway: "fittest" is the one that "fits most". It has nothing to do with strength or endurance, but (popular example) it can be a fly without wings on a stormy island.

It might sound tautological, but fitness is pretty much defined as 'being more likely to survive - and reproduce'; fitness is surviving and survival goes to the fittest.
This is a trite way of citing Richard Dawkins' theory of the replicator to describe fitness.
Fitness is a property of being able to carry one's genes to a later generation.  Fitness is result of the individual properties and how well the individual can get along in the environment that it finds itself, in comparison to other individuals who might be competing for resources in that environment.
There is no concrete definition of fitness.  Fitness can mean size and strength, or lightness and resilience, short or long life.  There is no a priori way of looking at two individuals you know nothing about and deciding which is going to be more successful at reproducing.
not sure this is better, but there's definitely more of it...

Survival of the one, who is more likely to survive. That's recursive. Can you elaborate?

@Zurechtweiser: I think there is a bit of confusion on the fact that it is not the survival of a specific individual per se which is important, but rather the survival of its genes in the population. There is no recursion there, the individual(s) who are more likely to transmit their genes (i.e. to make them "survive" to next generations) are the fittest.

you're right that this is a bit trite - i had only a minute or two to tap something out.  I've added a bit more.

I still think you're off the mark, particularly in paragraph  4. There is a fairly simple definition of biological fitness, namely, an individuals relative success in passing on their genetic material (as I've outlined in my answer). And no, biological fitness can not '...mean size and strength, or lightness and resilience...'. Those are factors which may influence fitness but they are not integral to the definition of 'evolutionary fitness', which is what we are discussing. Measuring fitness can be very difficult, which you rightly touch on at the end, but defining it is simple enough.

It's worth reading the Wikipedia page on this.

Also recommend "The Extended Phenotype". @ThomasWhite I think this is what I said.  I did change one word tho.

While, as others point out, "survival of the fittest" is a pithy description of the theory rather than an actual serious statement I think it can be converted to a useful definition relatively easily.
There is substantial debate about how, exactly, fitness should be defined. I'm not enough of an expert to want to try and lay out the complications here but I will give my preferred definition:

The fitness of an organism is defined as the number of its
  grandchildren that make it to adulthood (or that number divided by two
  for sexual organisms).

This has the advantage of being amenable to experimental investigation and intuitively simple while complex enough to avoid simple problems arising from the differences in offspring number and the question of infertile offspring.

Where is that definition coming from?

A book on the philosophy of evolution I read a while back. I don't have it to hand to give you a reference.

Such definitions will always be lacking, in my opinion. For example, what if an organism has tons of grandchildren but they are all sterile?

Often it is re-phrased "Survival of the Most Adapted."  Fittest might make you think of the strongest or the fastest, but suppose in extreme famine, those who had better regulation of muscle growth could have more surviving generations.  In an over abundance of resources the reverse could be true.
Ultimately in natural selection, it's all about getting your genetic information to as many surviving copies or permutations as you can. Many organisms use DNA to hold the information, but there are other options (RNA viruses for example).
Getting back to the phrase: It's saying that the fittest is the one who continually replicates well in the current environment/surroundings.  Ecosystems are often changing, thus who has the best fitness will change as the ecosystems changes.  When an ecosystem is stable for a long period of time, you will find highly adapted organisms to that ecosystem.  This is because the selection towards "fittest" has been applied to many, many generations.

Whoops I just saw the previous two answers come up while I was writing.  I won't be insulted if people think this should be delete as too similar.

Rather than "fitter", I'd say "better". Better at hunting, gathering food, surviving predators, surviving weather conditions or other kinds of population pressures. The better a population gets at the above things, the more (and fitter/better) offspring it is likely to have and the pyramid goes on.
In some cases, mutations might simply confer a "new" advantage that there was no prior pressure in the system for. For example, I can easily imagine a bird population where one of them evolves a plumage/pigment mutation that gives it a selection advantage and it quickly becomes the norm. This mutation could have - theoretically, and in my view - evolved even in the ABSENCE of a sexual selection pressure.
It's just that natural selection (in my simplistic interpretation) "favors" any improvements in organisms in a really simple, statistical way.

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Are there animals which can see movements better than shapes or colors?
I remember that in Michael Crichton's novel Jurassic Park, Tyrannosaurus Rex was supposed to have movement based vision. (Of course, that is a novel and not a scientific text.)
I have also noticed while feeding chickens, that they behave differently when they see me adding the food for them into the container as opposed to leaving it there for them when they cannot see me. (But this can be explained easily by different reasons, for example they are used to human as a source of their food, so they naturally go close to them.)
So my question is:
Are there some kinds of animals who have primarily movement based vision? If yes, which animals are examples for this?

The Michael Crichton's novel has been widely discussed online, I found for example this and several answers at Yahoo Answers. Frogs and reptiles are mentioned there.

This is my first post at this site and I am a newbie here. (Not to mention that I am asking just out of interest and I do not have much background in biology. I am not sure, whether you take also questions from amateurs.) I tried to find some reasonable tags, but as I am not that familiar with tagging system here, please improve the tagging if needed. I apologize in advance if the question like this is off-topic here.

Looks like a great question to me and good tag choices. I'm looking forward to reading the answers. +1

Nocturnal owls may present a good example of an animal with greater sensitivity to movement than color. While they also rely heavily on good hearing, many owls like the Scops Owl referenced in the link below (time~ 5m 58s), rely heavily on detecting movement rather than color. Other nocturnal predators that rely on vision, such as many felids (e.g. ocelot), may provide further examples.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShPhYUQmRN8#t=05m58s

Broken video link :(

Even for humans, without saccades we do not have visual perception. Visual system easily adapts to things that do not change. There have been several experiments with human that shows this. Microsaccades are essential. I am busy at a conference now, but if nobody else answers in detail, I'll expand this answer in a couple of weeks with proper references.

Can anybody help me? I don't have the time to find things.

There certainly are many adaptations in the light receptors in the eyes that enhance contrast, color sensing, color discrimination as well as feature and movement sensitivity.
In school we usually learn about the cone and rod cells which are color and contrast sensitive in humans.  Humans have only 3 types of cone receptors, the record may be 16 types of cone receptors.  Many animals have no cone receptors and don't see color.  The highly polychromatic mantis shrimp with 16 color receptors mentioned here may devote most of its brain power to motion sensing and little to color or feature parsing.
Motion sensing is not only wired in the brain, but the neural layers within the retina also generate neural signals when motion happens in the eye.  In the case of human beings the rod cells generate motion sensitivity..  Individual cell groups can cue to motion in a specific direction before passing off to the brain, which really helps with the reflex time.
All this takes a lot of brain power and the density of the cone cell density is highest in the center of your field of vision.
The density and the neural structure of the retina is highly flexible, adaptable to many configurations.  Humans have a circular patch of high density cone receptors, cheetah have a long vertical streak of them which help them track prey when running at speeds over 60 miles per hour.
All this being said, its unlikely that an animal would only see movement, especially a larger on. In Jurassic park, the tyrannosaurus motion only eyes was a dramatic twist - its hard to imagine an animal having such a huge blindspot.  Indeed this specific theory is now mostly discounted.

check out the last paragraph now..

i don't think there is a direct reference that answers this question unambiguously, but feel free to post if you find one.


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List of species recently found of economic value
Is there a website or organization cataloging lists of biological species to have been recently found of great economic value? For example, a plant that wasn't of economic relevance a while ago but has been found recently to be important, due to advances in breeding varieties and more crops being planted. The same for species that were already important but have turned to be even more important in the last few years.

Are you looking for a business idea? The most clever use of SE I've seen recently. ;)

Perhaps the Biofuel Ecophysiological Traits and Yields Database would be of some help?

I can only answer for plants. The short answer is no, there is no central source of information of that kind.
You are basically asking about the sub-classifications economic botany and ethnobotany, which cover the economy and human uses of plants respectively. Neither field is particularly fast-paced, so you could simply keep up to date with the latest issues of journals like Economic Botany or Ethnobotany.
One key area of development for new valuable crops is in crop wild relatives, but there is no particular publication you should watch for that. Keep an eye on the Crop Trust as they will shortly be releasing, in collaboration with us (the Millennium Seed Bank) some reports and data about this.
If I wanted to keep up to date with all those things over time, I would set up some saved search alerts on Google Scholar for key search terms like 'emerging crop', 'new crop', 'crop wild relative', etc. Just perform a search on Scholar and then click the envelope button to the right of the search field to create a recurring search alert.
One other potential source of information would be to check FAOSTAT each year. You can examine global and local data about area under cultivation, yield, investment, commodity value, etc. of most crops. If something new were to emerge as a big player, it would appear on there.


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What are the evolutionary niches differentiating an apple from a pear?
So, as far as I understand (basic) evolutionary theories, diversity is generated by "niching." That is, if there is an environmental factor that hasn't been fully used by any species to "profit" off, there will be a tendency to fill up that "niche" and thus speciation occurs (not in one day of course).
I was standing in the kitchen earlier and was wondering: what is the niche that an apple fills in respect to a pear end vice versa? If I'm not mistaken they are form the same family and thus share a common ancestor (albeit I don't know if it is a "recent" ancestor).
Is it a geographical thing or do they genuinely vie for the same thing in a different way? (e.g. a pear aims to be eaten by animals that have small teeth and thus want a softer fruit, while an apple aims to be eaten by the bigger animals, that like a heartier bite).
note: I know that this question might be too speculative and too localised to be any good, but hey, some of you might just know this!

I would be very, very surprised if the current day fruit of apples and pears gives us a good indication of what the ancestral fruit was like. Remember that, like almost everything else we eat, apples and pears have been dramatically altered by artificial selection.

The ancestral apple is thought to originate in what is now Kazakhstan. See this report from the USDA on this topic. Those early apples were small and likely eaten more often by non-human species.
Pears: From Wikipedia: The genus is thought to have originated in present-day western China in the foothills of the Tian Shan, a mountain range of Central Asia, and to have spread to the north and south along mountain chains, evolving into a diverse group of over 20 widely recognized primary species. A citation for this is needed.

so they would be related only so far back in history that their differences are merely a product of very long separation in region?

Once something is cultivated for commercial purposes, it's genome is under tremendous selective pressure. As evidence, consider the origin of the tomato - small and toxic. It is bred and has been bred for very different properties over the last centuries. Apples and pears can be related at the family level, or more related than you think they are based on color, size, taste, region where grown, etc. Most pear trees survive because they are grown on quince root stocks - so differences between these species are not as great as may appear at first glance.

I chose this answer because it has the most explanatory solution: humans did it.

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan has a chapter on apples, where he discusses the hypothesis that apples were originally domesticated by bears. That book is a great read if this kind of topic interests you.  I'm not aware of a similar hypothesis about pears, maybe it was pandas?

I wouldn't be suprised if no one has hard data on this. In any case there is more than one answer to this question.
Niches are defined more than one way.
In the narrowest definition, the niche might be defined as the ability of the different trees to grow in different terrains or be eaten by different animals in the same environment.  I can't comment on that, but in most environments, there is in practice little difference between the two.  The classic example of this is Darwin's finches - where a single species eventually becomes many, each specializing in a specific kind of lifestyle (what they eat/where they net) on the islands of the Galapagos where they were situated.
In the broadest definition of niche, they do have a different niche because they are different species, and their differences allow them to be eaten by different people.  In their highly domesticated environs, apples and pears each have a niche defined by the fact that they are both stocked in the produce sections for people to eat as they choose.

Its worth mentioning that Darwin determined that different organisms can inhabit the same niche.  In his case he saw that on different islands of the Galapagos he saw that the finches had evolved into different species, each of which took up the role that a different bird might have back home.  so its possible that apples and pears may have substantially the same niche in their respective evolutionary histories.

Yes, people drive the current distribution of these fruit trees.


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Are ape communities more "anarchist" or "communist" in structure?
I am using these terms because we can imagine them quite good, I guess ;)
By "anarchist" I mean that the ape wants to live without the rule of others apes(same biological race or other) and he pursue his own goals (replication, getting food etc.)
By "communist" I mean working together in groups because of the "higher"purpose (better chance to protect themselves, getting food easier, other benefits)
I am particlarly interested in apes, excluding us, of course.

I edited your title heavily - sorry but hopefully this is what you meant?

Great apes live in social groups which definitely have rules.  They seem to be more like a clan or family because of the size.  So maybe if you were forced to choose you might say communist.

I think your definitions of 'anarchism' and 'communism' do not reflect the actual political ideas at all. I think you were looking for the terms "selfish" and "cooperative" or "altruistic".

Among the great apes, chimpanzees and gorillas live in very hierarchical, male-dominated clans that are often in violent conflict with other clans. Bonobos, on the other hand, lead very peaceful lives, and are female-dominated, using sexual contact as a manner of communication to reduce tension within and between groups. Orangutans are largely solitary animals, with heavy parental investment (7 years, longest among non-human primates), wherein the mother lives separately with her child during the early years of development. Among the lesser apes, gibbons and siamangs are also highly territorial and pair-bonded, though notably, polyandrous siamang groups have been shown to display higher degrees of cooperation.
Though Anarchism varies greatly between different definitions, the most popular form of contemporary Anarchism values non-hierarchical organization, centered around mutual aid, rather than the kind of isolated individualism that you seem to associate with the term. By this definition, bonobos would be more "Anarchist" than chimpanzees. By your definition, orangutans might be the most "Anarchist."
Your definition of "Communism" is closer to the contemporary definition of Anarchism above, due mainly to the historical trajectory of Communism, which in practice, did not work out so well, leaving contemporary utopian thinkers largely in the Anarchist camp. By your definition of "Communism," bonobos may be the most "Communist"; however, if you mean the state-based gulag Communism of popular culture (ie portrayals of the Soviet Union), then you might say that chimps were more Communist. This is because individual chimps sacrifice individual goal attainment for group ends under the coercion of the alpha male chimp. Of course, some people may call that Fascism.
You may want to take a look at primatologist Franz De Waal's research on bonobos vs. chimpanzees. As a pacifist, he has a bit of an agenda, in terms of trying to prove that female-dominated bonobo "societies" are inherently more cooperative and less hierarchical. Another primatologist that agrees with this view is Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham, who looks at hierarchical organization and violent behaviors in chimpanzees.
Robert Sapolsky's research on baboons may also be of interest to you. He found a clan of baboons, in which all the alpha males had died from tuberculosis due to exposure to an infected meat found in a neighboring human village. He noted, then, that the remaining baboons lived much more peaceably and cooperatively than other observed clans, and furthermore, that this clan retained its "culture" and passed on its more cooperative ways of behaving to new members in the clan, therefore demonstrating that perhaps baboons (and other primates) are capable of having and passing on "culture." - Perhaps a more "Anarchist" culture than nature normally prescribes.
However, as a caveat, I must say: it is tenuous to make direct associations between ape behavior and human societies. Human culture, social intelligence, and symbolic reasoning facilitate human political systems. Though Sapolsky's work suggests primates may also be capable of some form of "culture," biological descriptions of ape social organization is insufficient to explain human behavior.


text:
In our solar system which other planet could have been in the "habitable zone" in the past?
With changes in our solar system, such as planets moving away from the sun and the reduction in solar radiation, which other planets in our solar system could have been, in the past, in a suitable zone for life to originate?

I think this might be more on topic in the physics SE, no?

I'm not sure what physicists would know of biology (origin of life).  It seems on-topic to me.

Cf. http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/8972/why-must-a-planet-be-in-a-stars-habitable-zone-to-have-life?rq=1

Looks, great to me. IMO the word "habitable" makes biological enough. OP should accept!


text:
Microscope recommendation for an amateur?
I am a mathematics student looking for a hobby and this has come up as a potential hobby. Thus I am interested in buying a high-magnification microscope that is within the limits of my budget.
My first question is, is high-magnification always better? That is, what are some examples, if any, where high-magnification isn't preferred?
Secondly, I am thinking of getting either the "OMAX 40X-2000X Digital Lab LED Binocular Compound Microscope with Built-in 1.3MP USB Camera and Double Layer Mechanical Stage". I have no idea what most of that jargon means, except that it is digital and it can magnify up to 2000x. http://www.amazon.com/40X-2000X-Binocular-Compound-Microscope-Mechanical/dp/B006MX03Q0/ref=pd_sbs_indust_4
Is there any reason I shouldn't get this microscope?

What are you trying to look at? I think without a sense of your goals, it would be hard for people here to help you with your question.

That's the question; what are then possible goals, @Oreotrephes?

Got it. I think others can answer this better than I can, but I think your first point of differentiation is going to be whether you want a "dissecting scope" which is easy to use and lets you look at things that aren't squished flat; or a "light microscope" (like the one you link to) which gives much higher magnification but for which you'd have to prepare slides. The former is great for looking in more detail at macroscopic things (e.g. living insects, whole flowers); the latter is appropriate for looking at things that are truly tiny (e.g. cells).

Why would I want to use it for macroscopic things if I can use my eyes? Also, what magnification do you need to see cells? @Oreotrephes

For anything more than about 40X you will also need a preparation laboratory and very good/expensive lighting.

Higher magnification is definitely NOT always better. Indeed, the microscope you are considering is designed for maximum magnification of 1,000x. The 2,000x is achieved by adding 20x eyepieces BUT it creates what is known as 'false magnification'. 2,000x is beyond the resolving power of a light microscope so what happens is that the image is magnified 2,000x but without a corresponding improvement in resolution. In fact, you will notice a degradation in image quality....it's like magnifying a pdf on your computer....it gets bigger but you still can't read it! And in any event, you will never use 2,000x let alone 1,000x! Read this article http://www.microscope.com/education-center/articles/false-magnification/
Second, I advise against buying an integrated digital microscope. Far better to buy a standard trinocular microscope and add a microscope camera. The reason is that the camera will be obsolete within about one year while the microscope should last a lifetime. If anything goes wrong with he camera, you will have to buy an entirely new microscope. Moreover, with separate scope/camera, you can switch cameras on the same microscope or use the camera on a different microscope. For more info read this article http://www.microscope.com/education-center/articles/digital-microscope-options/
Look for a lifetime warranty. A mechanical stage is standard and helps move the slides on the stage.
In full disclosure, I own www.microscope.com so give me a call if you would like any further assistance. You will not find false magnification or false advertising on our website!

I'm using oil immersion @Charles.

To answer your other question, you need a low power (also known as dissecting or stereo) microscope in order to see close-up views of specimens visible to the naked eye. For example, you can see a bee, but you need a stereo microscope to see the wonders of its eye. Similarly, you can see a rock or a diamond but you need a microscope to see the crystalline structure. Typical magnification ranges are 7x-45x or 50x with most work undertaken in the 20-30x range.
For viewing cells on slides, you need a high power (also known as biological or compound) microscope. Typically, these range from 40x-1,000x.


text:
Do swarms show intelligence?
Can you think of collective and swarm behaviors as "intelligence"? Would such a concept apply to a) ant colonies and b) fish swarms?

Intelligence is something which has to have a definition, and there are many, but I would cautiously say no.
The reason that I say this is because swarming behavior can be largely reproduced by a simple set of rules - matching distance to your neighbors and direction and speed as well.  To me this really removes any intention or even conscious element to swarm behavior although its clear individuals do make decisions, they don't have to be more intelligent than a mouse looking for food or other kinds of animal behavior.
That being said, others have literally built definitions of intelligence inspired by swarming - a decentralized sort of mind which makes decisions based on the interactions of component individuals.  You could argue that our own brains are a similar sort of ensemble, and therefore no more different than our own intelligence if we look closely enough.
So take your pick really.

When we talk about "artificial intelligence" we are talking about the ability to solve problems not directly specified in the code. It doesn't need to have "intention" or "conscience", as @shigeta suggests. So, I'd say swarms are intelligent, it's just another "hardware" where intelligence appears. Like shigeta said, our own mind is not different in essence from a swarm (just many times more developed).


text:
How are oranges in the US or anywhere made seedless?
How are oranges in the US or anywhere made seedless? Please explain the broad principles and not the technicalities.

Neat question! No time to write up an answer now, but I'm sure someone will. In the meantime, see: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-seedless-fruits-ar/

Related question: http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/2124/why-cant-we-breed-watermelons-without-any-remaining-seeds-in-the-flesh

Oranges and other fruits are generally not actively made seedless. Rather, seeds may fail to develop due to either lack of fertilization (pollination) or a natural tendency. The natural production of unfertilized and thus seedless fruit is called Parthenocarpy.
To quote the Scientific American article (3) mentioned by Oreotrephes:

Fruit development normally begins when one or more egg cells in the
  ovular compartment of the flower are fertilized by sperm nuclei from
  pollen. In some plants, however, fruit develops without fertilization,
  a phenomenon known as parthenocarpy. Parthenocarpic fruit has
  advantages over seeded fruit: longer shelf life and greater consumer
  appeal.
The most frequent reasons for lack of seed development are pollination
  failure, or nonfunctional eggs or sperm. In many plants,
  self-incompatibility genes limit successful fertilization to
  cross-pollination between genetically different male and female
  parents. This property is exploited by citrus farmers who grow
  seedless fruits, such as navel oranges and clementines. Because these
  cultivars are self-incompatible, they fail to set seed when they are
  planted in orchards of identical plants (clones). These plants have a
  high frequency of parthenocarpy, however, so they still produce fruit.

Parthenocarpic varieties may arise from a lack of pollinators. From the Wikipedia page on Parthenocarpy:

Plants moved from one area of the world to another may not always be
  accompanied by their pollinating partner and the lack of pollinators
  has spurred human cultivation of parthenocarpic varieties. Some
  parthenocarpic varieties have been developed as genetically modified
  organisms.

To preserve the seedless trait, parthenocarpic trees can be propagated by grafting. It is possible that more kinds of seedless fruits will be engineered in the future (3):

Plant biologists have learned that if the plant hormone auxin is
  produced early in ovule development, parthenocarpic fruit can grow on
  plants that do not usually exhibit this property. Thus, genetic
  engineering will most likely give consumers parthenocarpic fruit in
  many other species in the near future.


text:
Which species were first described by Charles Darwin?
There are many plants and animals named for the naturalist Charles Darwin, such as Darwin's Frog (Rhinoderma darwinii), but which were named by him? I'm finding it difficult to find such a list.

I haven't found a list of species named by him, but an article of species named after him. They list some 301 different animals in it. A few where probably named after him for findeing them (he collected vast numbers of them and sent them back to London) but others where named to honor him. You can find the list here.

Darwin described adaptive radiation by describing small, dark birds in Australia. Those birds are known as Darwin's finches.

Lets not forget the Galapagos Finches and other species described in "Voyage of the Beagle".

I've discovered that searching for Darwin on the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) appears to prioritise in its search results those species named by Darwin rather than for him. The first page of results includes many barnacle species (as noted by 3cat). The first five species are:

Amphibalanus amphitrite (Striped Barnacle)
Megabalanus coccopoma (Titan Acorn Barnacle)
Balanus glandula (Acorn Barnacle)
Elminius modestus (New Zealand Barnacle)
Balanus nubilus (Giant Barnacle)
...

There are 370 results, but some of them are not species level (e.g. Chthamalidae), and some other entries are mixed in (e.g. S.C. Darwin and S.P.Darwin), and later results include, for example, Nemoria darwiniata, so it's hard to quantify the results.
I might try writing an SQL query for the downloaded Catalogue of Life, as its online interface doesn't seem to allow the relevant query.
EDIT:

The complete list: Species described by Charles Darwin (EOL), listing 81 species. (Pointed out in comments. Thanks 3Cat)

Nice initiative. I followed your link and browsed through it. I clicked on one of the species (a bird, described in 1839) and discovered that it belonged to a collection called "Species described by Charles Darwin." (http://eol.org/collections/12085). It lists 81 species.

@3cat Perfect! I feel like a fool for missing that. I wish I could award the "answered" tick to your comment.

A 'correctly' formatted scientific name will usually have an author citation and date, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Author_citation_(zoology)), as you can see on the EOL page.

@Qubei - it was your answer that sparked my comment. You set me on the right trail. If you want, add my comment to your answer and accept yours.

I don't know if these are his earliest descriptions but Darwin did describe several species of Planaria, such as Planaria vaginuloides, P. oceania, plus a new genus, Diplanaria in 1844.
Darwin, C. R. 1844. Brief descriptions of several terrestrial planariæ, and of some remarkable marine species, with an account of their habits. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 14 (October): 241-251, 1 plate.
Perhaps his best known taxonomic work is on barnacles (Cirripedia). He described several species in his monograph first monograph on the group.
Darwin, C. R. 1851 [=1852]. A monograph of the sub-class Cirripedia, with figures of all the species. The Lepadidæ; or, pedunculated cirripedes.. London: The Ray Society. Volume 1
The first monograph was followed by three other monographs on living and fossil Cirripedia.
I believe that most of his writings after publication of On the Origin of Species focused on expanding his evolutionary ideas rather than on descriptions of new species.
You can read nearly all of Darwin's writings online at http://darwin-online.org.uk. With careful searching you can find all (or nearly all) species descriptions.

Thanks for the reply. I'm surprised there isn't simply a list somewhere though. His publications after Origin weren't all expanding on the theory—His last scientific book was The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits, not really about natural selection.

I'm not aware of any lists. Perhaps something has been compiled in a biography. I suspect that his work on natural selection (and related) has overshadowed all of his other important contributions, at least for most science historians. Perhaps you'll pull together such a list! Please feel free to accept my answer it is, well, acceptable to you.


text:
Why do an eagle’s feet look ridged?
Why are the knuckles of an eagles toes "ridged"?
(I found these pictures to explain.  One was from PBS and the other is one I found on Pinterest):

I circled the parts of the toes/feet I meant in red (from PBS):

Their DNA made them like that.

I don't really get what you mean by baggy. I can't see any bagginess in eagle talons. Can you be more specific?

Please consider rephrasing your query and hence using alternative terminology -- as of now it is a bit unclear what you are asking.

Those are just scutes.

@kmm you should post that as a brief answer.

@kmm Yeah, you should put it as an answer.  I was able to find information by using that keyword.  Thanks.

The bubbly structures on the dorsal sides of the digits are scutes. Birds retained them from their dinosaurian ancestors. Here is a picture of similar structures on an alligator foot:

What purpose do they serve?


text:
How do bumblebees and hornets avoid the negative effects of inbreeding?
I just learned that all hornets and bumblebees except for the queen die at the end of the year and the queen starts a new nest in spring.
But that means the next generation of queens have only brothers to breed with.
Should this lead to severe inbreeding, which over a couple of years would cause serious problems for survival?

As far as I know, the drones leave their nests before the end of the season and try to mate with the young queens that arise at the end of the summer. This way there is mixing of genes and also they avoid inbreeding.

@Chris this should be an answer I think.

I can do that, but I have to at least look up where I read this.

Queens do not generally breed with their brothers, but with males from other nests. In the life cycle of bees (and other social Hymenoptera), new queens are born late in the season along with haploid male drones. These all leave the nest and disperse in the landscape to find mates to reproduce with. After mating, all males die and the queens overwinter to start new colonies next spring. The situation is therefore not all that different compared to other annual, semelparous (single reproductive event) species, since you have population mixing before mating and reproduction.
Here are a couple of mechanisms that bees avoid inbreeding:

Population mixing before reproduction (see above).
Inbreeding avoidance
That queens prefer not to mate with close relatives has been shown in several species, see e.g. Foster (1992) and Whitehorn et al (2009).
Polyandry
Each queen generally mates with several males (regulary more than 10 in honey bees, see Palmer & Oldroyd, 2000) and stores their sperm to fertilize eggs during the next year, which means that workers and the queens of next year will have different fathers (increasing genetic variability).

References:

Foster. 1992. Nestmate Recognition as an Inbreeding Avoidance Mechanism in Bumble Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae). Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 65(3)
Whitehorn et al. 2009. Kin recognition and inbreeding reluctance in bumblebees. Apidologie, 40(6)
Palmer & Oldroyd. 2000. Evolution of multiple mating in the genus Apis. Apidologie 31(2)


text:
Can we say it's hybridisation if it's the same species?
If we mixed two population of the same species into the same environment and then they reproduce together, can we say it's hybridisation?
The wikipedia definition is the following:

Hybridisation (biology) the process of combining different varieties of organisms to create a hybrid

The question boils down to the definition of species and hybridization.
In general, we use the term hybridization to talk about mating between individuals from different species but really the term species does not mean as much as most people would think it does. Some people may use the term hybridization to talk about mating between lineages that are usually considered belonging to the asme species.
Have a look at How could humans have interbred with Neanderthals if we're a different species? for more information on the problems of definition of species.
Edit
Here are terms and concepts that are related and may help you

gene flow
introgression
interspecific mating
secondary contact
partial reproductive isolation

What do yo call a "Darwinian definition of species"? Do you refer to the so-called "biological definition of species" (which is based on reproductive isolation). Using the biological definition of species, you cannot hybridize different species (by definition).

Thank you for your answer, I know the definition of species is only arbitrary for the purpose of our mind.
If we use a Darwinian definition of species so basically a heritable morph then hybridation because interesting.

But if we refuse loosing variation and assume every ecotype is a species then we speak of hybridization between ecotype but is it really relevant ? Indeed, when hybridization is used too wide it then loose it's signification... The whole concept of hybridization is based on the idea of two variety (or species or what ever you want to call it) that breed together and produce a intermiedate morph, no ?

Sorry, I don't understand your comment and the point you are trying to make. Note that the hybrid does not necessarily have an intermediate morph. Note also that in english (unlike in french) there are no spaces before the "?" (another thing that Biology.SE taught me some time ago) $\ddot \smile$

I was just saying that basically , your answer dosen't answer mine since you refer to the species definition debate. I guess there is no proper answer to this question since the species definition is fuzzy. Then, I guess your right and it comes down to the species definition. Sorry for the ''?''...

Hum... not sure I follow the whole thing but you will be free to decide what you estimate answers your question. No problem for the "?", I am happy to see that I am not the only french speaking dude over here who did not know about this syntax difference between french and english.

Haha.... I am revising a text and this person use hybridization to speak of the reproduction between the natural population and the reintroduce population. My question was is hybridization really the good term, I would have use increase gene flow or something like that to be more precise. But since, hybridization can be applied to almost anythings I guess the use of the words is allright.

I agree with this conclusion :)

If you think the answer has been answer, you can check the answer. If you think the question makes little sense, you can delete it. If you think the question has not been answered, you should make sure that other people will understand what is missing to answer the question (or answer the question yourself). Cheers!

You might also consider whether the term 'introgression' is appropriate in this instance. Like 'hybridization' itself though, 'introgression' is used in different ways...


text:
What determines the autumn leaf color?
It is autumn out there. Green, brown, red, yellow, and mixed-colored leaves drop from the trees to the ground. What determines the colors of the leaves?
Wikipedia tells me

Leaf senescence is the cause of autumn leaf color in deciduous trees.

Ok. What does the color code? If a leaf is red, why is it red and not yellow or brown or green or mixed-colored?

There is no color code for the leafs - the color results from biochemical reactions. Basically there are three colors: Green, yellow and red.

Green color is caused by the chlorophyll inside the chloroplasts,
when the leafs are active in photosynthesis.
Yellow color is caused by Carotenoids, which are present in the
leafs all the time, but are masked by the chlorophyll. The
carotenoids become visible when the amount of chlorophyll in the
leafs is reduced, which usually happens in the fall.
The red color is caused by Anthocyanins, which are usually not
present in the leafs. They are made during the late summer and can
also mix up with the carotenoids (color mix) to get intermediate
colors.
Brown color is caused by the cell wall of dry leafs which have no
other color.

For further reading these articles are interesting:

Unravelling the evolution of autumn colours: an interdisciplinary
approach.
The Science of Color in Autumn Leaves

There is also the hypothesis around, that the bright colors are a warning sign to insects, this is called the co-evolution theory of autumn colors. The color should warn the insects that the tree has a high level of defense and thus reduce its parasitory load. You can read more about this hypothesis here:

The coevolution theory of autumn colours.
The shared and separate roles of aposematic (warning) coloration and
the co-evolution hypothesis in defending autumn leaves.

What
There are two theories according to Jennifer Wells, Leaf Color Change:

Competition theory - states that nutrients are redistributed to important parts of the plant. Lack of nutrients in the leaves will decrease the chlorophyll synthesis thus the leaves change their color. The redistribution does not happen equally that's why some leaves are multicolored (see Ecology and the Environment at Cornell Blogs).
Mutual enhancement - states that specific hormones (senescence factors) work in conjunction and cause the color change.

All these happen under the influence of light - the absorbed dose of light is modulated by internal factors. The result is a reversed balance between carotenoids and chlorophyll (increase in carotenoids).
These carotenoids (fat-soluble) turn the leaf into orange and yellow depending on their concentration. There are also anthocyanins (water-soluble) which are responsible for red coloration.
Why

Chlorophyll and its derivatives, if not carefully processed by organized biochemical pathways in green cells, can be toxic when illuminated.

According to: Howard Sidney Thomas, Leaf senescence and autumn leaf coloration. Check also Figure 3 from this link (on the last page).


text:
Identify the plant
Can anyone tell me which plant or flower is this. I have found it in Darjeeling,  West Bengal, India.

Those are known as Rhododendrons, and I'd ID that one as R. hodgsonii.


text:
Why do people die?
what is the reason people die naturally even though they have no known disease?
I see people become physically weak at times they get old and die eventually in case they are not attacked by any known disease.
My question is what reasons leads human to death?

What Does it Mean to "Die of Old Age"

the question, called senescence is kind of an open one in evolutionary biology.  There are some organisms which appear not to die - dividing amoeba and perhaps the microorganisms called hydrae.

Because people aren't supposed to live forever. We evolve trough generations.


text:
Is there a downloadable list of all species along with their traditional classification?
I'm looking for a downloadable list of all known (or better said, online documented) species in this straightforward format, as an example the European Frog:
Kingdom: Animalia
Division: Chordata
Class: Amphibia
Order: Anura
Family: Ranidae
Genus: Rana
Species: Rana temporaria
I'd like to have this list offline in a structured text or database format that I can parse. If such a list has other useful attributes (credits, distribution, common names), it is welcome, but the above is the absolute minimum I need. I know there are more taxonomy levels in the above system (Species 2000 & ITIS Catalogue of Life: April 2013 ), but I only need these basic 6.
I have been looking at several collections and am having difficulty getting the data that I need. Either the database is incomplete, not accessible as a database, has complicated data structures, or has poorly described and slow web APIs that I cannot rely on.
Conceptually, it seems to me that http://www.catalogueoflife.org comes closest to my needs, yet their download is a tool, not a database. I do see the download has a MySQL folder containing lots of files, but I don't know how to reconstruct it into a database. It seems also that they pulled the page to describe the database download.
As simple as my question seems (I'm not a biologist, so I assumed it was simple), I have wasted several hours coming up empty. I was wondering if anybody has done the work to provide basic species info in an understandable format as requested?
As for species completeness, the 1.3m of Catalogue of Life sounds really good, as I'm currently basing my system on Wikipedia, which only has 180k species.

you might want to have a look to www.tolweb.org

Have you ever found what you needed?

Extant only, or all known life? because xtinct life tends to mess with that form of classification, which is why it is included less. .

you have another issue as well,  taxonomic classification is less helpful for cross group comparison (some classes for instance are inside other classes) so many larger "tree of life" projects tend toward phylogenetic classification instead, it makes for clearer coding.

Second John. Possibly there are some reasons to use Linnean classifications, but the phylogeny is the actually useful data artifact. The hierarchical taxonomy is more of a crude heuristic, sounds like a painful exercise to make it play nicely.

ITIS
To expand on the answer from @Rodrigo, the Integrated Taxonomic Information System seems to be a reasonable answer. It gives you a database of every taxonomic node in the Tree of Life™ and each node has a Taxonomic Serial Number (TSN). You can download the data as a database or even just use the tables as pipe-delimited text files.
For example the file vernaculars tells us that the TSN for European frog is 173444. By looking in the file longnames, we can see that the complete name for 173444 is Rana temporaria. Finally, the file hierarchy, tells us that the complete hierarchy for 173444 is:
European frog:
→ Animalia
→ Bilateria
→ Deuterostomia
→ Chordata
→ Vertebrata
→ Gnathostomata
→ Tetrapoda
→ Amphibia
→ Anura
→ Ranidae
→ Rana
→ Rana temporaria
You may download the ITIS data in several different formats from https://www.itis.gov/downloads.
Example data from some of the files.
If you downloaded the MySQL Tables data from https://www.itis.gov/downloads/itisMySQLTables.tar.gz, here are some of the useful files you'll find.
vernaculars
The first two fields of vernaculars contain the TSN (Taxonomic Serial Number) and the common name for a node. Some common names map to a single TSN and not all TSNs have common names. Some examples:
50|bacteria|English|N|2015-03-02|159942
14092|mushrooms|English|N|2004-01-28|11529
14092|pore fungi|English|N|2004-01-28|11534
14092|rusts|English|N|2004-01-28|11539
183798|Domestic Cat|English|N|2007-08-15|111781

You can read the file dropcreateloaditis.sql to see what the other columns mean.
longnames
The file longnames contains only two fields, the TSN and the complete "scientific" name of the item. For example:
50|Bacteria
14092|Basidiomycotina
183798|Felis catus

hierarchy
The first field of the file hierarchy is the entire hierarchy, from tip to tail, for the TSN in the second field represented as a sequence of TSNs separated by a hyphen (-). E.g.,
50|50|0|0|14789
555705-936287-623881|623881|936287|2|415
202423-914154-914156-158852-331030-914179-914181-179913-179916-179925-180539-552304-180580-552363-180586-183798|183798|180586|15|0

Of course, those TSNs can be looked up in the longnames table to convert to something human readable. Using that, here is what the first field of the last line above actually says,
Animalia → Bilateria → Deuterostomia → Chordata → Vertebrata → Gnathostomata → Tetrapoda → Mammalia → Theria → Eutheria → Carnivora → Feliformia → Felidae → Felinae → Felis → Felis catus

synonym_links
The synonym_links file contains a list of obsolete TSNs and the current TSN which should replace them. For example, the TSN for the vernacular mushrooms is given as 14092 (Basidiomycotina). However, that TSN is not in the hierarchy file. Instead, synonym_links points us to use 623881 (Basidiomycota), which works. Here are some synonym entries:
51|50|2015-03-02
14092|623881|2004-01-28
552455|180586|2007-08-15

Example script
If you have access to a UNIX machine (MacOS may work), you can look up any common name by using a simple script I wrote. It will print a taxonomy, just like for European frog above. You can cut and paste the following commands into your terminal to try it out.
① Download the data
    wget https://www.itis.gov/downloads/itisMySQLTables.tar.gz
    tar -axvf itisMySQLTables.tar.gz
    cd itisMySQL*/

② Download my lookup.py script
    wget https://tinyurl.com/yyld2mm4 -O lookup.py
    chmod +x lookup.py

③ Run the script giving it a common name
    ./lookup.py human
    ./lookup.py domestic cat
    ./lookup.py love-lies-bleeding

④ Sample output
    human:
     → Animalia
     → Bilateria
     → Deuterostomia
     → Chordata
     → Vertebrata
     → Gnathostomata
     → Tetrapoda
     → Mammalia
     → Theria
     → Eutheria
     → Primates
     → Haplorrhini
     → Simiiformes
     → Hominoidea
     → Hominidae
     → Homininae
     → Homo
     → Homo sapiens

Have you tried NCBI?  Try this link:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/taxonomy

Sorry, but there's several problems with this answer. It's a different classification, it only has 10% of species, and as far as I can see, there is no database.

@Ferdy: yes there is http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/guide/taxonomy/

Have you tried ITIS?
http://www.itis.gov/
I once used their database. It was in MS Access format.
EDIT: Now they updated their site, and you may download PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, among other formats: https://www.itis.gov/downloads/

try this one as well:
http://www.catalogueoflife.org/DCA_Export/archive.php
the document with the taxonomy is the taxa.txt document

If you want Reptile data sets these are downloadable files here is the link http://www.reptile-database.org/data/ or if you want a wider and easier search there is https://www.gbif.org/ you might need to sign in though
but in my experience the best data sets for animal species are:
GBIF
and REPTILE DATABASE


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How would the human body adjust to sleep times if we were to live in a place with different day lengths?
You sleep at night and are active during the day that's how things work for humans, but theoretically if a human whose parents lived on earth were to be born in another planet resembling earth but the difference was that this planet has an 8.5 hour day, what kind of changes will this person undergo?if a human who grew up on earth suddenly had to move to this planet how would his body adapt? what would be the difference between a person who moves to this 8.5 hour day planet with the person that was born there? and would the person who was born on this planet be active for 4.25 hours and then sleep for the other 4.25?

This is a cop-out, but I think in practice, the circadian rhythm for civilized humans is only loosely coupled to the day/night cycle. Astronauts will probably spend their day indoors, with artificial light they control, which will be a bigger factor than the sun. Also, note that on Earth, there are people who live in areas such as Antarctica, where for days at a time there is no night at all.

It would be pretty ineffective to adapt to an 4.25-hour rhythm. The proportion of necessary, but not directly beneficial activities like driving to work or preparing a meal would rise to a very high level. I go with ThePopMachine ...

Humans have evolved for 24 hour days and our bodies would not adapt well to this short of sleep/wake cycles (whether or not they were born there, unless they have been there for many generations and have been able to evolve for the new time). Our bodies would still want to spend about the same amount of time sleeping and being awake.
If we tried to adjust our sleep cycles to this planet with 8.5 hour days, we would experience many of the stresses that occur during jet lag (Google Scholar search), which can cause depression. Jet lag is identical to experiencing one day which is shorter or longer than the typical 24 hours.
The sunlight helps set our circadian rhythm, but 8.5 hours would be too fast. I thought I heard for an experiment that used mice that supports this, but I still haven't found the reference yet.
Nbogard referenced the article Plasticity of the Intrinsic Period of the Human Circadian Timing System, which showed that the circadian rhythm in humans can be altered by up to 0.65 hours by the use of lights. This is consistent with what I mentioned that the sunlight helps to set our circadian rhythm.
The best way to adapt would be to use artificial lighting to keep your days about 24 hour days (artificial light during waking hours, heavy curtains during sleeping hours), as mentioned in ThePopMachine's answer.

Now we have two contradictory answers. Some sources to back up each view would be nice.

Added link for sources. Also, clarified my answer, so that it is more apparent that our answers don't really contradict.

This is hard to back up with evidence, but I think jet lag has to do with synchronizing to the other people in your time zone, not the sun. Furthermore, if people on such a planet lived with 24 hour cycles anyway, would the effect on their psychology would be any different from graveyard shift workers?

Hopefully it is more clear now: I meant that adjusting our sleep schedules to the new planet (of 8.5 hours in each day) would be the same physiologically as jet lag ("repeated phase shifts of the biological clock"). Does that make more sense?

I think the important question is whether or not your circadian clock can adapt to faster day/night cycles. Jet lag is caused by a large shift in the 24-hour cycle, so it's unclear whether the effects would be the same or how long they would last.

Check this out: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1934931/

@nbogard, thanks, I added it into my answer. I still need to find evidence for more extreme changes to circadian rhythm.

Actually, for your example it would be pretty easy to adapt.  You just have a 25.5 hour day with 12.75 hours of day and 12.75 hours of night.  Except you have a 4.25 hour period in the middle of the day where you stay inside and use lights (like in the evening for most people on Earth) and a 4.25 hour period at night where you make sure your eye mask is on.
Added convenience: there are three different choices of when to call day so it's good for shift work and there's no problem with traffic.  Let's move there!


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Why do tomatoes look so much like pomegranates?
The pomegranate fruit has been cultivated since ancient times, particularly in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.  It has a hard outer rind, and inside are several chambers, each of which contains a multitude of seed pods, consisting of a single hard seed wrapped in a protective cushion of liquid.
Take every detail of that description, make it a bit smaller, a bit softer, and a whole lot more edible, and what you've got is the exact description of the tomato fruit.  One could certainly be forgiven for assuming that they were genetically related, but if you look at the phylogeny of the two plants, you see that that hypothesis could hardly be more wrong--not to mention the minor little detail of tomatoes being native to the Americas, literally on the other side of the world from the pomegranate's home!
So what's going on here?

Would the downvoter care to comment?

Don't worry about it. it seems like some high-level botanist should be able to answer

Species evolve similar features in isolation - wings have evolved on multiple occasions for example. Besides that it seems your question is looking for some grand meaning behind their similarity, and is not a good fit for Bio SE.

So what's going on here?

Personally speaking, I don't think the tomato is anything like the pomegranate. However, generally speaking the appearance of similar traits despite widely divergent ancestry is called Convergent Evolution. Some traits -- let's say round fruit and red coloring -- may be so advantageous that they evolved multiple different times throughout history.
Take wings, for another example. Wings have evolved in insects, avians (obviously), and mammals. The last common ancestor (often shortened to "LCA") is billions of years back, but wings persist.
So, the real answer is not quite "by chance," but closer to "because they're very good traits to have."

We might also consider the effects of human selection: there are certainly similarities in the plants we choose to domesticate, and the traits in those plants that we select for.

Why do bats look a lot like birds?  Or hawk moths/hummingbirds, dolphins/ichthyosaurs, and many more.  Also, I wouldn't say that wings "persist", as the LCA didn't have them.  It's rather that they evolved independently, and the similarities are a result of aerodynamics determining that there are only so many ways to make a good wing.


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Change in conditions of an ecosystem lead to change in organisms
Let's think about the slash and burn method and its effects on the ecosystem.
Cutting down trees that rise all the way up to the canopy would expose the plants at ground level to more light, so would change an abiotic factor so changes the conditions required for survival. These plants are not adapted to the high light intensity so would find it hard to survive and compete, through inter-species competition, with newly arrived plant species that are much more adapted to the extra light intensity.
Obviously this would cause a dramatic reduction in the numbers of the previous plant species and would result in migration of the animals due to lack of food, assuming they can't feed on the newly arrived plants, and a change in the food chain.
In what ways do this affect the local and regional ecosystem, and what problems could it produce (both from an ecosystem and human perspective)? These types of land-use changes are often seen as problematic in conservation biology (as "...a bad thing"). Wouldn't the new plant species bring in new animals that do feed on them and a new equilibrium be reached just with different species? Is it to do with the reduced biodiversity or danger of extinction of indigenous organisms?
As you have probably realized I don't exactly understand this topic perfectly and would appreciate any amendments or extra information to the paragraphs above.
Thanks in advance.

Just to be clear: is your question mainly on 1) if ecosystem change and (local) species extinction is a bad thing (a philosophical/ethical question) or 2) if your description of the process is correct (ie how ecosystems change from clearcutting, including longterm effects on biodiversity - that is, an ecological question)?

I guess a bit of both! To make it more clear I want to know why cutting down trees is bad in terms of the ecosystem. Also is the process correct?

The question is not answerable unless you define "bad"

Remembering back to my undergrad in conservation & ecology; the cutting down of large trees/plants will make space for young of those species to grow - see first line of 4th paragraph here: http://www.forestrycorporation.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/233739/as20-in-a-rainforest.pdf

@user3760 I suggest an edit would help this question (it has 4 close votes already and I assume you don't want it closed) - instead of asking why slash and burn might be bad for the ecosystem, you could perhaps ask what the consequences of slash and burn are on the ecosystem? - The reason it is attracting close votes is probably because trying to define it as a "bad thing" is more philosophical than biological - being good or bad for the ecosystem is largely subjective to what you want to achieve from the ecosystem.

@GriffinEvo I agree that the phrasing of the question is problematic. However, from the perspective of conservation biology (arguably a part of biology) similar arguments are often used as shorthand, since the outcome of certain actions clearly go against the "goals" of conservation biology (which is interdisciplinary and has been described as a "crisis discipline"). Therefore, I can understand why a newcomer to the field can become confused. I have tried to edit the Q to remove some of the more subjective elements.

Thanks @fileunderwater it's a good question and I saw it was getting closed in the review and thought I could advise & help the question survive

I will try to provide a general answer, starting point and overview to this question, even though it is rather wide ranging and vague.
The biological process
If we start with your description of the process; you are correct that such a dramatic change in the environment as slash-and-burn agriculture will drastically change the living environments on the canopy floor (well, in the entire ecosystem).
To name a few, there will be changes in:

Light conditions, which will alter the competitive balance between plant species, where ones adapted to a closed canopy will disappear.
Moisture
Temperature (maximum, minimum and variance in temperature)
Nutrients The point of slash-and-burn agriculture is to provide a boost of nutrients for farming. However, the boost is short-lived and transient. Afterwards, you are usually left with a very nutrient poor soil, which is common in tropical forests. Tropical forests (where slash-and-burn is often used) are high in biomass, but most if it is bound in the standing biomass. When this is removed by clear-cutting, the natural cycling of nutrients is disrupted, and excess nutrients are leached out of the soil (Ricklefs, 2001).
Loss of host species This will lead to loss of primary consumers (specialists & generalists) feeding on them, and cascading effects into the ecosystem that depends on these.

All these changes and several others will dramatically modify the niche spaces and the competition between species in the forest patch, and most previous species will probably not be able to persist locally. New species will move in to fill the open niches, and over a (long) period of succession a new quasi-stable community will emerge. Due to the extremely high biodiversity in tropical forests it will almost certainly contain fewer species than the original community.
The question of whether the community will eventually return to its previous state (even if that will take an extremely long time), is a relatively open question, and also depends on the conditions at the specific site and if the spatial scale of the disturbance. The biggest issue for conservation biology is that these land-use changes generally happen at a large scale, so fragmentation of species habitats can lead to regional and even global extinction. Since many tropical species have small ranges and are not adapted to fragmented landscapes, many run the risk of going extinct. Therefore, even if the overall appearance of the original forest will return, it will contain a very different set of species. Land-use changes, even in the form of temporary slash-and-burn agriculture, also generally leads to continued/secondary exploitation of the area and seldom to restoration/regrowth (Meffe & Carroll, 1997).
I also want to point out that you are indirectly referring ("...new equilibrium be reached...") to the idea of a Balance of nature in ecosystems, which is largely seen as obsolete and incorrect. However, as shorthand or when referring to a dynamical equilibrium between multiple populations (with ongoing evolutionary change) it can be meaningful.
The philosophical issue
The question of whether an ecosystem change or extinction of species is "...a bad thing" is inherently philosophical and depends on human judgement. The philosophical foundations for conservation biology can be divided into instrumental values and intrinsic/inherent values. Instrumental values can then be subcategorized as services (pollination, water regulation), goods/resources, information (e.g. genetical info to be used in medical research), and esthetic/spiritual values. Intrinsic values refers to a specific value placed on species, ecosystems or evolutionary history due to its uniqueness and it is seen as independent of human needs and wants (although some argue that values independent of humans are impossible). Intrinsic values are also connected to the acknowledgement that organisms have interests and wants themselves (their own 'good'). Different people naturally weight these issues in different ways, and for some the short-term economical gains will weigh heavier. The long-term economic costs are potentially large, but less certain. From a strict biodiversity perspective (i.e. a species counting perspective), the change will certainly be negative, since the change in land-use will decrease diversity and probably lead to more 'trivial' species moving in. From the perspective of the original ecosystem (if it has a say) the change is per definition negative, since it will disappear.
The direct intrumental value of individual species are usually uncertain (irrespectivly of the direct rationales used), so the precautionary principle is often invoked to justify species conservation. Also, numerous examples exist of how aspects of biodiversity are related to human values (some recent examples are Garibaldi et al. 2013 and Gamfeldt et al. 2013), such as production or services, which can also be used to justify both conserving biodiversity or individual species. An example of ecosystem services from tropical environements can be seen in Ricketts (2004). However, sometimes functional diversity is emphasized which focus on preserving functional groups of species instead of 'general' biodiversity (i.e. specific species).

It's worth noting that there are sustainable and biodiverse agricultural systems that have been called "slash and burn" by outsiders. In many parts of the world, these managed successionary stages of "swidden-fallow" or "shifting cultivation" have created dynamic and resilient anthropogenic landscapes.
Hal Conklin's studies on Hanunóo agriculture are the classics in this field. For a good, general introduction try this powerpoint, which also notes that sustainable swiddening is closer in ecological impact to natural tree-fall disturbance, which usually has been taken to promote forest biodiversity (see Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis).
This is not to say that there aren't forests undergoing slash and burn that are being permanently transformed, and in a direction of lower biodiversity and lower human utility (i.e. "bad"/"destruction"), or to say that all traditional agricultural systems are necessarily sustainable; only that under many of the biological and philosophical criteria that fileunderwater raises, there do exist sustainable and biologically rich human-biological systems that have been called 'slash-and-burn'.

True that slash-and-burn can be sustainable, and that lack of natural disturbances (e.g. fire in boreal forests) can also be a problem. However, I would be hesitant to hinge this on the intermediate distrubance hypothesis, since the whole concept has been strongly critizised in a fairly convincing way, see e.g. *Fox. 2013. The intermediate disturbance hypothesis should be abandoned. TREE*.

Yes, it is an interesting topic, expecially since the IDH has been a default fall-back to explain diversity patterns. There are a couple of other papers as well, but they are cited in the review. Look at the blog posts by Fox as well (IDH as a zombie idea) at dynamicecology.wordpress.com e.g. here and here


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Which sources can I use to study botany and horticulture?
I refer with this question to those among you who have a strong background and work in fields like: botanics, horticulture, dendrology, etc.
I would like to start building a solid preparation, both practical and theoretical, in horticulture, with a strong scientific background.
I am a physicist at the moment, but I am trying to lay the basis for a career switch. In September I will attend the RHS courses, but in the meanwhile I would like to start studying something on my own.
Is there any introductory, basic, read that you would suggest? Also, if any of you have in mind a sort of "curriculum" (in terms of subjects, books, etc.) or would like to play with it, this would be of great help! Thanks a lot :)

I had an earlier version of Raven's Biology of Plants for botany/plant physiology classes and liked it, and the current version should be a very good start. Here is a review of the current version of Biology of Plants from Annals of Botany.

I like 'Plant Physiological Ecology". Thijs Pons is one of the authors.

This book could be a good start: Botany by Mauseth. However if you don't have any knowledge about biology I suggest you to get starting with the basics of cellular biology. A good book could be "The cell" by Cooper, you can find it in electronic version.  There are many books about cellular biology but I recommended this because it is complete and detailed without being too long compared with others.


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Did the Swedish cod fishery expand in the past years?
The Marine Stewardship Council states that the cod fishery in the Eastern Baltic sea recovered well and issued it's MSC certificate to the Swedish cod fishery in 2011 for that region. (MSC 2011)
Data downloaded from EUROSTAT shows that Portugal, a main importer of codfish and -products, imported less and less from Norway (besides Iceland and UK the main supplier) (FAO 2006); dropping from around 20,000 tons (2001) to < 1,000 tons (2011) and more and more from Sweden; < 5,000 tons until 2003 versus > 30,000 in 2010 and 2011.
This trade data does not necessarily show the origin of a product but rather the country that is selling the fish. I wonder if either the Swedish cod fishery expanded in the past few (~ five) years; Portugal changed it's main supplier from Norway to Sweden for whatever reason; or Sweden buys cod from Norway and distributes it.
Depending on this the answer may not be so closely related to biology but I hope to get an idea here.

A "fisheries" tag would be useful in my opinion.

[ichthyology]+[ethnobiology]="fisheries", more or less.

If by 'fishery' you mean "amount of fish caught", the answer is a qualified no. Sweden's catch has been stable or perhaps slightly increasing since a low in 2005, but the catch is still much lower than a decade ago (Statistics Sweden). This is presumably due in large part to the quotas set on Total Allowable Catch for various sea regions.
If by 'fishery' you mean "amount of fish in the sea", the answer is a qualified yes. Most Swedish cod catch (>90%) comes from the Baltic, where stocks have been recovering since 2006 after steep declines in the eighties (ICES full report and executive summary for Eastern Baltic). Presumably, this recovery is also due in large part to the quotas set on Total Allowable Catch, i.e. to the reduction in cod mortality due to fishing.

Sweden's cod catch for all regions, and the ICES estimated Spawning Stock Biomass of cod in the Eastern Baltic. Both are in thousands of metric tons, but note that the scales differ by a factor of ten)

No idea how this is affecting import/export, although Statistics Sweden might have that data. One biology related possibility is that Eastern Baltic stocks (presumably accessed more by Sweden) are doing better than North Sea stocks (presumably accessed more by Norway), but that's just a guess, you'd have to check the data.

Thank you. I spoke to a large codfish producer in Portugal who stated that their cod still mainly originates from Norway (> 80%), i.e. is caught in Norwegian waters, with no relevant share of the Swedish cod fishery. I assume that the considered trade data is inconsistent and includes more complex trade relationships that may be hard to entangle.


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A source for leaf architecture of different plant species/genus?
I'm currently working on extracting some features of the leaf architecture based on their images (like L:W ratio, laminar shape, ...). I use the Manual of Leaf Architecture as the reference. It is really great in mathematically describing the features and how to calculate them.
But, the problem is I am not able to find a source (a book, or a data set) to have this architecture of different leaves (plants). For example, whether the Acer genus has leaves with a certain (or a range of) L:W ratio or the laminar shape for this species is mainly ovate,....
Does anybody know any source of this kind?

I don't know of a ready-made database that's exactly what you're looking for. However, if you wanted to make your own, there's a massive number of taxonomically determined (that is, identified to species) pictures of plant leaves online in the forms of digitized herbaria. With a bit of coding, or a lot of undergrad labor, you could harvest a massive data set. Alternatively, if there's just one species you're looking for, you could do it individually / by hand.

@Oreotrephes, thanks for the comment. Currently, I am using the ImageCLEF data set for my work and it's comprehensive with all the leaves data accompanied (even location). But I was looking for a data set with more "quantitive features".

Quantitative descriptions of leaf shape used as diagnostics are hard to come by. There are numerous qualitative descriptions (lyrate, cordate, acicular, etc.), and I think this fits within the example you give that "the laminar shape for this species is mainly ovate." But actual quantitative ranges as you mention (e.g., that the L:W ratio of Acer lies within a certain range) are much more difficult to come by. Also, there are ways of quantifying leaves using all the shape variance present in their outlines, and I describe some of these methods below. By using quantitative methods such as these, you can avoid the trap of a subjective criteria that arbitrarily distinguishes leaf morphs by a particular feature. Plus, you won't be biased by using a particular shape attribute, as you will be measuring the entirety of shape. Use of these various methods though depends on the species you are studying.
Oreotrephes I think is on track saying that, if possible, you should build your own diagnostic criteria for whatever system you are working in. You mentioned certain "ranges" that can diagnose a species ... this is a critical question. Measuring intra-genotype/individual variance in shape for your system is critical. Which leaf to measure for a species? ... i.e., shoot position, developmental age of the leaf, if working with compound leaves, the placement of the leaflet along the proximal distal axis of the leaf, what about heteroblasty (changes in leaf form at different nodes), leaves from lateral vs. main branches, environmental effects on leaves (e.g. sun vs. shade leaves)?
For tomato, I measure shape quantitatively using Elliptical Fourier Descriptors, which reduces the shape of an object to a series approximation and explains variance with a Principal Component Analysis. I use the resulting Principal Component values of leaves as a trait and explain shape quantitatively that way. A very useful program to perform Elliptical Fourier Descriptors is described in Iwata & Ukai 2002 and can be downloaded here. In Chitwood et al 2012, I describe how to perform shape analysis on tomato leaves, separating components of shape based on genotype (e.g., by species), by position in the leaf series (heteroblasty), the ontogentic age of the leaf, and placement of leaflets along the proximal-distal axis.
Other easy ways to measure shape: Circularity, solidity, L:W ratio (or aspect ratio) as you mentioned. All very easy to measure in ImageJ!
You mentioned Acer leaves, which piqued my interest because I study differences in the shape of grape leaves. But like grape, many Acer leaves are palmately lobed. If every one of your samples has certain features (e.g. 5 lobes and 5 sinuses as in Acer, including petiolar sinus) then you can perform a landmark analysis using a Generalized Procrustes Analysis (The "Shapes" package in R is useful for this analysis).
Using global methods to describe shape, that is, methods to quantify the totality of shape variance, are critical to distinguish leaves. It may very well be that two leaves are so similar from different species that they are not statistically separable by shape! Be creative in the ways you measure shape, and if need be, create your own system for doing so!

 Chitwood DHD, Headland LRL, Kumar RR, Peng JJ, Maloof JNJ, Sinha NRN. 2012. The developmental trajectory of leaflet morphology in wild tomato species. Annu Rev Plant Physiol 158: 1230–1240.
 Iwata H, Ukai Y. 2002. SHAPE: a computer program package for quantitative evaluation of biological shapes based on elliptic Fourier descriptors. Journal of Heredity 93: 384–385.

Thanks for your answer and resources. About qualitative description, do you know of a good not-so-techincal source? That would help. And, about using descriptors like Elliptic FD, my work is more of an expert-system approach, so I try to use the features familiar with the botanists. That's why I'm trying to use the quantitative features that lead to describing the leaf's shape in words (L:W >10 => 'linear' leaf).

For qualitative features, you could try essentially any flora. Most of these will have descriptions like this one in Flora of China

Acer ....
  Leaves mostly simple and palmately lobed or at least palmately veined, in a few species pinnately veined and entire or toothed, or pinnately or palmately 3-5-foliolate.

The problem with using florae is that a) they're limited in geographical scope and b) they're  usually just blocks of text (not databased or usually even XML tagged). However, a big flora like FoC will have plenty of genera for you to work with, and it should be easy to manually look up the information you want for a few genera, and possible for you to automate the information retrieval with online florae.
Florae can be a pain to use for non-botanists, but I think the FoC site is pretty explanatory – you can navigate from the family list to any family, and then down at the bottom will be a link called "list of lower taxa" (or just a list, if it's a small family) where you'll seelinks to each of the genera in the family. Then you'll see the genus description page, for instance, for Acer as quoted above.