text:
Coracoid vs. Coronoid - Etymology/Naming Choice?
The word coracoid (e.g., coracoid process of scapula) literally means "resembling a crow/raven" or "of the form of a crow/raven." In this case, I assume, resembling the hooked characteristic of a corvid's beak.

Etymology: korax ("raven",Greek) + -oid (from Greek -oeidēs meaning "form").

However, the word coronoid (e.g., coronoid process of the ulna or of the mandible) also refers to a hooked projection of bone. Its etymology, however, is more straightforward:

Etymology: korōnē ("hooked", Greek) + -oid (from Greek -oeidēs meaning "form").

My question: Why the distinction?
 - Why is one termed the "coracoid" while the other structures are referred to as "coronoid"?

Since the coracoid process looks no more like an actual corvid's beak than the other structures, it seems that they should have all been referred to as "coranoid".

I get that we've just kept things the way they originally were b/c we like to do that in biology, but what was the original reason for the naming of the  coracoid to break from the trend?

It appears that both naming conventions originate with Galen, the Greek physician, almost 2000 years ago (for example, see: Singer, 1952).
Although the precise motivations behind the naming conventions aren't entirely clear, it seems that the origin of the coracoid naming convention is quite simple: Galen thought it looked specifically like a raven's beak, as you state, rather than the beak of some other bird.
Fortuine (2000) seems to suggest that the origins for both words originally applied to beaks of different birds, which implies that Galen may have thought some bone structures looked like beaks of one bird, and other bone structures looked like the beaks of another bird, so he used the corresponding terms of description. Specifically, "korōnē" may have referred to a crow or cormorant (I feel like the cormorant link makes more sense, though both are supported by Arnott (2007) - it may not be possible to know how the distinction was applied from surviving texts), as well as referring to a hooked shape. The same source mentions several other bird-derived terms, including the coccyx resembling the beak of a cuckoo and "rostrum" used more generally for beak-like structures.
Today, coronoid and coracoid may sound similar enough to be easily confused by students of medicine. However, giving these different bones distinct names does allow for some useful shorthand, such that one need not refer to the "coronoid of the scapula": I would assume, though I'm not sure if it is possible to find a good reference on this, that this is the motivation to keep things as-is, besides of course the history.
References

Arnott, W. G. (2007). Birds in the Ancient World from A to Z. Routledge, New York.
Duckworth, W. L. H., & Lyons, M. C. (2010). Galen on anatomical procedures: the later books. Cambridge University Press.
Fortuine, R. (2000). The words of medicine: sources, meanings, and delights. Charles C Thomas Publisher.
Singer, C. (1952). Galen's elementary course on bones.

I emphasize to my anatomy students the "coraCoid of the sCapula" and that the coracoid and coranoid are in "ABC order" from proximal to distal along the upper limb. (Of course, "coraNoid of the maNdible" or "of the ulNa" works, too).


text:
Can a dividing cell that skipped DNA replication become cancerous?
Let's assume that a cell fails to replicate its DNA during the S Phase of the cell cycle. Let's also assume that the appropriate CDKs are inactive (perhaps due to mutation or lack of cyclin proteins etc.) and the G2-M checkpoint fails.
2 questions:

Will the Spindle Checkpoint fail due to not having duplicated DNA, or can mitosis complete and form aneuploid daughter cells?

More to the point, if mitosis can complete after a cell fails to replicate its DNA (irrespective of the answer to question 1), can the resulting cell (if viable) lead to a neoplasm or cancer?

My thought is no because the odds of having subsequent generations of cells experience similar losses of DNA via mitosis of un-replicated cells would eventually lead to mostly non-viable next-generation cells and the "uncontrolled" division would cease.

Though, admittedly, this assumption is dependent on the assumption that the original cell has a heritable issue that "disables" the appropriate checkpoints (vs some random fluke event) allowing the uncontrolled cell line to continue duplicating with un-replicated genomes.

I'm also not sure how ultrafine anaphase bridges (see Moreno et al. 2016) can be informative for this question.

I found a paper (Deshpande et al. 2005) that discusses cyclins and cdks in development and cancer, but their paper focuses on the transition from G1 to the S phase and stops short of discussing mitosis of un-replicated cells

Note: this might sound like a homework question, but I'M the one writing the assignment! In fact, it's an exam, and I'm trying to cover my bases for the answers I provide for a different cancer-related question to ensure there are not multiple correct answers.

Question 1

Will the Spindle Checkpoint fail due to not having duplicated DNA, or
can mitosis complete and form aneuploid daughter cells?

Yes it is possible. Meiosis 2 essentially does not involve DNA replication.
Perhaps you are only talking about mitotic divisions. I have found two reports that say that cells can replicate without DNA replication.

Chan et al. (2022) show that zebrafish skin (superficial epithelial) cells can continue to "split" without DNA replication. This process apparently helps in rapid skin expansion.

Using time-lapse imaging, we found that many SECs readily divide on
the animal body surface; during a specific developmental window, a
single SEC can produce a maximum of four progeny cells over its
lifetime on the surface of the animal. Remarkably, EdU assays, DNA
staining and hydroxyurea treatment showed that these terminally
differentiated skin cells continue splitting despite an absence of DNA
replication, causing up to 50% of SECs to exhibit reduced genome size.

A preprint by Ganier et al. (2020; still unpublished) reports a study on a triploid mouse embryonic fibroblast cell line (3T3). They show that some daughter cells can receive 1N copy.

The fraction of unlicensed cells (24%) that divided produced two
daughter cells, despite the complete absence of DNA replication. If
the unlicensed genomes were equally distributed in the two daughter
cells, these cells should have 1C DNA content. In agreement, flow
cytometry analyses always highlighted a distinct population of
ΔDboxGeminin-expressing cells with 1C DNA content that appeared after
the first cell cycle (Figures 1A and 4A)

They say that these cells can also re-enter mitosis.

We removed DOX 24 hours after induction to stop ΔDboxGeminin induction
(T1, Figure 4F; control cells shown in Supplementary Figure 9) and
transfected these cells with a CDT1-encoding plasmid (or empty vector;
control) to counteract the effect of the remaining ΔDboxGeminin. 24h
after CDT1 transfection (T2), 15.3% of 1C cells were BrdU-positive
(Figure 4F, BrdU 24h, right panels) compared with 4.9% of 1C cells
transfected with empty vector.

Question 2

if mitosis can complete after a cell fails to replicate its DNA
(irrespective of the answer to question 1), can the resulting cell (if
viable) lead to a neoplasm or cancer?

If the "asynthetic fission" occurs naturally in zebrafish, it may not be predominantly neoplastic. I think that a reduced genome would make the cells unable to re-replicate.
However, the 1N 3T3 cells can re-enter mitosis and they may undergo some cancerous transformation. This cell line is non-cancerous but is laboratory-generated/propagated. So we don't know about what happens in vivo. The authors did not check if the 1N cells that have re-entered mitosis, have cancer driver mutations in their genome.
Aneuploidy is indeed associated with cancers. Several cancer cells are aneuploid. Aneuploidy can result due to loss of stringency of cell cycle checkpoints (common in cancer cells). Shih et al. (2023) show that aneuploidy can be a driver of tumorigenesis. Briefly, they show that somatic copy number alterations (SCNA) of entire chromosomal arms, can increase the fitness of cancer cells. These SCNAs include both expansions and deletions, and need not contain any oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes. For example,

Chromosome arm 8p is frequently deleted across cancer types, but
canonical tumour suppressors have not been detected on 8p
(refs. 16,26). We observed less cell death by caspase activity
(P = 0.02) and flow cytometry (P = 0.004) in cells with engineered 8p
deletion (Extended Data Fig. 6c,d and Supplementary Fig. 2). Of the
three 8p del-pos peaks (Fig. 2d), the smallest peak, in 8p12,
contained two protein-coding genes, WRN and NRG1.

This doesn't fully answer your question, I believe. So I end my answer with a few guesses.
It is quite likely that effect of aneuploidies on cancer are context dependent (Ben-David and Amon, 2019). My gross expectation would be that loss of an entire chromosome should reduce cell fitness (loss of several genes). Gene essentiality would depend on cell type. It is possible that if essential genes are translocated from a chromosome to another, then the former can be dispensed. Cancer cells not only have aneuploidies but also frequent chromosomal rearrangements.
If one were to artificially stimulate cell division without replication, and that these cells don't have a perfect asymmetric division (2N, 0N), then aneuploidies can result: asymmetric segregation (xN, [2-x]N) followed by diploidization (common in haploid cell lines). This can result in cancer.
However, it remains to be proven that an aneuploidy can indeed result in cancer.

Perhaps this answer comes too late to be helpful for your assignment.

source: Stack Exchange

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text:
Why do some grasshoppers have a black exoskeleton?
What species of grasshoppers have black exoskeletons? Is there a scientific difference in species between field crickets and grasshoppers?

where have you looked for this answer so far? have you done any work?

Could you clarify the question? Right now it's very vague. Are you asking: "what species of grasshoppers are black?" If so, you should provide your location, size of the insect you're interested in, and preferably a picture of the grasshopper. Without these, your question is far too broad and likely will be closed.

Further, we typically ask that you perform (and demonstrate) some type of effort to answer your question on your own. For more details, please see How to ask a good question on the help page

So is your question about identifying species or wondering why evolution has caused some grasshoppers (or field crickets) to be black in color?

Field crickets are rather distinct from grasshoppers. Although both groups are in the Order Orthoptera, grasshoppers are insects of the suborder Caelifera and field crickets are in the family Gryllidae of the suborder Ensifera.
For a discussion on insect coloraiton, see here.
If you'd like a specific species ID, please provide more information as requested in the comments.
Generally, field crickets are black, red or brown in color.

However, some species of grasshoppers are likewise black:

For example: Romalea species such as R. microptera and dark nymphs and morphs of R. guttata

Finally, here is a simple checklist of some typical differences between grasshoppers and crickets.

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text:
What is "enzymatic activity"?
I should be grateful if anyone would send me a link to an article or an encyclopedia/handbook contaning an explanation of the concept of enzymatic activity. Surprisingly, I did not manage to find anything else but a brief definition.

Are you asking how enzymes work in general (which is a broad question, and covered in any basic biochem text), or are you wondering how to precisely define and measure "activity"?

I'm not sure why people have voted this off-topic. As far as I can see the poster is unclear about the term activity, which for someone coming from a more physical science (like chemistry) — as I did myself — can appear a little puzzling. My own answer takes a much broader look at the meaning of enzyme activity in a biological context than the quantitative definitions provided by some, and seems to me on-topic. Perhaps the poster could clarify his question.

An Introduction to Enzymes (pdf) can be found here.

Excerpted from a very popular Worthington publication which was
  originally published in 1972 as the Manual of Clinical Enzyme Measurements. While some of the presentation may seem somewhat dated, the basic concepts are still helpful for researchers who must use enzymes but who have little background in enzymology.

Source: Worthington Biochemical Corporation.
The quantity or concentration of an enzyme can be expressed in terms of activity in enzyme units. See Wikipedia:

Enzyme activity = moles of substrate converted per unit time = rate × reaction volume. Enzyme activity is a measure of the quantity of active enzyme present and is thus dependent on conditions, which should be specified. The SI unit is the katal, 1 katal = 1 mol s−1, but this is an excessively large unit. A more practical and commonly used value is enzyme unit (U) = 1 μmol min−1. 1 U corresponds to 16.67 nanokatals.

Here are some additional useful, simple videos explaining enzyme activity:

How Enzymes Work
Explain factors affecting enzyme activity

The entry for Enzymes in Wikipedia contains 28 instances of the word ‘activity’. I can only assume, therefore, that it is the fact that this term is not explicitly defined that is the problem — one for which a novice to the field need make no apology. I shall answer it in elementary — but not self-evident — terms.
Enzymes are biological catalysts, so catalysis is their fundamental property or quality. In this context my definition is:

Enzyme activity is the manifestation of the catalytic ability of an enzyme

My use of the word ‘manifestation’ is deliberate and important: the essence of enzyme activity is the action or functioning of the enzyme, because this is the way that we are aware of its presence and, hence, how we draw quantitative or qualitative conclusions about its behaviour or function.
Detection of enzyme activity
Enzyme activity is detected by observing a reaction which it catalyses, i.e. by observing — and usually measuring — the conversion of  some chemical reactant (termed the substrate of the enzyme) to a product. This allows certain questions to be answered:
1. Is the enzyme present or not,  or, if present, is it able to manifest its potential?
The most basic question that measurement of enzyme activity is used to answer is whether or not there is enzyme present, e.g. in a tissue. In fact, the absence of enzyme activity can have other interpretations besides the absence of enzyme protein: the enzyme could be present but denatured or poisoned, or it could be present in a inactive form because of the absence of some secondary agent (cofactor, regulatory molecule) required for it to function.
2. How much enzyme is there?
In experimental work where one wishes to compare amounts of an enzyme in different tissues, monitor its purification from other proteins, or study the effects of agents and conditions upon its functioning, one needs not just to detect it (e.g. by observing that a coloured substance is formed) but to measure how much enzyme or functioning enzyme there is. To quantify enzyme activity we measure the amount of substrate converted to product in a given time under suitable conditions.
Explanation of the units used and the suitable conditions are available in standard texts and on the web. My own self-teaching material on this topic can be found  found here.
3. What is the nature of the reaction  catalysed or is there more than one enzyme there?
These are other questions that measurement of the activity of an enzyme or impure preparation can answer. What is important here is what precise reaction is being catalysed. If an enzyme can catalyse the phosphorylation of D-glucose to glucose 6-phosphate, can it also catalyse the phosphorylation of L-glucose — i.e. is it specific for one rotamer? If the preparation can also phosphorylate fructose (for example), are there actually two different enzymes present in the preparation? If it phosphorylates some other sugar 50 times better than glucose, perhaps its function within the cell is different from that previously assumed.
Activity as a general concept in science and biology
The measurement of activity rather than quantity is not restricted to enzymes. One is also concerned with the activity of hormones, drugs, neurotransmitters etc. (e.g. to determine what tissues they affect and what their effects are). And more generally in science, we deduce the existence of things by their ability to do something — gravity is an example from physics.

@tomd — I think this refers to another answer than mine which is totally non-quantative.

I have revised my answer considerably, because the questioner seems to me to be asking about the concept of enzyme activity — not how to assay enzymes and what their units are and definitely not what their kinetic constants are. (If he meant that he has not expressed himself very well.) So I have extended my answer to address the question of enzyme activity more generally than with respect to quantitation, and so that it gives a broader explanation of why measurement of enzyme activity is important. Coming from chemistry myself, I think this may help others.

Enzyme activity refers to the dynamic process of an enzyme catalyzing a reaction and is a measure of the quantity of catalytically competent enzyme present in a preparation.
We measure enzyme activity by making a trial of the enzyme reaction, that is we assay the enzyme. The trial, or assay, is done first and foremost under conditions where the enzyme works.  The pH, for example, may be critically important, as may the presence or absence of inhibitors or activators. In addition, the assay is conducted under conditions where the experimenter can directly or indirectly detect the catalytic transformation, perhaps by monitoring the production of a product or the consumption of a substrate.
For example, if I want to measure the activity of a dehydrogenase, I could measure the decrease in absorbance at 340nm, where NADH but not NAD(+) absorbs strongly. In a spectrophotometer, this may be done continuously with time and is an example of a continuous assay.
However, there may be no convenient change in absorbance but we might have a radioactive substrate. In this case we might conduct our trial under conditions where we would expect the enzyme to work for, say, 30 min, stop the reaction (by denaturing the enzyme with acid, for example) and isolate a radioactive product.  This would be an example of a discontinuous assay.
In both cases we are observing a change due to the enzyme catalyzing a specific reaction, that is we are measuring enzyme activity.
We now come to an important distinction.  An enzyme assay is a measure of catalytic activity, which may or may not be related to the total amount of enzyme protein present.  Consider a genetic disease that results in a particular enzyme activity being totally absent from an organ. We assay a liver sample for lactate dehydrogenase, for example, and find none present (to take a trivial example). This could mean that the  enzyme is not being produced: there is no enzyme there.  But is also could mean that the enzyme is present but is being produced in an inactive state.  Maybe the 'normal' enzyme has an essential tyrosine at the active site, but a genetic mutation has changed this to a phenylalanine in the case under study.
If we have an antibody directed against the enzyme under study, we could develop an enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA) which will (if it is any good) specifically measure the total amount of protein present whether active or not, even in a crude liver extract. (A Western blot, of course, might also detect the presence of inactive protein). That is, an enzyme assay gives an estimate of the amount of enzyme present based on enzyme activity, whereas an ELISA gives an estimate of the total amount of enzyme protein present.
Enzyme activity is usually reported in terms of amount of substrate or product transformed per minute or per second: in micromoles/min, for example.  It is also usual to measure the total amount of protein present and report the enzyme activity in terms of micromoles/min per milligram of (total) protein.  This is the specific activity and allows for ease of comparison. Almost invariably, the 'per milligram' part of a specific activity measurement refers to the total amount of protein present (measured with the Lowry protein assay or the like).
(If, for example, Lab A reports that 20 microlitres of their liver extract has a-dehydrogenase activity of 5 micromoles/min and Lab B reports that 20 microlitres of their liver extract has a-dehydrogenase activity of 50 micromoles/min, these measurements may well be identical when compared on a protein basis (micromol/min per mg) and that the only difference is that liver A was extracted in 100 volumes of buffer but that liver B was extracted in 10 volumes of buffer).
Units of enzyme activity invariably refer to specific assay conditions, and this may be a very important consideration when designing an experiment. In addition, enzyme are labile and the activity may decrease with time (on prolonged storage for example).  If, for example, a protocol requires you to add 10mg of of an enzyme preparation with a specific activity of 100 Units/mg (100 micromoles/min per mg), but freezing the enzyme preparation has resulted in denaturation, you are adding 10mg of enzyme protein but no enzyme activity. This may also be important.
Finally, a great reference:
Principles of enzyme assay and kinetic studies by K. F. Tipton in Enzyme Assays: A practical approach

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text:
Is some of the energy of food lost during digestion?
I know that chemical energy of food is converted to heat energy to be used by the body in many metabolic reactions. Specifically, I know that the breaking down of bonds is what releases energy.
Does that mean that some of the energy of food is lost during digestion as enzymes breakdown large food molecules into smaller soluble ones? Or is it the common concept of losing energy during digestion because not all the food is absorbed and some are egested?

How do you know that energy is required for digesting food? Enzymes are biocatalysts i.e. they just enhance the speed of digestion of food. Without enzymes too, all your food will get digested, but will take more time.

THere is plenty of overhead cost from digesting food. It takes energy grind up that food into small bit so that it can be digested and absorbed. To move food bolus through the digestion system via pertaltic contractions. And it takes energy to make those enzymes. And it take energy to maintain the immune system to control any parasites that came with said food. It also takes energy to breakdown anti-metabolites (compounds that prevent digestion and absorption) that come with most living tissue.

virtually all of the food is digested, most of your poop (that isn't water) is actually dead gut bacteria, chemically resistant fibrous material makes up most of the rest.

@another'Homosapien' Enzymes aren't free, and they aren't the only contribution to digestion.

@bryankrause certainly they are not free, but they are not made from energy lost from digestion (if any) and I don't think any of such contributions is paid up through that energy (if any) either. My point was that though body spends energy on digestion, yet that energy does not come from the food being digested.

Good question. But it is not true that heat energy is used by the body to drive other reactions. Heat is the portion of energy that is lost.

Typically, catabolic reactions such as the hydrolysis of food stuffs into their monomers is an exothermic process. This includes conversion of proteins into amino aids, starchs into monosaccharides and fats into fatty acids plus glycerol. As an example, hydrolysis of a peptide bond linking the amino acids in a protein liberates 8-16 kJ/mol of energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peptide_bond
So, that means a certain amount of the energy in food is liberated in the gut. But this is very minimal compared to the amount yet to be liberated, and harvested, as the many other bonds in the monomers are further broken down during cellular respiration.
A bit of research from a few different sites suggests the gut temperature is not meaningfully higher that the core body temperature measured in, say, the anus or vagina. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_temperature  Any heat liberated from digestion in the gut must be slow enough to be absorbed into the bulk of the body without accumulating in the gut.

Also, this release of some heat is what makes digestion spontaneous, otherwise (if $\Delta$G is 0 too) enzymes would require ATP for digestion to provide activation energy to the molecules. Anyways, nice answer, +1!


text:
Text or source (preferably free) for learning developmental biology
I might have to take a graduate level course in developmental biology, of which I have never taken a course in before. The course website lists no recommended texts. Therefore, I assume we will be doing a more independent study, and I would want to have a book or source to better facilitate that study.
Any recommendation, free or not free, is welcome.

Gilbert's Developmental Biology is an excellent text. It is in the 11th edition, though the 6th edition is available free on NCBI bookshelf.

I ended up buying the 9th edition since I felt the 6th was too old, and I could not figure out how to access a .pdf form of the 6th. Thanks :D

@RoSiv Many free text books on NCBI are only accessible by searching. You can get into whole chapters/sections if you just search for the title. Of course, the actual book is much more user friendly; I hope you enjoy it.

For a very quick and free introduction, you can have a look at Khan Academy > Developmental Biology.
Of course, before studying developmental biology, you will need basis in molecular biology and molecular genetics.

Yea I kind of found myself thrown into the whole grad school life. Just hoping to knuckle through.


text:
How to search NCBI in bulk for a list of accession numbers?
I have a large ( >100 ) list of accession numbers I want to look up and match to searches in NCBI (nucleotide); mainly for getting a tentative organism to match to the accession number.
ex:
KJ841938.1 would match to  Setoptus koraiensis
...
FJ911852.1 would match to  Uncultured eukaryote
...

I googled for tools, and I found this site. However, it is not what I really want since it doesn't list my queries in the same order as my list, which means I cannot match.
I also attempted to write a script in biopython using Entrez E-tools, but was unsuccessful due to a lack of coding skill.
Does anyone have any way I can go about this?
EDIT:
Via this tutorial,
I attempted to use this code sample:
from Bio import Entrez
Entrez.email = "Your.Name.Here@example.org"
handle = Entrez.efetch(db="nucleotide", id="AY851612", rettype="gb", retmode="text")
print(handle.readline().strip())
# expected output : LOCUS       AY851612                 892 bp    DNA     linear   PLN 10-APR-2007
handle.close()

But modified to take any list instead of the variable id, as below:
import Bio
print (Bio.__version__)
from Bio import Entrez
import time

Entrez.email = "Your.Name.Here@example.org"
id_list = ["KJ841938.1", "FJ911852.1"] # real list is about 500 elements

x = 0
while  x < len(id_list):
    handle = Entrez.efetch(db="nucleotide", id=id_list[x], rettype= "uilist", retmode="text")
    #print(handle.readline().strip())
    print(handle.readline())
    handle.close()
    x = x + 1

Output is:
1.69
673539906

283462561

However, I do not believe I am using the right "rettype" parameter in the .efetch function as I keep on getting GI numbers, where as I was hoping to get something like a species name directly. Unless I can then search with these GI numbers in batch with more code or a tool to produce a ordered list?

Can you post the BioPython code that you have tried and that didn't work? What specific error did you got? Have you modified the sample code from the tutorial?

Also, Accession number KJ841938.1 matches Setoptus koraiensis, not Gaeolaelaps aculeifer. So please update your question with correct sample input and expected results.

@BioGeek        I didnt know about that specific tutorial. I will try the example under "efetch" and see if it works. Thanks.

In your first attempt, when you use handle.readline(), you get only the first line from the genbank-formatted record. To get a list of all lines, you could use handle.readlines(). You might have gotten somewhere by this approach, but it appears that Biopython provides a way to parse the results more conveniently (see my answer).

After some trial and error in an interactive python shell and some documentation checking, I found that the relevant information is present in the genbank-formatted output (rettype="gb"), and this can be parsed using Entrez.read provided it is returned in "xml" mode (retmode="xml").
The following code that seems to work:
#!/usr/bin/env python3

from Bio import Entrez

Entrez.email = "Your.Name.Here@example.org"
id_list = ["KJ841938.1", "FJ911852.1"] # real list is about 500 elements

for accession in id_list:
    handle = Entrez.efetch(
        db="nucleotide", id=accession, rettype="gb", retmode="xml")
    gb_record = Entrez.read(handle)
    handle.close()
    organism = gb_record[0]['GBSeq_organism']
    print("{}\t{}".format(accession, organism))

(You don't need a while loop here, by the way: python has the more convenient forsyntax to loop over the elements of a list.)
Output:
KJ841938.1  Setoptus koraiensis
FJ911852.1  Gaeolaelaps aculeifer

If you don't want to bother with BioPython, you can use Entrez Direct for this as follows:
$ cat temp.txt
KJ841938.1
FJ911852.1
$ epost -db nuccore -input temp.txt \
    | esummary \
    | xtract -pattern DocumentSummary -element AccessionVersion,Organism
KJ841938.1  Setoptus koraiensis
FJ911852.1  Gaeolaelaps aculeifer

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text:
Identify this large (swamp) fly?
Can anyone identify this large fly?
I encountered it in Okefenokee Swamp (Georgia, U.S.A.) on May 1, 2015.
Weather: 53-78°F (avg. 66°F), avg humidity = 60, dew point = 47°F.
The fly was about the size of an adult thumb (more accurately approx. 5cm long and 2cm wide) -- this fly was HUGE! It was fairly docile and allowed me to take a good close-up or 2.

Tabanus nigrovittatus as my initial guess. "Greenhead horse fly."

Source
This is probably the biggest give-away for the genus Tabanus (namely the features of the veins at the wing tip, denoted R4 and R5, versus other Diptera orders), still searching out a good identification key to solidify the ID. Furthermore, also known as the salt marsh greenhead, a swamp is a good candidate to find these (1).
So what's particular is entomologists have gone through and collected many specimens, and data about their wing venation, and based on the Comstock-Needham system, you can pin presence/absence of major veins, and branching of said veins to specific types on insects. In this case, R refers to the Radius or 3rd longitudinal vein, and the number refers part of the branching that reaches the margin of the wing. Pg 156 here helps us ID Tabanus vs other orders.
Problematic with identifying these spp. is you need to get a good look at the sternites on the under side as well, if you look at how they ID Tabanus sudeticus here, but the photos tend to match nicely with those of T. nigrovittatus you can widely find.

You should add a bit on why you think this a good fit (traits etc), but my first impression was also Tabanus sp. As the moment, this is more of a comment than a full answer. FYI it was caught by the low-quality review queue "because of its length and content".

Believe it or not it's really hard to find a good identification key for Tabanus species!

@Kendall could you comment what about the R4 & R5 wing features (i.e., what is unique about these features as compared to other genera's wings) that demonstrate that this is a Tabanus species?

@theforestecologist I've done so in an edit to my post, let me know how I can better clarify this!

@Kendall Great!! The Comstock-Needham system is very fascinating (and fairly easy to learn)! I don't get the nomenclature for the R2+3 vein though... Also, the vein nomenclature in the image you reference on p156 of the Hamilton paper does not match the nomenclature of the image you've presented here. Could you also provide the link to the image you included and perhaps a comment on the discrepancy. Finally, could you present a citation or key indicating the importance of sternites (and other characteristics). Thanks!!

@theforestecologist Most of the nomenclature discrepancy I suspect is  from the fact the article by Hamilton is trying to do something different. I can't quote you on when the distinction was made, but R2+3 means that the vein R2 and the vein R3 coalesce through their extent in a single vein. Here's your image source http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/6270326#page/328/mode/1up .. for more on the nomenclature, here

It's  my thought while researching this that Tabanus is rather poorly defined!

@Kendall: your answer and subsequent comments have been very helpful (and interesting!).  However after having examined multiple photos of T. nigrovittatus and both photos /memory of the fly I saw, I Just am not convinced that the species is accurate. The wing veins do seem to support Tabanus. I will leave the question open (no accepted answer) to see if someone can provide additional expertise

@theforestecologist Unfortunately im not a specialist (just good at getting what I need out of the literature quickly). I did try quite hard to find an identification/dichotomous key, and outside of wing venation, the documentation is really scarce and photos simply don't help on average. Another good candidate: T. bovinus. The problem is distribution; the well-studied Tabanus spp. are often endemic to Europe/associated areas. "Salt-marsh greenhead" as T. nigrovittatus is often called fits the distribution, but you could viably contact an actual entomologist at a uni. department!

FYI (since this is the most relevant place I can think to place this cool find): here is a super cool website to look graphically at fly anatomical parts!! "Tha Anatomical Atlas of Flies"


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What would happen if you "rewired" your eyes with your nose?
The nose sends sensory input through transduction of chemicals in the air via the olfactory nerves/tracts to the primary olfactory cortex.
The eyes send sensory input through transduction of light via the optic nerve/tract to the visual cortex of the occipital lobe of the brain.
Although both senses receive different stimuli, they (like all of our senses) convert external stimuli to a nerve signal. Given that, it seems possible that one could "rewire" the brain so that sensory organs sent sensory signals to different parts of the brain.

For example, it seems possible that we could splice olfactory tracts to the optic chiasm to send signals to the visual cortex.

My question: If we rewired the cranial nerves so that our nose was connected to our visual cortex, what would we see??

(or what would happen if we rewired any of our major senses with a different processing center of the brain?)

@ theforestecologist Not an olfactory route but this is sending signals via tongue.

"Rewiring" the brain isn't quite that simple: simply splicing a nerve to another doesn't necessarily mean the axons of that nerve will then grow into area. I am unaware of any studies that cross these specific pathways but as I am writing this answer I see you have already updated your question to ask about other modalities! So, with that in mind...
Crossing Auditory and Visual Pathways
Some related experiments have been done with other modalities: the ones I am aware of involve the auditory and visual systems. Both auditory and visual information traveling to cortex mostly comes through two nuclei in the thalamus: the medial geniculate nucleus, MGN, for auditory information, and the lateral geniculate nucleus, LGN, for visual information.
These thalamic nuclei are adjacent to each other. In Angelucci et al 1998 and Sharma et al 2000, lesions were made to cause retinal projections to innervate the part of thalamus that usually processes auditory information (medial geniculate nucleus, MGN). (note: there are also a bunch of older experiments in rodents and ferrets besides these, I'm not going to do a comprehensive review of the literature here but you can find many relevant citations within those other papers).
Briefly, the technique is to damage both the LGN and the pathways that normally project to MGN. The result is that the retinal axons, which normally synapse in the LGN, will instead path to the MGN. Note that it is important to do this very early in development, such experiments would not work in an adult brain.
The result, in the papers I cited earlier, is that the part of cortex that normally responds to auditory information begins to respond to visual information, and develops a hallmark of visual cortical response properties: selectivity to the orientation of presented stimuli. Therefore, it seems like if you give an auditory cortical area visual information, it doesn't "try to process it as sound" but rather processes it just like the visual cortex would.
Effects on perception
It is hard to ask the ferrets what their actual perceptions are, but the best guess is that perceptions are built by what we put into the system: there is no way for an area that receives anything but visual input to interpret that information as anything other than visual input. There is no context to interpret it any other way. Cortex develops and responds based on the information it is given. In the animals in these experiments, their auditory systems have been lesioned so there is really no way they could interpret the stimuli they "see" as "sounding like" something.
Similarly, if you send olfactory information to visual cortex, you will process smells in visual cortex. Olfactory processing is a bit different than the other modalities, so depending on where you took this information from things may not develop properly, but that gets into a lot of speculation that is beyond this .SE site.
Crossmodal plasticity in blind individuals
There are some experiments in humans that also look at this type of cortical plasticity. Probably the best ones are those in blind individuals. Again, I won't review the entire literature, but can give some examples: Cohen et al showed tactile representations in the visual cortex of blind individuals, such as when they are reading Braille. Bedny et al, 2015 show that, especially in children who are blind, the visual areas of the brain respond strongly to information from other modalities, especially spoken language. Again, these individuals are not "seeing" these stimuli, beyond the type of "seeing" that you can do when you reconstruct a scene with your eyes closed (if they were at one point sighted). Rather, part of their brain that would normally be used for vision is now being used for other tasks.
Effects on olfaction haven't been studied as often, but in Kupers et al, blind individuals were shown to have olfactory responses in brain areas that don't show olfactory responses in sighted individuals, including areas that usually process vision.

References:
Angelucci, A., Clascá, F., & Sur, M. (1998). Brainstem inputs to the ferret medial geniculate nucleus and the effect of early deafferentation on novel retinal projections to the auditory thalamus. The Journal of comparative neurology, 400(3), 417-439.
Bedny, M., Richardson, H., & Saxe, R. (2015). “Visual” cortex responds to spoken language in blind children. Journal of Neuroscience, 35(33), 11674-11681.
Cohen, L. G., Celnik, P., Pascual-Leone, A., Corwell, B., Faiz, L., Dambrosia, J., ... & Hallett, M. (1997). Functional relevance of cross-modal plasticity in blind humans. Nature, 389(6647), 180-183.
Kupers, R., Beaulieu-Lefebvre, M., Schneider, F. C., Kassuba, T., Paulson, O. B., Siebner, H. R., & Ptito, M. (2011). Neural correlates of olfactory processing in congenital blindness. Neuropsychologia, 49(7), 2037-2044.
Sharma, J., Angelucci, A., & Sur, M. (2000). Induction of visual orientation modules in auditory cortex. Nature, 404(6780), 841-847.


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Worm inside a millepede
I found a dead millipede lying on the ground in Wayand, Kerala (India). I put it in a bottle and brought it home. After around 5 hours a worm came out of it. It is about about 1.5 cm long and segmented.
Any idea if its a larva of some sort?

Edit:
It's been about five days since I posted the picture of the larva , and it seems to have pupated last night. The pupa is approximately 0.5 cms in length. All that's left is to see what happens next.

Do you have a picture of the millipede?

Give it nutrients and see if it grows into anything!

Yes, it is a larva, and it could be any of a number of insects that parasitize millipedes, like the Phoridae.

It looks like a dipteran larva.

Can i get a more specific answer? And also, how would you suggest I raise it?

Yes that seems to be a larvae but at the same time I know that it is a millipede but the larvae it self reminds me of a carpet beetle.

Anything happen yet?

Yes, it was a dipteran larva. A housefly emerged from it yesterday, 9 days after  the larva pupated.

There is something wrong with this question. You are saying a housefly emerged from the larve. Housefly larvae are not 0.5 cm big.

@ObiwanKeNoobie they also don't parasitise millipedes, which I think is more of an issue here.

Do you have the adult that emerged? If you post a photo of it it might be identifiable.

Definitely some sort of fly (order Diptera). Specifically, you found the legless larva, or maggot, of a fly that then developed into a pupa.

 Source: Univ of Florida IFAS
The above picture represents the life-cycle stages of the common house fly (Musca domestica).

M. domestica is one of the most common and widespread flies in the world:

This common fly originated on the steppes of central Asia, but now occurs on all inhabited continents, in all climates from tropical to temperate, and in a variety of environments ranging from rural to urban. Source

According to Wikipedia, M domestic larvae take 2-5 days to metamorphose into a pupa.

Although the OP mentions that a housefly emerged from the pupa, I'll caution the OP that many flies look like house flies to the untrained eye. Houseflies typically deposit their eggs in fecal matter or dead flesh, so finding a maggot deposited into the body of a living millipede seems unlikely behavior from the common house fly. (Edit: Though I see now that the OP said the millipede was dead, so this is not an unlikely candidate).
IF the larva was deposited when the millipede was still alive, then other genera would be more likely.
One example would be a Sarcophagid (or flesh fly; family Sarcophagidae), which some species being known to be internal parasites.
As for proper ID, according to Wikipedia:

Generally, only males of this family can reliably be identified to species, and then only by examination of dissected genitalia. The literature is incomplete or scattered for all regions

Here are some images for a fairly widespread species, Sarcophaga crassipalpis (which is very unlikely to be your species, but demonstrates general appearance of this family):

 Source: Univ of Florida IFAS
Your specimen might still belong to another group of flies, the tachinids (family Tachninidae), which very often parasitize other arthropods.
It'd be very difficult to differentiate most of these taxa without up-close examinations of specimens.


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Signaling pathways with Receptor Tyrosine Kinase clarification
This question is regarding signaling pathways with RTKs, Receptor Tyrosine Kinase.  The picture posted has one thing wrong with it and I am supposed to figure out what that is.

What I have come up with so far is that the Ras protein shown that goes on to activate RAF, has GDP attached to it.  This cannot be true from what I understand, as Ras must have GTP bound to it in order for Ras to stay in it's closed conformation.  The closed conformation is what activates the rest of the signals.
I am wondering if I am correct in my assumption, or if there is something else in the diagram I am missing.

The active form of Ras should definitely be bound to GTP, to activate Raf. I don't see anything else wrong with the diagram. For reference, here is another useful diagram the pathway from Nature.

Please add some more details to your answer.


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Indian Snake Species Identification
Location: southern India
Time: noon
Approx. Size:
Length: around 2 feet;
Size: extremely small, like a straw.
Diameter: less than 1 cm.
Was very fast in climbing aisle of mud bed/uphill like 90 degree accent.

Ashok's Bronzeback (Dendrelaphis ashoki).

This is a relatively small snake (typically 70 cm in length) that feeds on lizards, frogs and small rodents.
More information can be found here or here.
It's range is Southwestern India:

You can differentiate this species from closely related D. girii based on it having a longer "postocular" black line than D. ashoki -- in D. ashoki it stops shortly caudal to the eye (e.g., see here).

+1 its like 100% close i would say, Only the bluish shiny thing makes me think, it might be very close family one.

@Umar I'm glad you added the third photo showing the blue shimmer of your specimen! That gives me even more confidence that this is your species. (the blue is only visible in certain positions -- again see here.

muahuhhaa i am seeing the blue stripes after you mentioned it (in the third photo)

Dumb question: When the differences are so minor (e.g. "longer "postocular" black line") what's the reason for designating them as two different species?

@curious_cat feel free to ask this in a new question. Comments aren't the best place for extended  discussion of additional questions.


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Are there only a few alleles or groups of many alleles impacting protein structure and function?
I'm in the first year of Medicine and I'm studying Genetics and Evolution. I have this doubt in the back of my mind and I'm not being able to move forward without someone explaining me what's wrong with my thinking.
So I've learned an allele is a variant form of a gene, all alleles of the same gene are slightly different from each other and code the same characteristic in different forms. We know proteins can have from 20 to 34350 amino acids. Let's take a protein with 4 thousand amino acids. The RNA that formed it had 4 thousand codons, which are 12 thousand nucleotides. I didn't study mutation yet but I assume a mutation can occur in a single nucleotide in the DNA that can or cannot code for a different protein (as some amino acids are coded by more than one codon).
Ok, so let's say a super energetic UV photon reaches one of my germinative cells and mutates a single nucleotide of my DNA that changes the provious amino acid. The protein has 4 thousand amino acids. Will a single one change its function or shape? I would say it is more likely not to change, and I don't know why this reasoning can be wrong. One amino acid in 4 thousand probably will have no effect in the overall shape and function and will form a slightly different/ almost identical protein with almost identical functions. If that is right, we should have an enormous number of alleles for the same gene (e.g. if we say less than 5 amino acids won't change the structure, that are 3,2 million different alleles), instead of 2, or 3, or 4, or some small number as I was taught.
I can think in 2 explanations: The first is that if, contrary to what I think, a small change in an unique amino acid could change the protein enough to make the individual die for example. Which I doubt. The second is if we in fact had millions of alleles, but all this alleles had similar or almost identical shapes, and we could segregate them in a small number of groups (2 for example) where the functions of the coded proteins are different from the other group but identical in the same group.
Am I going too far? Could anyone explain me why this is not possible?

Hi and welcome to Bio.SE! I tried to update your title to be more relevant. Please adjust if you don't think it captures your question appropriately. speaking of which, your post is a bit rambly and the actual question is not clear -- please update to clarify to avoid receiving negative response.

The protein has 4 thousand amino acids. Will a single one change its
  function or shape?

It very well might.  High schoolers learn about the existance of sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sacks, cystic fibrosis, phenylketonuria...you must know about them too.

If that is right, we should have an enormous number of alleles for the
  same gene (e.g. if we say less than 5 amino acids won't change the
  structure, that are 3,2 million different alleles), instead of 2, or
  3, or 4, or some small number as I was taught

The is the dbSNP entry for human transferrin receptor.  As you can see there are a whole lot of recorded variants.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/SNP/snp_ref.cgi?geneId=7037
But that doesn't mean that all of them are clinically relevant.

Firstable, a point mutation in your DNA could change definitively the fate of your hypothetical coding RNA (later a protein product). The reason relies on the nature of the mutations: Missense mutation, Nonsense mutation or Frameshift mutation. In the nonsense one, definitely will make your protein non-functional because of the insertion of a STOP signal inside your chain of nucleotides.
Talking about the susceptibility of some regions to be mutated, in general terms the most conserved regions on a protein are really well conserved because of their functional importance, that has been evolutionarily selected and prevents that the mutation rate will have a high probability.
And also, when you said: "I assume a mutation can occur in a single nucleotide in the DNA that can or cannot code for a different protein (as some amino acids are coded by more than one codon)."
Your assumption ignores the half part of history. Mutations are not restricted to small-punctual changes, but they could include big regions that alter the chromosome organization, as translocations, duplications, inversions or even loss of alleles by loss of heterozygosity.
I would suggest this resource, to get the principal concepts and ideas about this topic, but for sure this is just a general description.

Your answer focuses on extreme cases when mutations are more than a single amino acid, but I think the question was most concerned with the effect of a single amino acid substitution.

Right, but in the case that you codon, for example, codifies for Tyr (UAU) have the possibility to have U->A and results into the STOP codon (UAA) and it definitively modifies the fate of your potential protein. This is a related example, isn´t it?


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What do the names of Immunoglobulin subtypes mean?
What is the exact meaning and full form of  IgM, IgG, IgA, etc? What is the rationale behind the names of the isotypes, if there is one? For example, what does "M" mean in IgM?

what  M stands for in IgM?

Have you done any research on your own? Like a Google search?

Yes but I did not get the full form of M!!

The constant region of heavy chains of IgA are called α (alpha) chains so the English translation of the greek alphapet is A.

Ig stands for immunoglobulin. The isotype names have various origins. This paper provides an interesting story:
Black CA. 1997. A brief history of the discovery of the immunoglobulins and the origin of the modern immunoglobulin nomenclature. Immunol Cell Biol 75:65-68.
A brief summary, in order of characterization and naming:

IgG - named gamma globulin because it migrated in the gamma band of electrophoresed blood plasma (the bands were named in order of mobility: alpha, beta, etc)
IgM - named macroglobulin because it sedimented faster than IgG (ie was larger)
IgA - found in the beta and gamma bands of electrophoresed plasma and initially named β2A and γ1A, later renamed to alpha globulin
IgD - named by process of elimination: IgA was taken, murine immunoglobulins were expected to be named beta, the letter C has no Greek equivalent
IgE - named because it was most reactive with a fraction of pollen proteins (fraction E because it induced erythema)

What is the full form of IgM?


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Spider found in bathroom can’t identify

Found this spider in my bathroom on the wall by the door. Near Houston, TX.

Almost certainly a spider belonging to the genus Scytodes. It largely resembles the species S. thoracica with very similar markings to the picture above. It is a common spider in the United States, and is often found in houses.

Hi@ShroomZed and welcome to Bio.SE. Thanks for providing an answer to this question! However, if you check out our guide for writing good answers, you'll see that we really are seeking answers that *provide, cite, or link-to support for their answers. In this way, we cut down on misinformation while simultaneously providing easy access for further learning for the OP.  Please consider adding [reputable] support for your [seemingly valid] answer, and you'll almost certainly receive more positive attention (i.e., up votes). Thanks!


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How did sneezing evolve?
Did we develop the sneezing mechanism to get rid of pathogens like bacteria and viruses in our nose?
Or did pathogens develop a way to make us sneeze to propagate themselves?
Or did we develop the sneezing mechanism, and then pathogens hijacked this pathway to benefit themselves?
I'm trying to understand why we sneeze so much when we get sick - is it our bodies trying to help us, or is it something the pathogen is causing to help itself spread? And if it's both, how did that happen?

Although your question is quite interesting, it appears to be very broad; you can possibly find entire books/reviews dedicated to this topic (if there is already an answer).

By "we" do you mean humans? Because sneezing is shared at least across tetrapods.

Sneezing is a response to an irritant, any irritant, including pepper, pollen, dust, someone sticking a hair up your nose, etc. No pathogens necessary. That should answer the question.

@kmm I meant all organisms that sneeze. But the point that we sneeze in response to any irritant answers my question - I guess it's just lucky for pathogens that the sneezing response propagates them. Thanks for your answers!

Sneezing itself is a part of long story of human evolution.
Sneezing for early humans was as common as eating is for us. Early humans lived in caves which were full of dust and insects so whenever they wake up from sleep they sneezed intentionally to remove the dust and small insects from their nose, slowly this behaviour of early humans was proved to be beneficial and muscle memories remembered the Activity as a daily routine work and performed it to remove dust and any irritant in their nose or nasal cavity.
As they evolved they passed on their daily routine works to their descendants and this was also passed on , this way sneezing was slowly incorporated into the muscle memories and it exists till now as a way to relax is from external allergens.
There are several other theories too about evolution of sneezing and it itself demands great research .
 There is also a video on Veritasium on YouTube regarding the Sneezing whenever one sees light , this video too discusses this theory.
You should check that out too.

This answer needs citations and an explanation of why my dog also sneezes.


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Help identify this vertabrae found on Costa Rica beach

I was walking down tamarindo beach in Costa Rica today and came upon a really LARGE section of vertabrae.. I matched it against a crocodile a shark , whales, a horse, a cow, a snake even ... any ideas ? It naturally doesn't have another piece beyond the two transgressors bones ... I'm stumped... joined just to ask this... and also I think I found footprints in lava immortalized..  in the same area yesterday... thats a diff post tho w video .. I found the footprints in lava yest.. and went back today to see if I could find them again.. I didnt.. but found this instead... Note : I found another vertabrae about 1/5 its size about 15 ft away .. not sure if same animal
Any guesses?

Looks the same on the other side.. trying to upload more pics

It looks like a tuna/ sea bass / barracuda. may be worn away so we don't have all of the spine.


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How to Identify Astragalus Species
I have several photos of a plant I believe to be in the genus Astragalus. I would like to determine the particular species in my area, the foot hills of San Diego County. Do I need a microscope to determine species, or can it be determined from the naked eye? How exactly should I proceed?


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What is this long, thin and segmented insect I found in my house in India?
Found this inside my house, along the wall, there were few going somewhere few distance from each other.
I suspect it is a centipede but didn't found similar images on Google. What is this?
Location: Mysore City, India.
Size(only which I saw): the one in the image is about half centimeter, and the smallest one was less than 1/4th of a centimeter.
Color: the one in the image is kind of brownish I guess and the smallest one's are nearly white (pigmentless?)
We assumed this thing is kind of larva of cockroach or big white ant. Is this fully grown insect or still it is a baby? These were behaving like ants do.

Please [edit] your answer to include the approximate size. thanks

 UPDATE:
Based on a comment by ArthurJFrost reminding me of the existence of a group of insects I totally forgot about, AND based on a closer examination of the cerci and what appears to be external mouthparts in the image of the OP's specimen, I think this insect might actually be a webspinner!

These insects would be also about the right size, with the described and shown body plans, but also with short (but non-pincer-like) cerci and external mouth parts as in the OP's image. Female webspinners are wingless [source], as well, as the OP's image also appears to be.

See, for example, the black webspinner (Oligotoma nigra) from New Mexico, USA from bugguide.net:

 Source: bugguide.net
See also here for additional images of Oligotomidae species. (by the way, O. saundersii is the type species of Oligotomidae within the Indian subcontinent).
@ArthurJFrost, since you are more the expert than I on hexapods, PLEASE PLEASE write up an answer detailing how we might all feel more confident knowing that the webpsinner (and not the dipluran) is the better answer. Visually it appears to be the case to me, but I think you'd be able to point out some specifics for us all to learn from!

I will certainly default to you to write up the "official" webspinner answer since my update here on my post is simply to direct away from what I now think is an incorrect answer. I would gladly link to your answer to further emphasize that you came up with this answer.

OLD ANSWER: [Informed guess, but I think it's wrong!]
Based on the thin body plan, extended, segmented abdomen, lack of wings, and pair of posterior cerci, I was immediately reminded of a dipluran (or "two-pronged bristletail").

 Sourcce: Wikimedia
It would be good to know the size of your specimen since most diplurans are smaller than 10 mm  (though some can reach 50 mm!). A better photo would also be appreciated, since diplurans typically have antennae with beadlike segments, and I cannot tell if that's the case in your photo. I will note that many diplurans have much longer and even filamentous cerci, but others (like your specimen) have shorter cerci.
I am not sure why a dipluran would be inside your house, however, since they live in soil or leaf litter. [source]
Other organisms to rule out:

Snakefly (Agulla adnixa) -- no cerci (vs. yours)
Centipede -- too many legs (vs. yours)
I can't rule out earwigs since I am unfamiliar with the species in India. However, your specimen looks longer, thinner, and possessing smaller cerci than the earwigs I am more familiar with. [A clearer image of the thorax would help to determine if wings are present or not, which (if present) would rule out diplurans altogether and suggest it might be some earwig species I don't know).

I'm always amazed when people are able to answer these ID questions from limited data, and I really appreciate your style that includes criteria for excluding alternatives - really excellent pedagogy and I hope readers pick up on those cues in addition to the specific IDs. :)

@Bryan thanks for the encouragement! I try to make all my answers thorough + informative (esp with so many inaccurate IDs across the web). I certainly am no expert in any one taxonomic group like Karl Kjer, John Robinson, Arthur J Frost, RHA, and some other of our users, but It actually gets surprisingly easy to narrow to phyla, classes, and even orders when you've ID'd enough organisms -- with most of these having tell-tale characteristics to help narrow options. Though, it's the real puzzles that have been the most fun for me to ID! (e.g., here)

Another possibility here is a wingless webspinner (order Embioptera AKA Embiidina AKA Embidiina -- at least two of these spellings have seen recent use); I base this guess on the widened front feet (where webspinners keep their silk-glands!).  If I'm not off-base, identification further will be difficult if not impossible; wingless webspinners if adult are almost always female, which sex is not usually used for identification.

WOOO! @ArthurJFrost you are the expert here, not I, and having taken a look at bugguide.net, I think you're on to something here!! The OP's specimen's cerci match the webspinner's better than any dipluran I've seen (AND, now that I look again, I think I see external mouth parts in the OP's image!). I remember learning about webspinners once, but they're not in my regular rolodex of species I think about. PLEASE write up an answer based on your comment -- preferably outlining why you think webspinner and not dipluran. I know I'd learn something! Thanks


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what kind of lizard is this
Found on ground by house in residential neighborhood in Fort Pierce FL. looks mature maybe 17".

Nice find. It's a common basilisk or jesus christ lizard, distributed throughout central america, they grow to 27 inches and can run on water, the male is bigger than the female:
https://travel.mongabay.com/colombia/images/colombia_1513.html

haha nice downvote. :) i have only 6000 points left. can we go to 6666 plz.


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ID Fish from Florida?

This fish was caught in St. Augustine, Florida. What species is it?

Looks like a Goosefish (aka. monkfish) to me.

Could be a species of flathead

Does it have spines?

Did you catch it in fresh water? saltwater? brackish water? And at what depth did you catch it?

Was the fish caught at the location of the photo? Approximately how deep was the water?

Looks most likely to be a Gulf Toadfish, Opsanus beta, judging from its size, location caught, and other similar identifying features.

More detailed species information at:
Opsanus beta on FishBase.org

I live in Florida and I've neither caught nor seen one of these. I was kind of taken aback!

It can depend on the environment, with this species common in bays. You would not likely catch it far off from shore.

I am not familiar with fish from Florida. However, that one belongs to the family Lophiidae. Most probably it is Lophiodes reticulatus.
Need better resolution photos for identification.
http://www.fishbase.org/summary/3082

It seems to me to only appear like a member of Lophiidae. There are other families that are similar in appearance because they are also benthic dwellers. According to FishBase, L. reticulatus is found at depths of 64-820 meters. From the photo provided you can see what appears to be an embankment along the shore. If the fish was caught at the same location, it is unlikely that the environment was of the correct depth for the fish to be L. reticulatus. There are physical features that do not match, for instance, the pectoral fins in the photo are not barbed like L. reticulatus.


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Why is the consumer/producer biomass ratio higher in the oceans?
According to Bar-on et al. (2018) (see figure 2), the terrestrial consumer/producer biomass ratio is 20/450  while the marine consumer/producer biomass ratio is 5/1 (in Gton of carbon).
Why is the consumer/producer ratio much higher in the oceans?
Is it perhaps because marine animals are more efficient? Or is terrestrial plant biomass underexploited by surface animals?
 Bar-On, Y.M., Phillips, R. and Milo, R., 2018. The biomass distribution on Earth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(25), pp.6506-6511.

This is certainly not a full answer, but a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that terrestrial producers put a huge amount of biomass into support structures (wood!) that's not needed in the ocean.

The paper you cited suggests an explanation:

Such inverted biomass distributions can occur when primary producers have a rapid turnover of biomass [on the order of days (34)], while consumer biomass turns over much more slowly [a few years in the case of mesopelagic fish (35)]. Thus, the standing stock of consumers is larger, even though the productivity of producers is necessarily higher. Previous reports have observed inverted biomass pyramids in local marine environments (36, 37). An additional study noted an inverted consumer/producer ratio for the global plankton biomass (16).

To explain/clarify this a bit further: there are two main processes that affect the consumer/producer ratio. One, which you have identified, is efficiency (how much of the biomass is transferred from one trophic level to the next). The other is turnover rate (rate at which biomass leaves a trophic level), which is the reciprocal of the residence time (the average length of time that a unit of biomass spends in a trophic level before transitioning to another trophic level/compartment).
At equilibrium, the biomass in a trophic level is equal to (inflow/turnover rate) or (inflow $\times$ residence time). If consumers at a particular level consume one tonne of biomass per month (assume 100% efficiency for now) and the residence time is 6 months, the standing stock or quantity of biomass at that level will be 6 tonnes. Taking some of the numbers from the paragraph above: suppose the residence time for phytoplankton is 4 days while of consumers is 400 days. If the consumers have a 10% efficiency for taking up phytoplankton biomass, then the consumer biomass will be $(400~\textrm{days}/4~\textrm{days}) \times 10\% = 10$ times higher than the phytoplankton biomass.

Phytoplankton lives for about a week and is renewed, i.e. Cocolithophoridae which clones itself every 6 days.
Terrestrial biomass lives for about 10 years. i.e. trees
Hence, there is a higher ratio of phototrophic/producer biomass on land.
reference:

There were 45 billion tonnes of new phytoplankton each year, 45 times more than their own mass at any given time. The phytoplankton would therefore have had to reproduce themselves entirely, on average, 45 times a year, or roughly once a week. In contrast, the world's land plants have a total biomass of 500 billion tonnes, much of it wood. The same calculations showed that the world's land plants reproduce themselves entirely once every ten years.

This information is useful, but only if the OP already knows about the relationship between turnover and standing stock ...


text:
What species of duck is this?
What species of duck is this? See below photo. Head colour is green like a mallard, but that's pretty much the only similarity. Spotted in Leicestershire, UK.

I don't know what species it is, but it's a male duck and very, very common in the Netherlands.

Probably a domestic hybrid of a mallard.
From Cornell:

If your duck has large patches of white where you didn’t expect it, think domestic duck.

Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), which have the identifiable green head in the wild, are only 1 of 2 species of ducks that have been domesticated. So it would be no surprise if a strange looking mallard was in fact, well,  a mallard.
Again, according to Cornell:

Another common form [of the domestic/hybrid mallard] is the bibbed version. It has a sort of normal body and head plumage, and a white chest.

Also:

The passion for weird plumage in domestic ducks does not stop with white, but can go the other way too.  Some breeds are darker than normal Mallard plumage

These descriptions both match your specimen quite well.
Although your picture is low quality, it appears to me that the posterior feathers of your specimen also are not straight. Again, quoting Cornell:

Watch for the little curled feathers on the back of the male, above the tail.  Only the Mallard and its domestic descendants have those.

Finally, most hybrid ducks that come from some domesticated origin tend to be larger than  non-domesticated specimens since early domestication efforts emphasized large size for food (vs simply plumage for appearances). Your image has no relative scale, so I cannot comment on whether this applies to your specimen or not.
In terms of a specific "name" for such a hybrid?
I did find evidence that some people refer to domestic-hybrid mallards like your dark-plumage, white-bibbed mallards as "manky mallards", though I'm not sure how ubiquitous this is. For example, see here and here.

Though 10000birds.com claims non-domesticated birds can also occasionally develop bibs similar to those seen on domesticated descendants.

Wikimedia Commons has a Category: Anas platyrhynchos (wild living, but not wild colored. And yes, the domestic duck, which is often white, is considered a subspecies, Anas platyrhynchos domesticus.

There's no "probably" about it.

@Alnitak due to the HUGE amount of misinformation online and the propensity for people not knowledgeable in a subject to believe the first thing they read as fact, I am very cautious to use my possibly-perceived "expert" position as an answer writer to establish any concept of definitive authority. This is especially true in instances in which I'm not well-versed in a topic or the question itself could be more clear. I appreciate your vote of confidence and the other upvotes that can stand as support for my answer, but I'll continue using cautious wording to avoid these issues. Thanks.

I think it's likely a mallard hybrid. These sites have examples of crosses between mallards and domestic ducks (and others as well):
https://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/domducks.htm
https://www.birdsoutsidemywindow.org/2020/08/06/mixed-up-ducks/
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/manky-mallard-royalty-free-image/986875962
There isn't any specific pattern but the light coloring below the head seems to be a common occurrence in hybrids, with some variation in the rest of the coloring. It's hard to find more reputable resources because of the variation, but I don't know of any other duck that would fit the ID.


text:
What is this insect in North Carolina?
This insect is in my house in North Carolina, USA. I think it shares similar body features of that of a wasp, but it is far too narrow and has what appears to be a long stinger. What is it?

The long stinger is an ovipositor. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovipositor?wprov=sfla1)

This is some species of ichneumon wasp.
The ichneumon wasps are parasitoid wasps in the order Hymenoptera. They commonly parasitize other invertebrates, especially larvae and pupae of Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, and Lepidoptera.
Specifically, this appears to be Dolichomitus irritator.

 Photo credit:  Thomas wilson
Here's another specimen of the same species found in Weymouth Woods-Sandhills Nature Preserve, Southern Pines, Moore County, NC:

 Photo credit:  Dorothy Pugh
You can find additional high-quality images from Jeff Tome's Flickr page.
I could not find too many sources with good information about this specific species. Fontanelle Forests' Nature Search provided the most complete info:

Description: 7/8 inch long, not including the ovipositor.  The head and thorax are black.  The abdomen is red-orange.  The legs are yellow and orange.  The antennae are black.  The black ovipositor is at least as long as the body and head.
Ecology: Parasitoids of many woodboring insect larvae including long-horned beetles, weevils, metallic wood-boring beetles and some moths that are wasp look-alikes.
Taxonomy: In the subfamily Pimplinae, which has 180 species in 28 genera in North America.

Thank you very much, I thought it had to do something with wood

@Evander_C Some additional info: the long ovipositor has a purpose, but it isn't used for making holes in wood. Other species, like solitary bees lay eggs in existing or newly made holes. They make small walls between each egg (actually they also put eggs with females deeper into the wood). The longer your ovipositor, the more eggs the wasp can reach. A beautiful example of Ecology and evolution if you ask me.


text:
What is this insect (Egypt)?
I am from Egypt, and I found this insect in my house. It's slow when it moves, and I didn't see it fly. It's green (my phone camera didn't get the colors right).

This is some species of aphid.
Most people are familiar with the wingless stages of these insects that crawl on and eat plants. There are also winged 'alates'. For example, see the life cycle of the soybean aphid:

Due to the picture quality, I'm uncertain about the exact species. However, I can show you alates from some similar looking species:
Nasonovia ribisnigri (Currant-lettuce aphid)

 Source: influentialpoints.com
Aphis pomis (Green Apple Aphid)

 Source
Macrosiphum rosae (Rose Aphid)

 Source: Bernard Dupont
As you can see, these phenotypic characteristics (i.e., green body with black head, clear wings, black/green striped legs, green cauda and black cornicles) are present in numerous diverse species of aphids.
Perhaps you could comment on nearby crop plants or garden plants near your house or produce that you've recently purchased or brought into the house. Sometimes knowing possible host plant species can help narrow down possibilities.


text:
What is mold detection threshold in humans?
I managed to find primary taste detection thresholds, e.g. for sweetness it's 1 part in 200 of sucrose in solution.
Recently I've noticed that I can detect mold smell/taste even if there are no signs of product getting spoiled.
What is the mold detection threshold in humans, and is that a dangerous amount?

Different molds might have different taste. Thresholds can be set for primary tastes, and maybe for very basic molecules and compounds, but it is unlikely to be able to find one consistent threshold for something as varied as mold.

Maybe asking for one consistent treshold is too much, but some numbers would give at least an overview. It's an interesting research topic, shame it looks hard to do at home.

It depends on the mold. For example, humans can smell octenol in ppb concentrations[1], presumably long before any toxic effects of this or other compounds produced by molds. Octenol is produced by many molds, always through breakdown of linoleic acid (part of many triglycerides, i.e., fatty oils present in most food).
Update: another example of a non-toxic mold is that causing cork taint. The responsible substances (trichloroanisoles, TCA) can be tasted by humans in wine at 2-4ng (nanograms) per liter wine.[2]
[1] M. J. Saxby: Food Taints and Off-Flavours., 2. ed., Springer 1995, ISBN 978-0-7514-0263-6, S. 210–212.
[2] http://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2018/07/tainted.html


text:
How many genes are needed for a living organism?
I am interested in this question as I'm doing research into early life on earth which is believed to have been single-celled. Therefore, by extension, it seems only logical that the first life would be as genetically simple as is possible, therefore I present the above question.
How many genes / pairs of AA would be the bare minimum for something to be considered alive and function as an organism.

Hi there. You're right the question is the same but the answer given doesn't link any studies and i think it's also possible that the date is outdated.

Check out this answer: https://biology.stackexchange.com/a/56363/6307


text:
What are these bugs eating my lumber?
Duplicate of this question.
I found bugs in wood that I've had air drying for the last few years. What are they?
I had a tree cut down a few years ago and some of the wood milled in to slabs. However, I've found a few pieces that appear to have bugs living in it. They seem to be some kind of larva.
The larva seem to be approximately 2cm long and maybe 1-2mm across. There have also been larger tunnels from what I assume is the adult insect that are more like 3-4 mm across. I haven't found any adult insects to get pictures of though.
Tunnels are usually packed with sawdust, but sometimes the bigger tunnels are packed with what looks more like leaves.
The picture below is of a piece of oak, but I've seen similar tunnels in some maple also.
Current searching online leads me to the Emerald Ash Borer (but it seems to only eat Ash trees?) or termites (but the larvae size doesn't seem to quite match).
I'd like to identify the insects so I can evaluate whether I can use the wood.
This is in Eastern Missouri (USA).

Welcome to Biology.SE. Please take the [tour] and then go through the [help] pages starting with [Ask] questions effectively on this site. In particular, please note that crossposting, is considered rude — instead differentiate the questions so that they are not duplicates and are appropriate for the two sites. Also note that organism ids need more information: 1) one or more clear closeup photos (from multiple angles if possible); 2) the location (e.g. country and region); and 3) an estimate of the size.

tyersome, Thank you for the welcome. I've added the location. Unfortunately, only the one photo is immediately available. If I manage to obtain others, I will add them.
The answers on the previous question directed me here. While the fundamental question (help identify the bug) remains the same, the question is not an exact duplicate. It has been tailored for this site. If further tailoring is needed, I look forward to your proposed edits.

These are larvae of some species of wood-boring beetle. It is quite possible you've had multiple species eating your various species of wood.

Many species of boring insects have white, segments, worm-like larvae.

I do not know for certain what species you have, but size, phenology (e.g., timing of metamorphosis/emergence), type of wood infected, and time of infection (dead wood vs dying wood) all are helpful in narrowing down to a specific species. I recommend placing some wood with a borer in a terrarium with a screen on top and waiting to see what the adult looks like when it emerges -- and recording when it emerges.
One possibility, I suppose, is the red oak borer (Enaphalodes rufulus), though only infected specimens look like yours (though, it does appear you've only shown us the caudal side of the insect -- any head shots??).
I couldn't find evidence from a short search as to whether the invasive goldspotted oak borer (Agrilus auroguttatus) has been found in Missouri or not yet, but I will provide an image demonstrating a similar larvae morphology of this species:

 Credit: Mike I. Jones ; Source: UCANR -- L>R: 4th instar, 4th instar in hairpin configuration, 4th instar constricted form, pupa, adult
If you could update with more info (e.g., specific species of tree) and additional photos (especially of larvae head and any emerged adults), ID to specific species would be easier.
According to forestpests.org:

Larval tunnels cause lumber cut from infested logs to be downgraded, reducing log value by up to 40% compared to top quality wood.


text:
Tiny Green beetle
I have some tiny, bright-green beetles on Granny Bonnet seed heads in Cornwall, UK. The insects have black heads and 3 black/yellow stripes across the back. They are ladybird shaped but much smaller. Any ideas what these might be?

I can’t help you personally, but I recommend trying the app Seek on the App Store. I find it to be very helpful and it probably could identify them. I recommend taking a picture and then going to images in the identification camera, it is much faster.

You could use an app and self-answer your question if you get a result, but I do think having a good quality picture will greatrly improve your chances of getting an answer here! See also https://biology.stackexchange.com/tags/species-identification/info

My guess is the nymph of some species of shield bug, such as the Common Green Shieldbug (Palomena prasina)

 Source: Wildlifeinsight.com
According to Wikipedia:

Green shield bugs are a very common shield bug throughout Europe, including Great Britain & Ireland, and are found in a large variety of habitats, including gardens.


text:
A word that includes plants and fungi, but not animals
Hello biologists and biology enthusiasts!
I am working on a project which includes information about plants and fungi. It would be very helpful for me if there a word that means plants-and-fungi, but I'm not sure there is. "Flora" only includes plants, but "biota" includes animals.
Thanks!

Also, are you interested in a taxonomic term or a non-technical term?

Thank you for your response! I think if you think flora is OK, you can put it as an answer and I will accept it. I don't think a taxonomic term exists (please correct me if I'm wrong), so I suppose I'm looking for the best non-technical term.
Do you know why my question was downvoted?

I don't think "flora" is what you're looking for. I simply wanted to point out it's broader usage beyond plants. I think referring to "all plants and fungi" as "flora" is not clear and will likely not get across the meaning you intend.

 Short Answer
There is no such word that I can think of.
 Long Answer
Note: although fungi were once considered to be lumped with plants, such classifications fell out of favor 60+ years ago (or sooner). See here for a summary.
Nomenclature "dead ends"
Using the traditional taxonomic approach (including Woese's familiar 3-domain classification system)  will not provide the collective term you're looking for. Plants, Animals, and Fungi are all of the kingdoms rank in this system; the only higher rank than kingdom in this system is domain (in this case "Eukarya"), which would include all 3 kingdoms.
If we take a cladistics approach instead, we can investigate Phylogenetic nomenclature. This taxonomic approach lacks categorical ranks such as "kingdoms" and instead tends to use hierarchical group names based on nested ancestral synapomorphies. However, using this approach proves to be even less useful for finding the term you're looking for:

Generally ~6 (5-8) informal supergroups (sometimes called "suprakingdoms") have been recognized based on phylogenetic research. Importantly, 2 of these groups (i.e., clades) are the Opisthokonts (which include fungi and animals) and the Archaeplastids (which include plants). Since animals and fungi share a common ancestor more recently than plants, it's not possible to "lump" plants and fungi together without including animals (and a whole host of other organisms).
You can see a recent publication (Burki et al., 2020) discussing an even more recent proposed organization for classifying Eukaryotes that maintains this phylogenetic distinction and separation between animals/fungi and plants.

Comment on the usage of "flora"
FYI, "flora" has broader usage beyond plants. "flora" can also be used for fungi (e.g., search "fungal flora" on Google). In fact, in microbiology, "flora" (or sometimes "microflora") is used to describe microorganisms in/on a system/host, which would include fungi, bacteria, etc. (For example, see gut flora).
I don't think "flora" is what you're looking for. I think referring to "all plants and fungi" as "flora" is not clear and will likely not get across the meaning you intend without further annotation/clarification.
Other thoughts:
I momentarily considered if being sessile would be a possible trait to use for delineating these organisms the way you're trying since by definition animals are not sessile (at least not at all stages of their lifecycle). However, many "protists" are also sessile and therefore such delineation would not be exclusive to plants and fungi. Further, I'm not sure all fungi are in fact sessile (though I can't think of any reason why not).

The phrase "multi-cellular sessile organisms" is probably much more exclusive and encompassing, but probably not 100% perfect. (However, at the point you'd be considering such phrases, I'd just suggest sticking with "plants and fungi" :p).

Perhaps someone else can come up with something, but I couldn't think of any non-outdated ways to accomplish your goal off the top of my head.


text:
Can anyone tell me what tree does this leaf belong to?
I found a lovely tree in my friends yard and we do not have a clue what tree is it. The leaf texture is a but like the ginko biloba, but the shape is different. Can anyone identify it? (It's in Romania, Eastern Europe, but I suspect it's not a local tree)

definitely looks like Liriodendron tulipifera (aka tulip tree, tulip poplar, yellow poplar)

maybe it is from tulip-tree (Liriodendron tulipifera)
use one of this applications to identify plant species:

http://www.plantsnapp.com/#theapp
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id957861141?mt=8
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/flowerchecker-plant-identification/id916709270?mt=8
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.thran.flowercheckerplus

and many others here


text:
What is the name of this black and white dove/pigeon?
July 19, 2021. My sister found this bird outside near our bird feeders. We’ve never seen one of this coloring or size before, and I’m not sure it’s native to where we live (Northern New Jersey). It has a white plastic tag with numbers on the leg, so I’m thinking it’s either tagged for scientific research or it’s domesticated.
It was resting on the ground instead of sitting in the trees like the other wild birds that frequent our yard. My sister was able to get within 10 feet of it to toss it some bird seed and set out a bowl of water. Any other wild bird around here would’ve flown off if she was within 15 or 20 feet, which makes me think it’s either domesticated, has had contact with humans, or is injured. The bird opened its wings at one point, but didn't fly or flap them at all throughout our interaction with it.
I apologize for the image quality, I couldn't get too close to the bird or it would shy away. In the picture it's sitting down with its legs folded under it. From what I saw, it has a rounded or wedge-shaped tail that fades from white to black at the tip. The body is pure white. The wings are white but with about 3 black stripes across the outer tip. It's shaped like a dove or a pigeon and stands approximately 10 inches at its head.

What's the size?  Is it any different in size from the common pigeon (or rock dove) frequently seen in cities?

I believe it was a little bigger than rock doves. I have mourning doves that frequent my bird feeders and this black/white dove was about a third larger than the mourning doves. I'm estimating it was about 8-10 inches tall at its head when standing up and maybe 10 inches from chest to tail tip? I may be off with the measurements, I couldn't get too close to it.

Welcome to Biology.SE. Domesticated (and feral) Rock pigeons are highly variable in both size and coloration. They are around 33 cm (~12-14 inches) from beak to tail (which is the standard length measurement for birds), which seems compatible with your estimates. Do an internet image search for "Rock pigeon" to get an idea of how variable these birds can appear. It seems likely this is a "racing pigeon" that's gotten injured or lost. Try using binoculars (or a telephoto camera) to see the band and you might help it get home.

Possibly some breed of show/fancy pigeon.
For example, see Damascene Pigeons:

 Source: YouTube
You can see some discussion/images of black/white pigeons in the pigeon genetics newsletter, and you can see the below image of some additional black/white varieties:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Vz3YY7qzN1k/maxresdefault.jpg


text:
Identification of a plant
Please help me to identify this plant

The plants can be found on italian balconies and I would like to buy one, but I do not know what I should look for.
The habit of the plant is trailing.

Can you give us more information please? - what is the habit of the plant - trailing? Upright? If you have any photos of flowers that will definitely help with identification.

Yes, the habit of the plant is trailing. I will try to make more photos, but I do not think I have seen some plants with flowers...

This looks to me like it may be a type of Jade plant, genus Crassula.  Probably many cultivars out there.  Alternatively, may also be a Sedum.

This is likely to be a stone plant (Aizoaceae), depending on habit, it could well be the ice plant (Carpobrotus edulis). Stone plants are a quite diverse family of succulents from southern Africa, but are widespread throughout the western world as stabilizers of sand-dunes and in gardens as they are very tolerant of lack of watering and high salinity.
Ice plants are very common in the Mediterranean region, having become an invasive pest on much of the coastline.
If it is ice plant, then you can sub-cultivate it by taking a small part of the plant, usually leaves with a bit of stem, but even a leaf by itself may work, and placing it in water or on sandy soil. With regular watering, it should grow roots and then be plantable.
Apparently the leaves of ice plant are edible (hence the edulis part of the name), similar to Aloe I suspect.


text:
Identifying insect in Sri Lanka
I saw this one in our garden in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It seemed to be hiding from the harsh sunlight that was there. I have never seen this bug before. Anyone know what bug this could be?

Does it jump away if you disturb it?

This appears to be a springtail (Collembola). I'm not familiar with Sri Lankan fauna, but the overall body plan (kind of oval, pudgy, short-legged) reminds me of a subgroup of springtails, the Poduromorpha.
You can see similar-looking species in the Superfamily Neanuroidea, which are an example group in the Poduromorpha order:

 Brachystomella parvula from UK; Credit: Andy Murray (2012); Source: Wikimedia

 Red Poduromorph Springtails (family Neanuridae) ; Credit: Elahi Rayan (2018); Source: Wikimedia

FYI springtails are not insects but a closely related group of hexapods

Agreed all the way down to superfamily; going any further than that really needs a slide-mounted specimen, and (given the OP location) may actually end with a species that is as yet nameless.

@Arthur thanks for the comment. To clarify for others reading my post: I am only proposing this superfamily as a likely correct answer. I only include the specific species (found 1000s km away in the UK) for the sake of demonstrating visually the common body plan seen in the superfamily. I have no idea what the OP's species is, and Arthur is probably correct that neither does science :p.


text:
What are these little insects in that I found in my greenhouse?
I found these little (3-4mm) insects in my indoor greenhouse where I propagate Begonia from leaf cuttings.
They are slowly walking around on the soil and don't seem to be particularly interested in the plants. When I disturb them they start running around quite fast.
The (unfortunately low quality) pictures show some individuals that I managed to move into a test tube.
location: Switzerland.
the insects immediately make themselves drop when you try to lift them up with a piece of paper.

 Short answer
I think this could possibly be the nymph of some sort of cockroach.
 Long answer
I initially thought these were aphids of some type due to their pear-like body shapes and the small pair of upright projections coming off their backsides (possibly cornicles?).

However, zooming into some of your more-detailed specimens in the 2nd photo immediately made me questions this:
Your specimen appears to lack a prominent cauda sticking off the center of their backside; further, they appear to have some sort of palps around the mouth and a fairly hypognathus head -- all of these characteristics are inconsistent with any aphids I know.
Lack of a furcula (among other details) rules out springtails.
Your specimens appear to have filiform antennae, which doesn't preclude aphids or many other insect orders including beetles, roaches, and orthopterans (e.g., grasshoppers).
Your one specimen appears to have a prominent posterior femur (upper part of leg), suggesting these insects may be good jumpers. However, it could be that the enlarged region is in fact a coxa or that other enlarged femurs are simply less apparent from your photo. Regardless, given the enlarged leg and your observed running behavior, I'd guess these are cursorial legs adapted for -- in fact -- running! [See here for more on legs].

Running vs jumping rules out orthoptera nymphs of any kind.

Given the head type, body shape, mouth parts, rear projections (likely cerci not cornicles), and rear leg anatomy, I suppose this is some sort of cockroach (Blattodea) nymph.
Here is an example:

 Ectobius pallidus - young nymph (<3mm) ; Source: JungleDragon
Due to the poor quality of the photo, I think I'll stop here. You'll have to explore possible species based on your ability to ascertain in-person detail.

Alternatively, someone else might know a more specific group/species and/or may propose another order of insect all together. We'll see..

I'll consider updating if you provide additional detail.

 Also, I'm going to pitch the informative Insects information page from NC State University: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/extension-gardener-handbook/4-insects

It's just great to read such an analytical answer to my question. Thank you!

@ert22 thanks! Glad I could help. Would you say your specimens looked anything like the photo I include? (i.e., am I close?? :p -- the photos really make it hard to tell!)


text:
Probability of an $AABbCC$ offspring given the cross $AaBbCc\times AaBbCc$, is my solution correct?
So I have been working through the drills in the 26th edition of AP Biology Prep by The Princeton Review for fun when I came across this question in the Chapter 12 drill that I'm not really sure about my answer to:

Given the cross $AaBbCc\times AaBbCc$, what is the probability of having an $AABbCC$ offspring?(A) $\dfrac14$(B) $\dfrac18$(C) $\dfrac1{16}$(D) $\dfrac1{32}$

Here's my thinking:
I can draw up 3 Punnett squares to calculate the probability of having an $AA$, then a $Bb$, and finally a $CC$ offspring, as then due to the law of probability, I can then multiply these probabilities together to get my final answer, right?
So we have the three Punnett squares:
$$
\begin{array}{c|c|c|}
  & A  & a  \\ \hline
A & AA & Aa \\ \hline
a & Aa & aa \\ \hline
\end{array}\\
\\
\begin{array}{c|c|c|}
  & B  & b  \\ \hline
B & BB & Bb \\ \hline
b & Bb & bb \\ \hline
\end{array}\\
\\
\begin{array}{c|c|c|}
  & C  & c  \\ \hline
C & CC & Cc \\ \hline
c & Cc & cc \\ \hline
\end{array}
$$
So from our Punnett squares, we have a 25% chance of the offspring having the AA gene, 25%+25%=50% chance of the offspring having the Bb gene, and then a 25% chance of the offspring having the CC gene.
So, due to these observations, the probability of this cross resulting in an $AABbCC$ offspring should be $1/4\times1/2\times1/4=1/32$, and (D) is the correct answer.
My question is: Is my thinking correct, or is my answer wrong, and why if so?

Yes, it is correct.

In the case of no linkage, yes.

@MaximilianPress What do you mean by linkage? I've never heard of it.

Linkage is the non-independence of transmission of alleles at different loci. It is traditionally understood to mean when two loci (e.g. the A locus, or B or C loci, from your example) are physically close to each other on the chromosome. This leads to distortions because it is unlikely that recombination will reassort alleles from those 2 loci. There are also other phenomena that can lead to linkage. I strongly recommend any genetics text to learn more.

Your thinking is indeed correct. Just from probability, if you know the odds of 3 separate events, multiplying them together will give you the % chance of all 3 occurring. Putting this whole thing into a single punnet square is also possible which gives us a 2/64 chance, or 1/32 as the answer choice says. If I were taking an exam I would use the same thinking as you.

Sorry about the late comment @Snow, but welcome to Bio.SE! This is a great first contribution, and I hope you enjoy your stay here! I actually would like to provide some feedback about the giant Punnett square: While I do find the idea interesting, wouldn't this be super inefficient to use when taking a test? Or is that why you said that you'd use the same thinking as me during a test?

Hello @CrSb0001, thanks for your friendly remarks. Yes apologies if I was not clear enough but when I said I would use the same thinking as you in an exam I mean precisely that I would just multiply the separate odds together to get the total. Even drawing a 2x2 square in an exam is not particularly useful unless in strange cases such as X or Y chromosome problems, where they can be very helpful. My 8x8 monstrosity was just to help give you the full picture and to act as proof of your idea. I would never use that in an exam setting. Good luck with the AP biology prep!

Thanks, although I'm just doing it for fun lol