Portal:Biology
Introduction
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are composed of at least one cell that processes hereditary information encoded in genes, which can be transmitted to future generations. Another major theme is evolution, which explains the unity and diversity of life. Energy processing is also important to life as it allows organisms to move, grow, and reproduce. Finally, all organisms can regulate their own internal environments.
Biologists can study life at multiple levels of organization, from the molecular biology of a cell to the anatomy and physiology of plants and animals, and the evolution of populations. Hence, there are multiple subdisciplines within biology, each defined by the nature of their research questions and the tools that they use. Like other scientists, biologists use the scientific method to make observations, pose questions, generate hypotheses, perform experiments, and form conclusions about the world around them.
Life on Earth, which emerged over 3.7 billion years ago, is immensely diverse. Biologists have sought to study and classify the various life form, from prokaryotic organisms such as archaea and bacteria to eukaryotic organisms such as protists, fungi, plants, and animals. These organisms contribute to the biodiversity of an ecosystem, where they play specialized roles in the cycling of nutrients and energy through their biophysical environment. (Full article...)
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Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms that inhabit the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather than on taxonomy.
A large proportion of all life on Earth lives in the ocean. The exact size of this "large proportion" is unknown, since many ocean species are still to be discovered. The ocean is a complex three-dimensional world, covering approximately 71% of the Earth's surface. The habitats studied in marine biology include everything from the tiny layers of surface water in which organisms and abiotic items may be trapped in surface tension between the ocean and atmosphere, to the depths of the oceanic trenches, sometimes 10,000 meters or more beneath the surface of the ocean. Specific habitats include estuaries, coral reefs, kelp forests, seagrass meadows, the surrounds of seamounts and thermal vents, tidepools, muddy, sandy and rocky bottoms, and the open ocean (pelagic) zone, where solid objects are rare and the surface of the water is the only visible boundary. The organisms studied range from microscopic phytoplankton and zooplankton to huge cetaceans (whales) 25–32 meters (82–105 feet) in length. Marine ecology is the study of how marine organisms interact with each other and the environment. (Full article...)
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The platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is a semi-aquatic mammal endemic to eastern Australia, including Tasmania. Together with the four species of echidna, it is one of the five extant species of monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. It is the sole living representative of its family (Ornithorhynchidae) and genus (Ornithorhynchus), though a number of related species have been found in the fossil record. The bizarre appearance of this egg-laying, venomous, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal baffled European naturalists when they first encountered it, with some considering it an elaborate fraud.
Major topics
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Philip Henry Gosse FRS (/ɡɒs/; 6 April 1810 – 23 August 1888), known to his friends as Henry, was an English naturalist and populariser of natural science, prolific author, "Father of the Aquarium", scientific illustrator, lecturer, entrepreneur, and pioneer in the study of marine biology and ornithology. Gosse created and stocked the world's first public marine aquarium at London Zoo in 1853, and coined the term "aquarium". His 1854 work The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea was the catalyst for the aquarium craze in mid-Victorian England. Over thirty years later, Gosse co-authored a three-volume work on Rotifera (microscopic aquatic animals) considered at the time "the most complete and exhaustive history of the Rotifera in any language", with drawings of "extreme minuteness, accuracy, and beauty".
In addition, Gosse was one of the chief figures among Brethren (British evangelical Christians frequently referred to by the misnomer "Plymouth Brethren"). For over half his life he advanced his religious outlook by lecturing, evangelising, teaching, preaching, and watching for the Second Advent, as well as helping to spread the movement across the world. (Full article...)
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In Micrographia, Robert Hooke had applied the word cell to biological structures such as this piece of cork, but it was not until the 19th century that scientists considered cells the universal basis of life. (from History of biology) -
The "central dogma of molecular biology" (originally a "dogma" only in jest) was proposed by Francis Crick in 1958. This is Crick's reconstruction of how he conceived of the central dogma at the time. The solid lines represent (as it seemed in 1958) known modes of information transfer, and the dashed lines represent postulated ones. (from History of biology) -
A Genentech-sponsored sign declaring South San Francisco to be "The Birthplace of Biotechnology." (from History of biotechnology) -
An art scape image showing the relative importance of animals in a rain forest through a summary of (a) child's perception compared with (b) a scientific estimate of the importance. The size of the animal represents its importance. The child's mental image places importance on big cats, birds, butterflies, and then reptiles versus the actual dominance of social insects (such as ants). (from Conservation biology) -
Efforts are made to preserve the natural characteristics of Hopetoun Falls, Australia, without affecting visitors' access. (from Conservation biology) -
Aristotle's model of transmission of movements from parents to child, and of form from the father. The model is not fully symmetric. (from History of genetics) -
August Weismann's germ plasm theory. The hereditary material, the germ plasm, is confined to the gonads. Somatic cells (of the body) develop afresh in each generation from the germ plasm. (from History of genetics) -
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A pie chart image showing the relative biomass representation in a rain forest through a summary of children's perceptions from drawings and artwork (left), through a scientific estimate of actual biomass (middle), and by a measure of biodiversity (right). The biomass of social insects (middle) far outweighs the number of species (right). (from Conservation biology) -
Blending Inheritance (from History of genetics) -
Carefully engineered strains of the bacterium Escherichia coli are crucial tools in biotechnology as well as many other biological fields. (from History of biology) -
Inside of a 48-well thermal cycler, a device used to perform polymerase chain reaction on many samples at once (from History of biology) -
2016 conservation indicator which includes the following indicators: marine protected areas, terrestrial biome protection (global and national), and species protection (global and national) (from Conservation biology) -
Thomas Hunt Morgan discovered sex linked inheritance of the white eyed mutation in the fruit fly Drosophila in 1910, implying the gene was on the sex chromosome. (from History of genetics) -
The frontispiece to Erasmus Darwin's evolution-themed poem The Temple of Nature shows a goddess pulling back the veil from nature (in the person of Artemis). Allegory and metaphor have often played an important role in the history of biology. (from History of biology) -
Statue of Robert Koch in Berlin. Koch directly provided proof for the germ theory of diseases, therefore creating the scientific basis of public health, saving millions of lives. For his life's work Koch is seen as one of the founders of modern medicine. (from History of biology) -
Synthetic insulin crystals synthesized using recombinant DNA technology (from History of biotechnology) -
Diagram of Charles Darwin's pangenesis theory. Every part of the body emits tiny particles, gemmules, which migrate to the gonads and contribute to the fertilised egg and so to the next generation. The theory implied that changes to the body during an organism's life would be inherited, as proposed in Lamarckism. (from History of genetics) -
Frontispiece to a 1644 version of the expanded and illustrated edition of Historia Plantarum, originally written by Theophrastus around 300 BCE (from History of biology) -
Penicillin was viewed as a miracle drug that brought enormous profits and public expectations. (from History of biotechnology) -
Gregor Mendel, "father of modern genetics" (from History of biology) -
In the course of his travels, Alexander von Humboldt mapped the distribution of plants across landscapes and recorded a variety of physical conditions such as pressure and temperature. (from History of biology) -
Description of rare animals (写生珍禽图), by Huang Quan (903–965) during the Song dynasty (from History of biology) -
Clay models of animal livers dating between the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries BCE, found in the royal palace at Mari (from History of biology) -
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Charles Darwin's first sketch of an evolutionary tree from his First Notebook on Transmutation of Species (1837) (from History of biology) -
Wendell Stanley's crystallization of tobacco mosaic virus as a pure nucleoprotein in 1935 convinced many scientists that heredity might be explained purely through physics and chemistry. (from History of biology) -
A biomedical work by Ibn al-Nafis, an early adherent of experimental dissection who discovered the pulmonary and coronary circulation (from History of biology) -
Some biodiversity loss is more insidious than others due to systemic neglect. For example, sport killing and wanton waste of tons of native fishes from unregulated 21st century bowfishing in the United States. New conservation movements are needed to deter irreparable biodiversity loss to fragile freshwater ecosystems. (from Conservation biology) -
Mendelian inheritance states characteristics are discrete and are inherited by the parents. This image depicts a monohybrid cross and shows 3 generations: P1 generation (1), F1 generation (2), and F2 generation (3). Each organism inherits two alleles, one from each parent, that make up the genotype. The observed characteristic, the phenotype, is determined by the dominant allele in the genotype. In this monohybrid cross the dominant allele encodes for the colour red and the recessive allele encodes for the colour white. (from History of genetics) -
Brewing was an early example of biotechnology (from History of biotechnology) -
Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir on Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park (from Conservation biology) -
De arte venandi, by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, was an influential medieval natural history text that explored bird morphology. (from History of biology) -
Summary of 2006 IUCN Red List categories: EX (Extinct) — EW (Extinct in the Wild) — CR (Critically Endangered) — EN (Endangered) — VU (Vulnerable) — NT (Near Threatened) — LC (Least Concern) (from Conservation biology) -
More conservation research is needed for understanding ecology and behaviour of the dhole in central China. (from Conservation biology) -
Innovative laboratory glassware and experimental methods developed by Louis Pasteur and other biologists contributed to the young field of bacteriology in the late 19th century. (from History of biology) -
Thomas Hunt Morgan's illustration of crossing over, part of the Mendelian-chromosome theory of heredity (from History of biology) -
Cabinets of curiosities, such as that of Ole Worm, were centers of biological knowledge in the early modern period, bringing organisms from across the world together in one place. Before the Age of Exploration, naturalists had little idea of the sheer scale of biological diversity. (from History of biology) -
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Did you know -
- ... that endemics along the wildlife of Morocco include more than six hundred species of vascular plants and a single species of bird?
- ... that an extract of Alchemilla diademata, a plant endemic to Lebanon, shows antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus?
- ... that more than 5,000 hen fleas were recorded from the nest of a coal tit?
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