Science Vocabulary #4: Species

Yesterday I mentioned the word "species." What is a "species"?

A common definition is "that of a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring of both genders, and separated from other such groups with which interbreeding does not (normally) happen."

So, although seahorses, sea dragons and pipefish are in the same family, they are not all the same species, and so don't interbreed with each other.

Science Vocabulary #3: Brood pouch

A brood puch is a sealed picket, located on a male sea horse's tail, in which the little seahorse babies grow. (I'm writing a book on seahorses, and reading a reference book about them to help me, which is why I talked about breeding season yesterday and "brood pouch" today!)

Of course not only seahorses have brood pouches.

First off, what's a brood? "a number of young produced or hatched at one time; a family of offspring or young"

With birds, "to sit upon (eggs) to hatch, as a bird; incubate." The same goes for seahorses, who "incubate" their eggs in their brood pouch.

Some animals have pouches in which they carry their young. The kangaroo carries her baby (called a joey) in her pouch.

The seahorse is a very interesting creature. It is a member of the Syngnathidae family (Syngnathidae is a long word, which comes from the Greek. Don't worry about it now!), which consists of seahorses, the pipefishes, and the weedy and leafy sea dragons. Every other species on earth, that we know of, that has male and female members of the species, has the female become pregnant. Not so the seahorse, pipefish and sea dragon.

In these three species, and in these three alone, out of the millions on the earth, it is the male becomes pregnant.

Science Vocabulary #1: aquaculture

Each day, we will post a word for you to learn to build your science vocabularly. Write the word in your notebook, and do some research into the word. Try to use it in a sentence, which will demonstrate whether or not you really understand the word and how it is used.

Depending on how old you are, you have probably learned what "prefixes" and "suffixes" are in school. If not, I'm going to tell you.

A prefix is "an affix placed before a base or another prefix, as un- in unkind, un- and re- in unrewarding."

A suffix is "an affix that follows the element to which it is added, as -ly in kindly."

Most prefixes, used in scientific terms, come from Latin or Greek.

For example, in aquaculture, the prefix is aqua. Auqua means water in Latin. Culture, in this context, does not mean a social culture, like a civilization, but rather culture as in cultivation, such as "the cultivation of microorganisms, as bacteria, or of tissues, for scientific study, medicinal use, etc." ("Cult" is another prefix, which we'll discuss at a different time.")

So aquaculture is "the cultivation of aquatic animals and plants, esp. fish, shellfish, and seaweed, in natural or controlled marine or freshwater environments; underwater agriculture"

Another word that uses the prefix aqua is "aquanaut." Again, aqua means water, so aquanaut means "an undersea explorer, esp. one who skin-dives from or lives for an extended period of time in a submerged dwelling".

(Explaininng how the word "naut" was derived, such as astronaut, aquanaut, aeronaut, would also take time, and I'll explain it later on, too. Either subscribe to or Follow this blog so you can find out all about it, unless you want to do research on your own.)

How about aquifer? It doesn't have "aqua" but it has "aqui", so you can still figure out that it has something to do with water. "any geological formation containing or conducting ground water, esp. one that supplies the water for wells, springs, etc"