User:Vtaylor/Coastal Florida

Crabs

Create - A - Fish

Many technical terms, names of biological structures, and names of animals and plants, are formed from Greek and Latin roots. If you are familiar with these roots, you can 'translate' the technical terms into English.

One particularly useful example is the names of taxa. The formal taxonomic names for many animal groups (from phylum down to species) are often formed from roots that refer to distinctive features of the animals. When used in pairs, such as in the familiar Latin binomials for genus and species, both the genus and species names are often descriptive. Task:

Use the lists below to choose at least 4 descriptive Latin and Greek roots. Group them into your own new fish genus and species. You can add a letter here or there to make it sound better if you want… Here’s a couple examples using terms from the list below:

• Octoechina macrognathus – this would be an 8 spined, big nosed fish.

• Purpurechinaornatuspinni nasiphagoruberodon – and this one would be the purple spined fancy finned nose eating red tooth fish!

Many fish and other marine species have descriptive genus and species names…after you’ve created your new species…use your colored pencils to draw it…and be ready to show it off to the group! Try pronouncing your creation’s name too.

Colors: albus - white auranti - orange leucos - white caeruleus - blue melano, melas - black, dark chloros, chloro - green nigra, niger, nigrum - black chromis - color, colorful porphyr, purpur - purple chryseus, chrys - golden yellow rubens, ruber - red cyano - blue or green viridis - green erythro - red aureus - gold fuscus - dark brown xanthos - yellow glauc, glauco - grey or bluish grey flavi, flavus - light yellow

Descriptors: echino - spiny acanth – spine or thorny grandis - large macro – big or large micro - small platy - flat astro, astero - star fasciata - banded fimbri, fimbria – edge or border guttatus – spotted or speckles lineatus – striped or lined maculatus – spotted or blotched notat - marked ornatus – ornate or fancy punctata –spotted or spots striata, stratus - striped taenia - band, ribbon variegat – striped or variegated

Body Parts: cauda - tail odon, odus - tooth cephale, ceps - head stern – chest, breast ops -face cheil - lip pector - chest derma - skin pinni - wing or fin dorsal, dorsalis -back pod, ped -foot gaster - belly rhyncho, rhynchus – nose or snout gnath, gnathus - jaw rostra - snout, beak nasi -nose ventral – belly or stomach

Numbers: mono, uni – one or single diplo, di, bi – two or double tres, tris, tri – three or triple tetra, quad -four penta -five hexa, hex - six hepta - seven octo, octa - eight ennea, nona - nine deca - ten poly - many

Some Other Terms: ichthys - fish neo – new or recent crypt - hidden opsis - appearance geo - earth para – near or close to haplo -simple phago - eating hyper - over pseudo –fake or false hypo - under -ensis - originating from

Draw your fish on the back if you want…or on another sheet of paper…good luck!