Descriptions of Topics

In the 'Index of Scientific Names and Topics', species are arranged alphabetically by scientific name and by various topics of natural history, biology, and management, and bibliographic citations that involve those species and topics are listed by number. The 23 topics used to characterize the references are described here.

Species Account: Includes identification keys and accounts in field guides and other articles or publications containing common knowledge on one or many species. This category includes general papers covering many topics on a species and papers that were not examined and therefore could not be indexed more specifically.

Distribution: Includes geographic distribution, locality data, county records, zoogeography, and density patterns of species.

Area Inventory: Includes checklists, survey results, and species composition for particular geographical areas, ecological communities, or habitats.

Taxonomy: Includes descriptions of new taxa, systematics, hybridization accounts, and museum records for Florida specimens.

Evolution and Genetics: Includes evolutionary adaptation, speciation, variation, phylogeny, natural selection, inheritance, genotypes, chromosomes, and population and molecular genetics for Florida specimens.

Fossil Record: The fossil occurrence of extant or extinct species (listed under the closest modern-day relative) in Florida.

Description and Morphology: Includes external physical appearance and dimensions, biometrics, size records, scalation, dentition, color/pattern characteristics and anomalies, and phenotypes.

Behavior: Includes instinctive, agonistic, courtship, territorial, and social behavior and responses to environmental factors. Also includes communication, basking, estivation, hibernation, burrowing, activity patterns, circadian rhythms, and thermal biology. Does not include feeding behavior, movements, and orientation.

Movements: Includes movement patterns, migration, dispersal, home range, homing, orientation, and locomotion.

Food Habits: Includes information on diets, nutrition, and feeding behavior.

Growth and Development: Includes growth rate, life cycle, developmental stages, longevity, embryology, ontogenesis, metamorphosis, neoteny, and age-specific changes in dimensions and other characteristics.

Physiology and Biochemistry: Includes gross internal anatomy, chemical composition, cytology, histology, energetics, metabolic rate, and ion and water relations (e.g., salinity tolerance, osmoregulation).

Habitat: Includes habitat selection, descriptions, and requirements.

Reproduction: Includes reproductive system, fertilization, sex determination, reproductive condition, sexual maturation, fecundity, reproductive productivity, nesting, hatching, characteristics of eggs and young, clutch/litter size, incubation/gestation periods, and all aspects of breeding except behavioral.

Population Study: Includes population structure (age and sex), dynamics, regulation, and censuses. Also includes survival, natality, and mortality from natural causes.

Diseases and Contaminants: Includes all topics related to an animal's health, such as parasites, disease organisms, disorders, environmental contaminants, bioaccumulation of toxic residues, and the effects of pesticides, toxins, pollution, and pH changes.

Associations with other Organisms: Includes associations with other species of animals or plants, such as symbiosis, commensalism, mutualism, predation, and competition.

Conservation and Management: Includes conservation and management plans, recommendations, policies, research, and techniques. Also includes species population status, legislation, and conflicts with humans (e.g., alligator bites).

Effects of Habitat Modification: Includes the effects of fire, forestry practices, urbanization (i.e., habitat destruction and encroachment, highway mortality, artificial lighting), dredging, radiation, thermal discharge, and man-induced changes in water levels and hydroperiods on populations of species.

Human Exploitation: Includes past and present exploitation and utilization of the species for food, sport, pets, and hides; overcollection of scientific specimens; incidental collection during other activities (e.g., trawling, fishing); economics; harvest and trade data; and collecting techniques.

Husbandry: Includes all aspects of captive care and husbandry, such as handling, feeding, breeding, veterinary care, and farming techniques.

Venom Research and Snakebite: Includes research on the effects and uses of snake venom, incidences of snakebite in Florida, and the treatment and prevention of snakebite.

Historical Account: Includes significant information about the species prior to 1940, except for descriptions of new taxa. Includes information on past distribution, exploitation/utilization, area inventories, and explorations. Does not include accounts dealing only with food habits, reproduction, or behavior.

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