title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: Once many Americans had begun to immigrate to the new territory, it became apparent that there would be continued skirmishes with local Creek and Miccosukee peoples and white settlers encroaching on their land. The United States government favored removal policies, but local indigenous groups in Florida refused to leave without fighting. The nineteenth century saw three Seminole Wars. In 1823, territorial governor William Duval and James Gadsden signed the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, forcing Seminoles onto a four million acre reservation in central Florida. The Second Seminole War (1835–1842) was the longest war of Indian removal and resulted when the United States government attempted to move the Seminole people from Central Florida to a Creek reservation west of the Mississippi River. As a result of the Seminole War, Seminole prisoners, including the prominent leader Osceola, were held captive in the Castillo de San Marcos, renamed Fort Marion after General Francis Marion, who fought in the American Revolution, in the 1830s.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: By 1840, the territory's population had reached 54,477 people. Half the population were enslaved Africans. Steamboats were popular on the Apalachicola and St. Johns River and there were several plans for railroad construction. The territory south of present-day Gainesville was sparsely populated by whites.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: On January 7, 1861, only three days before Florida would secede and join the Confederacy, a group of 125 Florida militia marched on Fort Marion. The fort was guarded by a single sergeant, who surrendered the fort after being provided with a receipt. Gen. Robert E. Lee, who was commander of coastal defenses at the time, ordered that the fort's cannons be removed and sent to more strategic locations, such as Fernandina and the mouth of the St. Johns River.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: The town raised a militia unit, known as the Florida Independent Blues or the Saint Augustine Blues. They were soon joined by the Milton Guard, another militia unit.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: In an effort to help blockade runners avoid capture, the Confederate government ordered all lighthouses to be extinguished. In St. Augustine, the customhouse officer, Paul Arnau, organized the "Coastal Guard," a group who worked to disable the lighthouses along Florida's east coast. They started by removing and hiding the lenses from the St. Augustine Light before moving south. After successfully dismantling the lighthouses at Cape Canaveral, Jupiter Inlet, and Key Biscayne, Arnau returned to St. Augustine. He would then serve as mayor from 1861 until early 1862, just before the Federals took over the city.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: The Confederate authorities remained in control of St. Augustine for fourteen months, although it was barely defended. The Union conducted a blockade of shipping. In 1862 Union troops gained control of St. Augustine and controlled it through the rest of the war. With the economy already suffering, many residents fled.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: Henry Flagler, a co-founder with John D. Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Company, spent the winter of 1883 in St. Augustine and found the city charming, but considered its hotels and transportation systems inadequate. He had the idea to make St. Augustine a winter resort for wealthy Americans from the north, and to bring them south he bought several short line railroads and combined these in 1885 to form the Florida East Coast Railway. He built a railroad bridge over the St. Johns River in 1888, opening up the Atlantic coast of Florida to development.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: Flagler finished construction in 1887 on two large ornate hotels in the city, the 450-room Hotel Ponce de Leon and the 250-room Hotel Alcazar. The next year, he purchased the Casa Monica Hotel (renaming it the Cordova Hotel) across the street from both the Alcazar and the Ponce de Leon. His chosen architectural firm, Carrère and Hastings, radically altered the appearance of St. Augustine with these hotels, giving it a skyline and beginning an architectural trend in the state characterized by the use of the Spanish Renaissance Revival and Moorish Revival styles. With the opening of the Ponce de Leon in 1888, St. Augustine became the winter resort of American high society for a few years.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: When Flagler's Florida East Coast Railroad was extended southward to Palm Beach and then Miami in the early 20th century, the wealthy stopped in St. Augustine en route to the southern resorts. Wealthy vacationers began to customarily spend their winters in South Florida, where the climate was warmer and freezes were rare. St. Augustine nevertheless still attracted tourists, and eventually became a destination for families traveling in automobiles as new highways were built and Americans took to the road for annual summer vacations. The tourist industry soon became the dominant sector of the local economy.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: In late 1963, nearly a decade after the Supreme Court ruling in "Brown v. Board of Education" that segregation of schools was unconstitutional, African Americans were still trying to get St. Augustine to integrate the public schools in the city. They were also trying to integrate public accommodations, such as lunch counters, and were met with arrests and Ku Klux Klan violence. Local college students held non-violent protests throughout the city, including sit-ins at the local Woolworth's, picket lines, and marches through the downtown. These protests were often met with police violence. Homes of African Americans were firebombed, black leaders were assaulted and threatened with death, and others were fired from their jobs.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: In the spring of 1964, St. Augustine civil rights leader Robert Hayling asked the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and its leader Martin Luther King Jr. for assistance. From May until July 1964, King and Hayling, along with Andrew Young, organized marches, sit-ins, and other forms of peaceful protest in St. Augustine. Hundreds of black and white civil rights supporters were arrested, and the jails were filled to capacity. At the request of Hayling and King, white civil rights supporters from the North, including students, clergy, and well-known public figures, came to St. Augustine and were arrested together with Southern activists.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: St. Augustine was the only place in Florida where King was arrested; his arrest there occurred on June 11, 1964, on the steps of the Monson Motor Lodge's restaurant. The demonstrations came to a climax when a group of black and white protesters jumped into the hotel's segregated swimming pool. In response to the protest, James Brock, the manager of the hotel and the president of the Florida Hotel & Motel Association, poured what he claimed to be muriatic acid into the pool to burn the protesters. Photographs of this, and of a policeman jumping into the pool to arrest the protesters, were broadcast around the world.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: The Ku Klux Klan responded to these protests with violent attacks that were widely reported in national and international media. Popular revulsion against the Klan and police violence in St. Augustine generated national sympathy for the black protesters and became a key factor in Congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, leading eventually to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, both of which provided federal enforcement of constitutional rights.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: In 1965, St. Augustine celebrated the 400th anniversary of its founding, and jointly with the State of Florida, inaugurated a program to restore part of the colonial city. The Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board was formed to reconstruct more than thirty-six buildings to their historical appearance, which was completed within a few years. When the State of Florida abolished the Board in 1997, the City of St. Augustine assumed control of the reconstructed buildings, as well as other historic properties including the Government House. In 2010, the city transferred control of the historic buildings to UF Historic St. Augustine, Inc., a direct support organization of the University of Florida.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: In 2015, St. Augustine celebrated the 450th anniversary of its founding with a four-day long festival and a visit from Felipe VI of Spain and Queen Letizia of Spain.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and (21.99%) is water. Access to the Atlantic Ocean is via the St. Augustine Inlet of the Matanzas River.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: St. Augustine has a humid subtropical climate ("Cfa") typical of the Gulf and South Atlantic states. The low latitude and coastal location give the city a mostly warm and sunny climate. Unlike much of the contiguous United States, St. Augustine's driest time of year is winter. The hot and wet season extends from May through October, while the cool and dry season extends November through April.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: In summer, highs are in the 80s to 90s and lows are in the 70s. The Bermuda High pumps in hot and unstable tropical air from the Bahamas and Gulf of Mexico, which help create the daily thundershowers that are typical in summer months. Intense but very brief downpours are common in summer in the city. Fall and spring are warm and sunny with highs from 74 °F to 87 °F and lows in the 50s to 70s.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: In winter, St. Augustine has generally mild and sunny weather typical of the Florida peninsula. The coolest months are from December through February, with highs from 67 °F to 70 °F and lows from 47 °F to 51 °F. From November through April, St. Augustine often has long periods of rainless weather. April can see near drought conditions with brush fires and water restrictions in place. St. Augustine averages 4.6 frosts per year. The record low of happened on January 21, 1985. Hurricanes occasionally impact the region; however, like most areas prone to such storms, St. Augustine rarely suffers a direct hit by a major hurricane. The last direct hit by a major hurricane to the city was Hurricane Dora in 1964. Extensive flooding occurred in the downtown area of St. Augustine when Hurricane Matthew passed east of the city in October 2016.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: As of the 2020 United States Census, there were 14,329 people and 5,828 households in the city. The racial makeup of the city was 84.6% white, 9.2% African American, 0.2% Native American, 0.5% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 5.9% Hispanic or Latino, and 4.2% from two or more races.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: 2.2% of the population were under 5 years old, 8.7% under 18 years old, and 25.5% were 65 years and over. 57.9% of the population were female.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: There were 1,230 veterans living in the city between 2016-2020 and 6.6% of the population were foreign born persons.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: The median value of owner-occupied housing units was $294,600. The median gross rent was $1,118. 91.2% of households had a computer and 83.0% of households had a broadband internet subscription.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: 93.8% of the population 25 years and older had a high school degree or higher and 37.4% of that same population had a Bachelor's degree or higher.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: The median household income was $60,455. The per capita income was $33,060. 17.0% lived below the Poverty threshold.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: The city of St. Augustine operates under a city commission government form with an elected mayor, vice mayor, and city commission. Additionally, the government includes a city manager, city attorney, city clerk, and various city boards.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: Bus service is operated by the Sunshine Bus Company, based in St. Augustine Beach. Buses operate mainly between shopping centers across town, but a few go to Hastings and Jacksonville, where one can connect to JTA for additional service across Jacksonville.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: St. Augustine has one public airport north of the downtown. It has three runways and two seaplane lanes. There is currently no scheduled service to the Airport following ViaAir's suspension of service to Charlotte in 2018. Various private jets and tour helicopters also operate from the airport. Northrop Grumman runs a large manufacturing plant on the grounds, where the E-2 Hawkeye is produced. Jacksonville International Airport is 40 miles to the north along I-95.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: Primary and secondary education in St. Augustine is overseen by the St. Johns County School District.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: There are four zoned elementary schools with sections of the city limits in their attendance boundaries: John A. Crookshank (outside the city limits), R. B. Hunt, Ketterlinus, and Osceola (outside the city limits).


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: There are two zoned middle schools (both outside the city limits): R. J. Murray Middle School, and Sebastian Middle School. There are no county high schools located within St. Augustine's current city limits, but St. Augustine High School is the designated senior high school for residentially-zoned land in St. Augustine. Additionally Pedro Menendez High School, and St. Johns Technical High School are located in the vicinity.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: The Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, a state-operated boarding school for deaf and blind students, was founded in the city in 1885. The Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine operates the St. Joseph Academy, Florida's oldest Catholic high school, to the west of the city.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: There are several institutions of higher education in and around St. Augustine. Flagler College is a four-year liberal arts college founded in 1968. It is located in the former Ponce de Leon Hotel in downtown St. Augustine. St. Johns River State College, a state college in the Florida College System, has its St. Augustine campus just west of the city. Also in the area are the University of North Florida, Jacksonville University, and Florida State College at Jacksonville in Jacksonville.


title: St. Augustine, Florida

text: The institution now known as Florida Memorial University was located in St. Augustine from 1918 to 1968, when it relocated to its present campus in Miami. Originally known as Florida Baptist Academy, then Florida Normal, and then Florida Memorial College, it was a historically black institution and had a wide impact on St. Augustine while it was located there. During World War II it was chosen as the site for training the first blacks in the U. S. Signal Corps. Among its faculty members was Zora Neale Hurston; a historic marker is placed at the house where she lived while teaching at Florida Memorial (and where she wrote her autobiography "Dust Tracks on a Road".)


title: Cuckoo

text: Cuckoos are birds in the Cuculidae family, the sole taxon in the order Cuculiformes . The cuckoo family includes the common or European cuckoo, roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals and anis. The coucals and anis are sometimes separated as distinct families, the Centropodidae and Crotophagidae respectively. The cuckoo order Cuculiformes is one of three that make up the Otidimorphae, the other two being the turacos and the bustards. The family Cuculidae contains 150 species which are divided into 33 genera.


title: Cuckoo

text: The cuckoos are generally medium-sized slender birds. Most species live in trees, though a sizeable minority are ground-dwelling. The family has a cosmopolitan distribution; the majority of species are tropical. Some species are migratory. The cuckoos feed on insects, insect larvae and a variety of other animals, as well as fruit. Some species are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other species and giving rise to the metaphor "cuckoo's egg", but the majority of species raise their own young.


title: Cuckoo

text: Cuckoos have played a role in human culture for thousands of years, appearing in Greek mythology as sacred to the goddess Hera. In Europe, the cuckoo is associated with spring, and with cuckoldry, for example in Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Lost". In India, cuckoos are sacred to Kamadeva, the god of desire and longing, whereas in Japan, the cuckoo symbolises unrequited love.


title: Cuckoo

text: Cuckoos are medium-sized birds that range in size from the little bronze cuckoo, at 17 g and , to moderately large birds, ranging from in length, such as the giant coua of Madagascar, the coral-billed ground-cuckoo of Indochina, the channel-billed cuckoo and various large Indo-Pacific coucals such as the goliath coucal of Halmahera, Timor coucal, buff-headed coucal, ivory-billed coucal, violaceous coucal, and larger forms of the pheasant coucal. The channel-billed cuckoo, at and is the largest parasitic cuckoo. There is generally little sexual dimorphism in size, but where it exists, it can be either the male or the female that is larger. One of the most important distinguishing features of the family are the feet, which are zygodactyl, meaning that the two inner toes point forward and the two outer backward. There are two basic body forms, arboreal species (like the common cuckoo) which are slender and have short tarsi, and terrestrial species (like the roadrunners) which are more heavy set and have long tarsi. Almost all species have long tails which are used for steering in terrestrial species and as a rudder during flight in the arboreal species. The wing shape also varies with lifestyle, with the more migratory species like the black-billed cuckoo possessing long narrow wings capable of strong direct flight, and the more terrestrial and sedentary cuckoos like the coucals and malkohas having shorter rounded wings and a more laboured gliding flight.


title: Cuckoo

text: The subfamily Cuculinae are the brood-parasitic cuckoos of the Old World. They tend to conform to the classic shape, with (usually) long tails, short legs, long narrow wings and an arboreal lifestyle. The largest species, the channel-billed cuckoo, also has the most outsized bill in the family, resembling that of a hornbill. The subfamily Phaenicophaeinae are the non-parasitic cuckoos of the Old World, and include the couas, malkohas, and ground-cuckoos. They are more terrestrial cuckoos, with strong and often long legs and short rounded wings. The subfamily typically has brighter plumage and brightly coloured bare skin around the eye. The coucals are another terrestrial Old World subfamily of long tailed long legged and short winged cuckoos. They are large heavyset birds with the largest, the greater black coucal, being around the same size as the channel-billed cuckoo. The subfamily Coccyzinae are arboreal and long tailed as well, with a number of large insular forms. The New World ground cuckoos are similar to the Asian ground-cuckoos in being long legged and terrestrial, and includes the long billed roadrunner, which can reach speeds of 30 km/h when chasing prey. The final subfamily are the atypical anis, which include the small clumsy anis and the larger guira cuckoo. The anis have massive bills and smooth glossy feathers.


title: Cuckoo

text: The feathers of the cuckoos are generally soft, and often become waterlogged in heavy rain. Cuckoos often sun themselves after rain, and the anis hold their wings open in the manner of a vulture or cormorant while drying. There is considerable variation in the plumage exhibited by the family. Some species, particularly the brood parasites have cryptic plumage, whereas others have bright and elaborate plumage. This is particularly true of the "Chrysococcyx" or glossy cuckoos, which have iridescent plumage. Some cuckoos have a resemblance to hawks in the genus "Accipiter" with barring on the underside; this apparently alarms potential hosts, allowing the female to access a host nest. The young of some brood parasites are coloured so as to resemble the young of the host. For example, the Asian koels breeding in India have black offspring to resemble their crow hosts, whereas in the Australian koels the chicks are brown like the honeyeater hosts. Sexual dimorphism in plumage is uncommon in the cuckoos, being most common in the parasitic Old World species. Cuckoos have 10 and 9–13 . All species have 10 apart from the anis which have 8.


title: Cuckoo

text: The cuckoos have a cosmopolitan distribution, ranging across all the world's continents except Antarctica. They are absent from the south west of South America, the far north and north west of North America, and the driest areas of the Middle East and North Africa (although they occur there as passage migrants). They generally only occur as vagrants in the oceanic islands of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, but one species breeds on a number of Pacific islands and another is a winter migrant across much of the Pacific.


title: Cuckoo

text: Cuculinae is the most widespread subfamily of cuckoos, and is distributed across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and Oceania. Amongst the Phaenicophaeinae cuckoos the malkohas and Asian ground-cuckoos are restricted to southern Asia, the couas are endemic to Madagascar and the yellowbill widespread across Africa. The coucals are distributed from Africa through tropical Asia down into Australia and the Solomon Islands. The remaining three subfamilies have a New World distribution, all three are found in both North and South America. The Coccyzinae reaches the furthest north of the three subfamilies, breeding in Canada, whereas the anis reach as far north as Florida and the typical ground-cuckoos the south west United States.


title: Cuckoo

text: For the cuckoos suitable habitat provides a source of food (principally insects and especially caterpillars) and a place to breed, for brood parasites the need is for suitable habitat for the host species. Cuckoos occur in a wide variety of habitats. The majority of species occur in forests and woodland, principally in the evergreen rainforests of the tropics. Some species inhabit or are even restricted to mangrove forests; these include the little bronze cuckoo of Australia, some malkohas, coucals, and the aptly-named mangrove cuckoo of the New World. In addition to forests some species of cuckoo occupy more open environments; this can include even arid areas like deserts in the case of the greater roadrunner or the pallid cuckoo. Temperate migratory species like the common cuckoo inhabit a wide range of habitats in order to make maximum use of the potential brood hosts, from reed beds (where they parasitise reed warblers) to treeless moors (where they parasitise meadow pipits).


title: Cuckoo

text: Most species of cuckoo are sedentary, but some undertake regular seasonal migrations and others undertake partial migrations over part of their range.


title: Cuckoo

text: Species breeding at higher latitudes migrate to warmer climates during the winter due to food availability. The long-tailed koel, which breeds in New Zealand, flies to its wintering grounds in Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia, a feat described as "perhaps the most remarkable overwater migration of any land bird." The yellow-billed cuckoo and black-billed cuckoo breed in North America and fly across the Caribbean Sea, a non-stop flight of 4000 km. Other long migration flights include the lesser cuckoo, which flies from Africa to India, and the common cuckoo of Europe, which flies non-stop over the Mediterranean Sea and Sahara Desert on the voyage between Europe and central Africa.


title: Cuckoo

text: Within Africa, ten species make regular intra-continental migrations that are described as polarised; that is, they spend the non-breeding season in the tropical centre of the continent and move north and south to breed in the more arid and open savannah and deserts. This is the same as the situation in the Neotropics, where no species have this migration pattern, or tropical Asia, where a single species does. 83% of the Australian species are partial migrants within Australia or travel to New Guinea and Indonesia after the breeding season.


title: Cuckoo

text: In some species the migration is diurnal, as in the channel-billed cuckoo, or nocturnal, as in the yellow-billed cuckoo.


title: Cuckoo

text: The cuckoos are for the most part solitary birds that seldom occur in pairs or groups. The biggest exception to this are the anis of the Americas, which have evolved cooperative breeding and other social behaviours. For the most part the cuckoos are also diurnal as opposed to nocturnal, but many species call at night (see below). The cuckoos are also generally a shy and retiring family, more often heard than seen. The exception to this are again the anis, which are often extremely trusting towards humans and other species.


title: Cuckoo

text: Most cuckoos are insectivorous, and in particular are specialised in eating larger insects and caterpillars, including noxious hairy types avoided by other birds. They are unusual among birds in processing their prey prior to swallowing, rubbing it back and forth on hard objects such as branches and then crushing it with special bony plates in the back of the mouth. They also take a wide range of other insects and animal prey. The lizard cuckoos of the Caribbean have, in the relative absence of birds of prey, specialised in taking lizards. Larger, ground types such as coucals and roadrunners also feed variously on snakes, lizards, small rodents, and other birds, which they bludgeon with their strong bills. Ground species may employ different techniques to catch prey. A study of two coua species in Madagascar found that the Coquerel's coua obtained prey by walking and gleaning on the forest floor, whereas the red-capped coua ran and pounced on prey. Both species also showed seasonal flexibility in prey and foraging techniques.


title: Cuckoo

text: The parasitic cuckoos are generally not recorded as participating in mixed-species feeding flocks, although some studies in eastern Australia found several species participated in the non-breeding season, but were mobbed and unable to do so in the breeding season. Ground-cuckoos of the genus "Neomorphus" are sometimes seen feeding in association with army ant swarms, although they are not obligate ant-followers as are some antbirds. The anis are ground feeders that follow cattle and other large mammals when foraging; in a similar fashion to cattle egrets they snatch prey flushed by the cattle and enjoy higher foraging success rates in this way.


title: Cuckoo

text: Several koels, couas, and the channel-billed cuckoo feed mainly on fruit, but they are not exclusively frugivores. The parasitic koels and channel-billed cuckoo in particular consume mainly fruit when raised by frugivore hosts such as the Australasian figbird and pied currawong. Other species occasionally take fruit as well. Couas consume fruit in the dry season when prey is harder to find.


title: Cuckoo

text: The cuckoos are an extremely diverse group of birds with regards to breeding systems. The majority of species are monogamous, but there are exceptions. The anis and the guira cuckoo lay their eggs in communal nests, which is built by all members of the group. Incubation, brooding and territorial defence duties are shared by all members of the group. Within these species the anis breed as groups of monogamous pairs, but the guira cuckoos are not monogamous within the group, exhibiting a polygynandrous breeding system. This group nesting behaviour is not completely cooperative; females compete and may remove others' eggs when laying hers. Eggs are usually only ejected early in the breeding season in the anis, but can be ejected at any time by guria cuckoos. Polyandry has been confirmed in the African black coucal and is suspected to occur in the other coucals, perhaps explaining the reversed sexual dimorphism in the group.


title: Cuckoo

text: The majority of cuckoo species, including malkohas, couas, coucals, and roadrunners and most other American cuckoos, build their own nests, although a large minority engage in brood parasitism (see below). Most of these species nest in trees or bushes, but the coucals lay their eggs in nests on the ground or in low shrubs. Though on some occasions non-parasitic cuckoos parasitize other species, the parent still helps feed the chick.


title: Cuckoo

text: The nests of cuckoos vary in the same way as the breeding systems. The nests of malkohas and Asian ground cuckoos are shallow platforms of twigs, but those of coucals are globular or domed nests of grasses. The New World cuckoos build saucers or bowls in the case of the New World ground cuckoos.


title: Cuckoo

text: Non-parasitic cuckoos, like most other non-passerines, lay white eggs, but many of the parasitic species lay coloured eggs to match those of their passerine hosts.


title: Cuckoo

text: The young of all species are altricial. Non-parasitic cuckoos leave the nest before they can fly, and some New World species have the shortest incubation periods among birds.


title: Cuckoo

text: About 56 of the Old World species and 3 of the New World species (pheasant, pavonine, and striped) are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other birds and giving rise to the metaphor "cuckoo's egg". These species are obligate brood parasites, meaning that they only reproduce in this fashion. The best-known example is the European common cuckoo. In addition to the above noted species, others sometimes engage in non-obligate brood parasitism, laying their eggs in the nests of members of their own species in addition to raising their own young. Brood parasitism has even been seen in Greater roadrunners where its eggs were seen in the nests of Common ravens and Northern mockingbirds. The shells of the eggs of brood-parasitic cuckoos are usually thicker and stronger than those of their hosts. This protects the egg if a host parent tries to damage it, and may make it resistant to cracking when dropped into a host nest. Cuckoo eggshells have two distinct layers. In some nesting cuckoos, there is a thick outer chalky layer that is not present on the eggs of most brood-parasitic species, although there are some exceptions and the eggshells of Old World parasitic cuckoos have a thick outer layer that is different from that of nesting cuckoos.


title: Cuckoo

text: The cuckoo egg hatches earlier than the host eggs, and the cuckoo chick grows faster; in most cases the chick evicts the eggs and/or young of the host species. The chick has no time to learn this behavior, nor does any parent stay around to teach it, so it must be an instinct passed on genetically.


title: Cuckoo

text: One reason for the cuckoo egg's hatching sooner is that, after the egg is fully formed, the female cuckoo holds it in her oviduct for another 24 hours prior to laying. This means that the egg has already had 24 hours of internal incubation. Furthermore, the cuckoo's internal temperature is 3-4 degrees Celsius higher than the temperature at which the egg is incubated in the nest, and the higher temperature means that the egg incubates faster, so at the time it is laid the egg has already had the equivalent of 30 hours incubation in a nest.


title: Cuckoo

text: The chick encourages the host to keep pace with its high growth rate with its rapid begging call and the chick's open mouth which serves as a sign stimulus.


title: Cuckoo

text: Since obligate brood parasites need to successfully trick their host in order for them to reproduce, they have evolved adaptations at several stages of breeding. However, there are high costs of parasitism on the host, leading to strong selections on the host to recognize and reject parasitic eggs. The adaptations and counter-adaptations between hosts and parasites have led to a coevolution arms race. This means that if one of the species involved were to stop adapting, it would lose the race to the other species, resulting in decreased fitness of the losing species. The egg-stage adaptation is the best studied stage of this arms race.


title: Cuckoo

text: Cuckoos have various strategies for getting their eggs into host nests. Different species use different strategies based on host defensive strategies. Female cuckoos have secretive and fast laying behaviors, but in some cases, males have been shown to lure host adults away from their nests so that the female can lay her egg in the nest. Some host species may directly try to prevent cuckoos laying eggs in their nest in the first place – birds whose nests are at high risk of cuckoo-contamination are known to 'mob' cuckoos to drive them out of the area. Parasitic cuckoos are grouped into gentes, with each gens specializing in a particular host. There is some evidence that the gentes are genetically different from one another.


title: Cuckoo

text: Female parasitic cuckoos sometimes specialize and lay eggs that closely resemble the eggs of their chosen host. Some birds are able to distinguish cuckoo eggs from their own, leading to those eggs least like the host's being thrown out of the nest. Parasitic cuckoos that show the highest levels of egg mimicry are those whose hosts exhibit high levels of egg rejection behavior. Some hosts do not exhibit egg rejection behavior and the cuckoo eggs look very dissimilar from the host eggs. It has also been shown in a study of the European common cuckoos that females will lay their egg in the nest of a host that has eggs that look similar to its own. Other species of cuckoo lay "cryptic" eggs, which are dark in color when their hosts' eggs are light. This is a trick to hide the egg from the host, and is exhibited in cuckoos that parasitize hosts with dark, domed nests. Some adult parasitic cuckoos completely destroy the host's clutch if they reject the cuckoo egg. In this case, raising the cuckoo chick is less of a cost than the alternative, total clutch destruction.


title: Cuckoo

text: There are two main hypotheses on the cognitive mechanisms that mediate host distinguishing of eggs. One hypothesis is true recognition, which states that a host compares eggs present in its clutch to an internal template (learnt or innate), to identify if parasitic eggs are present. However, memorizing a template of a parasitic egg is costly and imperfect and likely not identical to each host's egg. The other one is the discordancy hypothesis, which states that a host compares eggs in the clutch and identifies the odd ones. However, if parasitic eggs made the majority of eggs in the clutch, then hosts will end up rejecting their own eggs. More recent studies have found that it is more likely that both mechanisms contribute to host discrimination of parasitic eggs since one compensates for the limitations of the other.


title: Cuckoo

text: The parasitism is not necessarily entirely detrimental to the host species. A 16-year dataset was used in 2014 to find that carrion crow nests in a region of Northern Spain were more successful overall (more likely to produce at least one crow fledgling) when parasitised by the great spotted cuckoo. The researchers attributed this to a strong-smelling predator-repelling substance secreted by cuckoo chicks when attacked, and noted that the interactions were not necessarily simply parasitic or mutualistic. This relationship was not observed for any other host species, or for any other species of cuckoo. Great spotted cuckoo chicks do not evict host eggs or young, and are smaller and weaker than carrion crow chicks, so both of these factors may have contributed to the effect observed.


title: Cuckoo

text: However, subsequent research using a dataset from southern Spain failed to replicate these findings, and the second research team also criticised the methodology used in experiments described in the first paper. The authors of the first study have responded to points made in the second and both groups agree that further research is needed before the mutualistic effect can be considered proven.


title: Cuckoo

text: Cuckoos are often highly secretive and in many cases best known for their wide repertoire of calls. These are usually relatively simple, resembling whistles, flutes, or hiccups. The calls are used in order to demonstrate ownership of a territory and to attract a mate. Within a species the calls are remarkably consistent across the range, even in species with very large ranges. This suggests, along with the fact that many species are not raised by their true parents, that the calls of cuckoos are innate and not learnt. Although cuckoos are diurnal, many species call at night.


title: Cuckoo

text: The cuckoo family gets its English and scientific names from the call of the male common cuckoo, which is also familiar from cuckoo clocks. Some of the names of other species and genera are also derived from their calls, for example the koels of Asia and Australasia. In most cuckoos the calls are distinctive to particular species, and are useful for identification. Several cryptic species are best identified on the basis of their calls.


title: Cuckoo

text: The family Cuculidae was introduced by the English zoologist William Elford Leach in a guide to the contents of the British Museum published in 1820.


title: Cuckoo

text: There is very little fossil record of cuckoos and their evolutionary history remains unclear. "Dynamopterus" was an Oligocene genus of large cuckoo, though it may have been related to cariamas instead.


title: Cuckoo

text: A 2014 genome analysis by Erich Jarvis and collaborators found a clade of birds that contains the orders Cuculiformes (cuckoos), Musophagiformes (turacos), and Otidiformes (bustards). This has been named the Otidimorphae. Relationships between the orders is unclear.


title: Cuckoo

text: The following cladogram shows the phylogenetic relationships between the genera. It is from a 2005 study by Michael Sorenson and Robert Payne and is based solely on an analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequences. The number of species in each genus is taken from the list maintained by Frank Gill, Pamela Rasmussen and David Donsker on behalf of the International Ornithological Committee (IOC).


title: Cuckoo

text: The family Cuculidae contains 150 species which are divided into 33 genera. These numbers include two species that have become extinct in historical times: the snail-eating coua from Madagascar and the Saint Helena cuckoo which is placed in its own genus Nannococcyx.


title: Cuckoo

text: In Greek mythology the god Zeus transformed himself into a cuckoo so that he could seduce the goddess Hera, to whom the bird was sacred. In England, William Shakespeare alludes to the common cuckoo's association with spring, and with cuckoldry, in the courtly springtime song in his play "Love's Labours Lost". In India, cuckoos are sacred to Kamadeva, the god of desire and longing, whereas in Japan, the cuckoo symbolises unrequited love. Cuckoos are a sacred animal to the Bon religion of Tibet.


title: Cuckoo

text: The orchestral composition "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring" by Frederick Delius imitates sounds of the cuckoo.


title: Cuckoo

text: The greater roadrunner, a cuckoo, is the state bird of the US state of New Mexico and is a common symbol of the American Southwest in general. "Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner" was a long running series of cartoons by Warner Brothers Studios that has had enduring popularity from the time the characters were created in 1949 through the present and helps define the image of the roadrunner in popular culture.


title: Cuckoo

text: Since 1962, Sonny the Cuckoo Bird has been the mascot for Cocoa Puffs, a product of General Mills that was launched six years before the character was created.


title: Cuckoo

text: In "The Legend of Zelda" series of games created by Nintendo, there is a fictional species of bird known as the Cucco that was likely named after the Cuckoo, first appearing in 1992 with "". However, the species is more similar to a Chicken than a real Cuckoo.


title: Cuckoo

text: The metaphor of the cuckoo's egg is referenced in the title of the anime and manga series A Couple of Cuckoos, where a pair of infants are switched at birth and raised by the other's family.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, commonly referred to as Leviathan, is a book written by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and published in 1651 (revised Latin edition 1668). Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan. The work concerns the structure of society and legitimate government, and is regarded as one of the earliest and most influential examples of social contract theory. Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651), it argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Hobbes wrote that civil war and the brute situation of a state of nature ("the war of all against all") could be avoided only by strong, undivided government.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: The title of Hobbes's treatise alludes to the Leviathan mentioned in the Book of Job. In contrast to the simply informative titles usually given to works of early modern political philosophy, such as John Locke's "Two Treatises of Government" or Hobbes's own earlier work "The Elements of Law", Hobbes selected a more poetic name for this more provocative treatise.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: After lengthy discussion with Thomas Hobbes, the Parisian Abraham Bosse created the etching for the book's famous frontispiece in the style which Bosse himself had refined. It is similar in organisation to the frontispiece of Hobbes' "De Cive" (1642), created by Jean Matheus. The frontispiece has two main elements, of which the upper part is by far the more striking.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: In it, a giant crowned figure is seen emerging from the landscape, clutching a sword and a crosier, beneath a quote from the Book of Job—"" ("There is no power on earth to be compared to him. Job 41 . 24")—further linking the figure to the monster of the book. (Due to disagreements over the precise location of the chapters and verses when they were divided in the Late Middle Ages, the verse Hobbes quotes is usually given as Job 41:33 in modern Christian translations into English, Job 41:25 in the Masoretic text, Septuagint, and the Luther Bible; it is Job 41:24 in the Vulgate.) The torso and arms of the figure are composed of over three hundred persons, in the style of Giuseppe Arcimboldo; all are facing away from the viewer, with just the giant's head having visible facial features. (A manuscript of "Leviathan" created for Charles II in 1651 has notable differences – a different main head but significantly the body is also composed of many faces, all looking outwards from the body and with a range of expressions.)


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: The lower portion is a triptych, framed in a wooden border. The centre form contains the title on an ornate curtain. The two sides reflect the sword and crosier of the main figure – earthly power on the left and the powers of the church on the right. Each side element reflects the equivalent power – castle to church, crown to mitre, cannon to excommunication, weapons to logic, and the battlefield to the religious courts. The giant holds the symbols of both sides, reflecting the union of secular, and spiritual in the sovereign, but the construction of the torso also makes the figure the state.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: Hobbes begins his treatise on politics with an account of human nature. He presents an image of man as matter in motion, attempting to show through example how everything about humanity can be explained materialistically, that is, without recourse to an incorporeal, immaterial soul or a faculty for understanding ideas that are external to the human mind.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: Hobbes proceeds by defining terms clearly and unsentimentally. Good and evil are nothing more than terms used to denote an individual's appetites and desires, while these appetites and desires are nothing more than the tendency to move toward or away from an object. Hope is nothing more than an appetite for a thing combined with an opinion that it can be had. He suggests that the dominant political theology of the time, Scholasticism, thrives on confused definitions of everyday words, such as "incorporeal substance", which for Hobbes is a contradiction in terms.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: Hobbes describes human psychology without any reference to the , or greatest good, as previous thought had done. According to Hobbes, not only is the concept of a superfluous, but given the variability of human desires, there could be no such thing. Consequently, any political community that sought to provide the greatest good to its members would find itself driven by competing conceptions of that good with no way to decide among them. The result would be civil war.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: However, Hobbes states that there is a , or greatest evil. This is the fear of violent death. A political community can be oriented around this fear.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: Since there is no , the natural state of man is not to be found in a political community that pursues the greatest good. But to be outside of a political community is to be in an anarchic condition. Given human nature, the variability of human desires, and need for scarce resources to fulfill those desires, the state of nature, as Hobbes calls this anarchic condition, must be a war of all against all. Even when two men are not fighting, there is no guarantee that the other will not try to kill him for his property or just out of an aggrieved sense of honour, and so they must constantly be on guard against one another. It is even reasonable to preemptively attack one's neighbour.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: The desire to avoid the state of nature, as the place where the of violent death is most likely to occur, forms the polestar of political reasoning. It suggests a number of laws of nature, although Hobbes is quick to point out that they cannot properly speaking be called "laws", since there is no one to enforce them. The first thing that reason suggests is to seek peace, but that where peace cannot be had, to use all of the advantages of war. Hobbes is explicit that in the state of nature nothing can be considered just or unjust, and every man must be considered to have a right to all things. The second law of nature is that one ought to be willing to renounce one's right to all things where others are willing to do the same, to quit the state of nature, and to erect a commonwealth with the authority to command them in all things. Hobbes concludes Part One by articulating an additional seventeen laws of nature that make the performance of the first two possible and by explaining what it would mean for a sovereign to represent the people even when they disagree with the sovereign.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: The commonwealth is instituted when all agree in the following manner: "I authorise and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition; that thou give up, thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner."


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: Hobbes explicitly rejects the idea of "Separation of Powers". In item 6 Hobbes is explicitly in favour of censorship of the press and restrictions on the rights of free speech should they be considered desirable by the sovereign to promote order.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: The right of succession always lies with the sovereign. Democracies and aristocracies have easy succession; monarchy is harder:


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: Because in general people haven't thought carefully. However, the succession is definitely in the gift of the monarch:


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: In "Leviathan", Hobbes explicitly states that the sovereign has authority to assert power over matters of faith and doctrine and that if he does not do so, he invites discord. Hobbes presents his own religious theory but states that he would defer to the will of the sovereign (when that was re-established: again, "Leviathan" was written during the Civil War) as to whether his theory was acceptable. Hobbes' materialistic presuppositions also led him to hold a view which was considered highly controversial at the time. Hobbes rejected the idea of incorporeal substances and subsequently argued that even God himself was a corporeal substance. Although Hobbes never explicitly stated he was an atheist, many allude to the possibility that he was.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: Hobbes also touched upon the sovereign's ability to tax in "Leviathan", although he is not as widely cited for his economic theories as he is for his political theories. Hobbes believed that equal justice includes the equal imposition of taxes. The equality of taxes doesn't depend on equality of wealth, but on the equality of the debt that every man owes to the commonwealth for his defence and the maintenance of the rule of law. Hobbes also championed public support for those unable to maintain themselves by labour, which would presumably be funded by taxation. He advocated public encouragement of works of Navigation etc. to usefully employ the poor who could work.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: In Part III Hobbes seeks to investigate the nature of a "Christian" commonwealth. This immediately raises the question of which scriptures we should trust, and why. If any person may claim supernatural revelation superior to the civil law, then there would be chaos, and Hobbes' fervent desire is to avoid this. Hobbes thus begins by establishing that we cannot infallibly know another's personal word to be divine revelation:


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: This is good, but if applied too fervently would lead to all the Bible being rejected. So, Hobbes says, we need a test: and the true test is established by examining the books of scripture, and is:


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: "Seeing therefore miracles now cease" means that only the books of the Bible can be trusted. Hobbes then discusses the various books which are accepted by various sects, and the "question much disputed between the diverse sects of Christian religion, from whence the Scriptures derive their authority". To Hobbes, "it is manifest that none can know they are God's word (though all true Christians believe it) but those to whom God Himself hath revealed it supernaturally". And therefore "The question truly stated is: by what authority they are made law?"


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: Unsurprisingly, Hobbes concludes that ultimately there is no way to determine this other than the civil power:


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: He discusses the Ten Commandments, and asks "who it was that gave to these written tables the obligatory force of laws. There is no doubt but they were made laws by God Himself: but because a law obliges not, nor is law to any but to them that acknowledge it to be the act of the sovereign, how could the people of Israel, that were forbidden to approach the mountain to hear what God said to Moses, be obliged to obedience to all those laws which Moses propounded to them?" and concludes, as before, that "making of the Scripture law, belonged to the civil sovereign."


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: Finally: "We are to consider now what office in the Church those persons have who, being civil sovereigns, have embraced also the Christian faith?" to which the answer is: "Christian kings are still the supreme pastors of their people, and have power to ordain what pastors they please, to teach the Church, that is, to teach the people committed to their charge."


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: There is an enormous amount of biblical scholarship in this third part. However, once Hobbes' initial argument is accepted (that no-one can know for sure anyone else's divine revelation) his conclusion (the religious power is subordinate to the civil) follows from his logic. The very extensive discussions of the chapter were probably necessary for its time. The need (as Hobbes saw it) for the civil sovereign to be supreme arose partly from the many sects that arose around the civil war, and to quash the "Pope of Rome's challenge", to which Hobbes devotes an extensive section.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: Hobbes named Part IV of his book "Kingdom of Darkness". By this Hobbes does not mean Hell (he did not believe in Hell or Purgatory), but the darkness of ignorance as opposed to the light of true knowledge. Hobbes' interpretation is largely unorthodox and so sees much darkness in what he sees as the misinterpretation of Scripture.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: The first is by extinguishing the light of scripture through misinterpretation. Hobbes sees the main abuse as teaching that the kingdom of God can be found in the church, thus undermining the authority of the civil sovereign. Another general abuse of scripture, in his view, is the turning of consecration into conjuration, or silly ritual.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: The second cause is the demonology of the heathen poets: in Hobbes's opinion, demons are nothing more than constructs of the brain. Hobbes then goes on to criticize what he sees as many of the practices of Catholicism: "Now for the worship of saints, and images, and relics, and other things at this day practiced in the Church of Rome, I say they are not allowed by the word of God".


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: The third is by mixing with the Scripture diverse relics of the religion, and much of the vain and erroneous philosophy of the Greeks, especially of Aristotle. Hobbes has little time for the various disputing sects of philosophers and objects to what people have taken "From Aristotle's civil philosophy, they have learned to call all manner of Commonwealths but the popular (such as was at that time the state of Athens), tyranny". At the end of this comes an interesting section (darkness is suppressing true knowledge as well as introducing falsehoods), which would appear to bear on the discoveries of Galileo Galilei. "Our own navigations make manifest, and all men learned in human sciences now acknowledge, there are antipodes" (i.e., the Earth is round) "...Nevertheless, men... have been punished for it by authority ecclesiastical. But what reason is there for it? Is it because such opinions are contrary to true religion? That cannot be, if they be true." However, Hobbes is quite happy for the truth to be suppressed if necessary: if "they tend to disorder in government, as countenancing rebellion or sedition? Then let them be silenced, and the teachers punished" – but only by the civil authority.


title: Leviathan (Hobbes book)

text: The fourth is by mingling with both these, false or uncertain traditions, and feigned or uncertain history.


title: Shark Tank India

text: Shark Tank India is an Indian Hindi-language business reality television series that airs on Sony Entertainment Television. The show is the Indian franchise of the American show "Shark Tank". It shows entrepreneurs making business presentations to a panel of investors or "sharks", who decide whether to invest in their company.


title: Shark Tank India

text: The show features a panel of potential investors, termed as "Sharks", who listen to entrepreneurs pitch ideas for a business or product they wish to develop. These self-made multi-millionaires judge the business concepts and products pitched and then decide whether to invest their own money to help market and mentor each contestant. The host of this show is Rannvijay Singha.


title: The Pogues

text: The Pogues were an English or Anglo-Irish Celtic punk band fronted by Shane MacGowan and others, founded in Kings Cross, London in 1982, as "Pogue Mahone" – the anglicisation of the Irish Gaelic "póg mo thóin", meaning "kiss my arse". The band reached international prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s, recording several hit albums and singles. MacGowan left the band in 1991 owing to drinking problems, but the band continued – first with Joe Strummer and then with Spider Stacy on vocals – before breaking up in 1996. The Pogues re-formed in late 2001, and played regularly across the UK and Ireland and on the US East Coast, until dissolving again in 2014. The group did not record any new material during this second incarnation.


title: The Pogues

text: Their politically tinged music was informed by MacGowan and Stacy's punk backgrounds, yet used traditional Irish instruments such as the tin whistle, banjo, cittern, mandolin and accordion.


title: The Pogues

text: The future members of the Pogues first met when MacGowan (vocals), Peter "Spider" Stacy (tin whistle), and Jem Finer (banjo) were together in an occasional band called The Millwall Chainsaws in the late 1970s after MacGowan and Stacy met in the toilets at a Ramones gig at The Roundhouse in London in 1977. MacGowan was already with The Nips, though when they broke up in 1980 he concentrated more on Stacy's Millwall Chainsaws, who changed their name to The New Republicans.


title: The Pogues

text: In 1982, James Fearnley (accordion), who had been a guitarist with The Nips, joined MacGowan, Stacy, and Finer, forming the band, then known as Pogue Mahone. The new group played their first gig at The Pindar of Wakefield on 4 October 1982.


title: The Pogues

text: They then appeared at Gossips in Dean Street Soho on Thursday 3 November 1983 with Trash Trash Trash and The Stingrays.


title: The Pogues

text: They later added Cait O'Riordan (bass) and Andrew Ranken (drums). The band played London pubs and clubs, and released a single, "Dark Streets of London", on their own, self-named label, gaining a small reputation – especially for their live performances, and national airplay on BBC Radio 1. They came to the attention of the media and Stiff Records when they opened for The Clash on their 1984 tour. Shortening their name to The Pogues (partly due to BBC censorship following complaints from Gaelic speakers in Scotland) they released their first album, "Red Roses for Me", on Stiff Records that October.


title: The Pogues

text: The band gained more attention when the UK Channel 4's influential music show "The Tube" made a video of their version of "Waxie's Dargle" for the show. The performance, featuring Spider Stacy repeatedly smashing himself over the head with a beer tray, became a favourite with the viewers, but Stiff Records refused to release it as a single, feeling it was too late for it to help "Red Roses for Me". Nevertheless, it remained a favourite request for the show for many years.


title: The Pogues

text: With the aid of producer Elvis Costello, they recorded the follow-up, "Rum Sodomy & the Lash", in 1985 during which time guitarist Philip Chevron joined. The album title is a famous comment falsely attributed to Winston Churchill who was supposedly describing the "true" traditions of the British Royal Navy. The album cover featured "The Raft of the Medusa", with the faces of the characters in Théodore Géricault's painting replaced with those of the band members. The album shows the band moving away from covers to original material. Shane MacGowan came into his own as a songwriter with this disc, offering up poetic storytelling, such as "The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn" and "The Old Main Drag", as well as definitive interpretations of Ewan MacColl's "Dirty Old Town" and Eric Bogle's "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" (this had previously been covered by Shane's fellow punk contemporaries Skids in 1981).


title: The Pogues

text: The band failed to take advantage of the momentum created by the strong artistic and commercial success of their second album. They first refused to record another album (offering up the four-track EP "Poguetry in Motion" instead); O'Riordan married Costello and left the band, to be replaced by bassist Darryl Hunt, formerly of Plummet Airlines and Pride of the Cross; and they added a multi-instrumentalist in Terry Woods, formerly of Steeleye Span. Looming over the band at this period (as throughout their entire career) was the increasingly erratic behaviour of their vocalist and principal songwriter, Shane MacGowan. Their record label, Stiff Records, went bankrupt soon after the 1987 release of the single "The Irish Rover" (with The Dubliners). Members of the band, including O'Riordan, acted in Alex Cox's "Straight to Hell", and five songs by the band were included on the film's soundtrack album.


title: The Pogues

text: The band remained stable enough to record "If I Should Fall from Grace with God" with its Christmas hit duet with Kirsty MacColl "Fairytale of New York". "Fairytale of New York" was released as a single in 1987 and reached No. 1 in the Irish charts and No. 2 in the British charts over Christmas (the time of peak sales). The song has become a festive classic in the UK and Ireland over the years, and was voted the best Christmas song of all time three years running in 2004, 2005, and 2006 in polls by music channel VH1 UK, despite not achieving Christmas Number One when it was released. It was also voted as the 27th greatest song never to reach UK#1 in another VH1 poll, and also voted as the 84th greatest song of all time by BBC Radio 2 listeners in the "Sold on Song" top 100 poll. In 2007 the record was briefly censored by the BBC because of the word "faggot" being deemed potentially offensive to homosexual people. Following protests from listeners, including the mother of Kirsty MacColl, the censorship was lifted.


title: The Pogues

text: The band was at the peak of its commercial success, with both albums making the top 5 in the UK (numbers 3 and 5 respectively), but MacGowan was increasingly unreliable. He failed to turn up for the opening dates of their 1988 tour of America, and prevented the band from promoting their 1990 album "Hell's Ditch", so in 1991 the band sacked him. Vocal duties were for a time handled by Joe Strummer. Spider Stacy took over permanently after Strummer left in the winter of 1991. After Strummer's departure, the remaining seven Pogues recorded in 1993 "Waiting for Herb", which contained the band's third and final top twenty single, "Tuesday Morning", which became their best-selling single internationally. Terry Woods and James Fearnley then left the band and were replaced by David Coulter and James McNally respectively. Within months of their departures, ill health forced Phil Chevron to leave the band; he was replaced by his former guitar technician, Jamie Clarke. This line-up recorded the band's seventh and final studio album, "Pogue Mahone". The album was a commercial failure, and, following Jem Finer's decision to leave the band in 1996, the remaining members decided it was time to call it quits. According to Shane MacGowan, among the reasons of the break-up was disagreement concerning the political orientation of his songs, the band not wanting to sing too obvious pro-Republican songs – though some of their previous songs were already politically engaged: for instance, "Streams of Whiskey" is about the poet and IRA member Brendan Behan. Soon after the break-up Shane MacGowan recorded a song titled "Paddy Public Enemy Number One" as a tribute to the Republican leader Dominic McGlinchey, a former leader of the INLA killed a few years before.


title: The Pogues

text: After the Pogues's break-up, the three remaining long-term members (Spider Stacy, Andrew Ranken and Darryl Hunt) played together briefly as The Vendettas. They played mainly new Stacy-penned tracks, though Darryl Hunt also contributed songs, and the band's live set included a few Pogues songs. First Ranken then Hunt left the band, the latter going on to become singer/songwriter in an indie band called Bish, whose self-titled debut album was released in 2001. Ranken has gone on to play with a number of other bands, including hKippers, The Municipal Waterboard and, most recently, The Mysterious Wheels. In addition to The Vendettas, who Stacy freely admits lost all attraction when the Pogues reformed, Spider continued to write and record music with various bands, including the James Walbourne, Filthy Thieving Bastards, Dropkick Murphys and Astral Social Club.


title: The Pogues

text: Shane MacGowan founded Shane MacGowan and The Popes in 1992. They released two studio albums and broke up in 2002. His autobiography "A Drink With Shane MacGowan", co-written with his journalist girlfriend Victoria Mary Clarke, was released in 2001. Jem Finer went into experimental music, playing a big part in a project known as "Longplayer", a piece of music designed to play continuously for 1,000 years without repeating itself. In 2005, Finer released the album "Bum Steer" with DB Bob (as DM Bob and Country Jem). James Fearnley moved to the United States shortly before leaving the Pogues. He was a member of The Low And Sweet Orchestra and later the Cranky George Trio. Philip Chevron reformed his former band The Radiators, which briefly included former Pogue Cait O'Riordan. Terry Woods formed The Bucks with Ron Kavana, releasing the album "Dancin' To The Ceili Band" in 1994. Later, he formed The Woods Band, releasing the album "Music From The Four Corners of Hell" in 2002.


title: The Pogues

text: The band, including MacGowan, re-formed for a Christmas tour in 2001 and performed nine shows in the UK and Ireland in December 2004. In 2002 "Q" magazine named the Pogues one of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die". In July 2005, the band – again including MacGowan – played at the annual Guilfest festival in Guildford before flying out to Japan where they played three dates. Japan is the last place they all played together before MacGowan was originally sacked in 1991, and they have a strong following there. They played a date in Spain in early September. The reunited Pogues played dates in the UK with support from the Dropkick Murphys in late 2005, and re-released their 1987 Christmas classic "Fairytale of New York" on 19 December, which went straight in at No. 3 in the UK Singles charts on Christmas Day 2005, showing the song's enduring popularity. On 22 December 2005 the BBC broadcast a live performance (recorded the previous week) on the Jonathan Ross Christmas show with Katie Melua filling in for the late Kirsty MacColl, the first time the band had played the song live on television. The following week they performed live on the popular music show "".


title: The Pogues

text: The band was awarded the lifetime achievement award at the annual Meteor Ireland Music Awards in February 2006. In March 2006, the band played their first US dates with Shane in over 15 years. The band played a series of sold-out concerts in Washington, D.C., Atlantic City, Boston, and New York. Later they played a series of highly acclaimed and sold-out gigs during mid-October 2006 in San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles, and toured Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, London, Dublin, and Nottingham in mid-December 2006. They began a second US tour in March 2007, once again to coincide (and conclude) with a Roseland Ballroom New York City show on Saint Patrick's Day. 2007 has proved to be the most prolific year of touring since the reunion. A tour of the west coast of America and eleven dates in the UK in December complement the headlining festival appearances made in the summer across Europe (Sweden, Belgium and Spain). They continue to be in huge demand, often selling out very large venues, despite criticism of selling out, and claims that arenas and festivals do not suit the band's sound.


title: The Pogues

text: Guitarist Phil Chevron has stated there were no plans to record new music or release a new album. Chevron said that one way to keep enjoying what they were doing was to avoid making a new album, although he did say that there still is a possibility in the future for new music, but certainly not in the near future. Terry Woods has commented that MacGowan has been writing, and most of it sounds good. In 2008 the band released a box set "Just Look Them Straight in the Eye and Say...POGUE MAHONE!!", which included rare studio outtakes and previously unreleased material.


title: The Pogues

text: The band received mixed reviews of their performances though they continued to pull the crowds. Reviewing a March 2008 concert, "The Washington Post" described MacGowan as "puffy and paunchy," but said the singer "still has a banshee wail to beat Howard Dean's, and the singer's abrasive growl is all a band this marvelous needs to give its amphetamine-spiked take on Irish folk a focal point". The reviewer continued: "The set started off shaky, MacGowan singing of 'goin' where streams of whiskey are flowin,' and looking like he'd arrived there already. He grew more lucid and powerful as the evening gathered steam, through two hours and 26 songs, mostly from the Pogues' first three (and best) albums". In December 2010 the Pogues (with support from Crowns) played what was billed as a farewell UK Christmas tour.


title: The Pogues

text: In March 2011, the Pogues played a six-city/ten-show sold out US tour titled "A Parting Glass with The Pogues" visiting Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Boston, and New York City (in that order), with only the last three cities getting more than one show. Stacy said "I think we are basically pretty certain this is the last tour of this type we'll be doing in the States. There might be the odd sort of one-off here and there. We're not saying this is absolutely, definitely the end".


title: The Pogues

text: In August 2012, the Pogues embarked on a 30th Anniversary Summer 2012 8-city European Tour scheduled from 4 August 2012 at the Stockton Weekender Festival in Stockton-on-Tees, UK to 11 & 12 September 2012 at L'Olympia, Paris, two shows filmed and recorded for a live album and DVD released on 19 November 2012.


title: The Pogues

text: In March 2013, the Pogues released "30:30: The Essential Collection", a 2-disc set featuring 30 songs along with eleven videos. In October 2013, the Pogues released a box set titled "Pogues 30" containing remastered versions of all of their studio albums plus a previously unreleased live album featuring Joe Strummer at the London Forum in December 1991.


title: The Pogues

text: In December 2013, the Pogues went on a four-date UK Christmas tour, followed by a few shows during spring and summer 2014. The Pogues' last performance on British soil occurred on 5 July 2014 at the British Summer Time festival in London's Hyde Park. The Pogues' last ever performance (to date) occurred on 9 August 2014 during the "Fête du bruit dans Landerneau" festival in Landerneau, Brittany, France.


title: The Pogues

text: About his future with the Pogues, in a 24 December 2015 interview with Vice Magazine, when the interviewer asked whether the band were still active, Shane MacGowan said: "We're not, no", saying that, since their 2001 reunion happened, "I went back with [The] Pogues and we grew to hate each other all over again", adding, "I don't hate the band at all – they're friends. I like them a lot. We were friends for years before we joined the band. We just got a bit sick of each other. We're friends as long as we don't tour together. I've done a hell of a lot of touring. I've had enough of it".


title: 2S19 Msta

text: The 2S19 Msta (, after the Msta River) is a 152.4 mm self-propelled howitzer designed by the Soviet Union, which entered service in 1989 as the successor to the 2S3 Akatsiya. The vehicle has the running gear of the T-80, but is powered by the T-72's diesel engine.


title: 2S19 Msta

text: The "Msta" is a howitzer designed for deployment either as an unarmored towed gun, or to be fitted in armored self-propelled artillery mountings. Current production of the towed model is designated "Msta-B", while the self-propelled model is the "Msta-S" (also known by the GRAU index 2S19).


title: 2S19 Msta

text: Development of the 2S19 started in 1980 under the project name "Ferma". The prototype was known as Ob'yekt 316. The 2S19's standard equipment consists of a semi-automatic laying system 1P22, an automatic loader, an NBC protection system, passive night vision device for the driver, a vehicle snorkel, a dozer blade, a smoke generator and 81mm smoke launchers, 1V116 intercom system and a 16 kW generator AP-18D. In 2008 the Russian armed forces ordered an improved model with an automated fire control system.


title: 2S19 Msta

text: Msta-S howitzers were used by Russian Army to deliver artillery strikes against Chechen separatists during the Second Chechen War.


title: 2S19 Msta

text: Msta-S howitzers have been used in the Russo-Ukrainian War by the Ukrainian Army as well as pro-Russian separatists who captured one machine during the conflict.


title: 2S19 Msta

text: Russia recently offered its Msta-S 152 mm Howitzer to foreign countries, particularly in the Middle East. A demonstration was organised in 2020 by Rosoboronexport, the country's nodal agency for arms export, for representatives from various Middle Eastern countries.


title: Parasitism

text: Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one". Parasites include single-celled protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the broomrapes.


title: Parasitism

text: There are six major parasitic strategies of exploitation of animal hosts, namely parasitic castration, directly transmitted parasitism (by contact), trophicallytransmitted parasitism (by being eaten), vector-transmitted parasitism, parasitoidism, and micropredation. One major axis of classification concerns invasiveness: an endoparasite lives inside the host's body; an ectoparasite lives outside, on the host's surface.


title: Parasitism

text: Like predation, parasitism is a type of consumer–resource interaction, but unlike predators, parasites, with the exception of parasitoids, are typically much smaller than their hosts, do not kill them, and often live in or on their hosts for an extended period. Parasites of animals are highly specialised, and reproduce at a faster rate than their hosts. Classic examples include interactions between vertebrate hosts and tapeworms, flukes, the malaria-causing "Plasmodium" species, and fleas.


title: Parasitism

text: Parasites reduce host fitness by general or specialised pathology, from parasitic castration to modification of host behaviour. Parasites increase their own fitness by exploiting hosts for resources necessary for their survival, in particular by feeding on them and by using intermediate (secondary) hosts to assist in their transmission from one definitive (primary) host to another. Although parasitism is often unambiguous, it is part of a spectrum of interactions between species, grading via parasitoidism into predation, through evolution into mutualism, and in some fungi, shading into being saprophytic.


title: Parasitism

text: People have known about parasites such as roundworms and tapeworms since ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In early modern times, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek observed "Giardia lamblia" in his microscope in 1681, while Francesco Redi described internal and external parasites including sheep liver fluke and ticks. Modern parasitology developed in the 19th century. In human culture, parasitism has negative connotations. These were exploited to satirical effect in Jonathan Swift's 1733 poem "On Poetry: A Rhapsody", comparing poets to hyperparasitical "vermin". In fiction, Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel "Dracula" and its many later adaptations featured a blood-drinking parasite. Ridley Scott's 1979 film "Alien" was one of many works of science fiction to feature a parasitic alien species.


title: Parasitism

text: First used in English in 1539, the word "parasite" comes from the Medieval French "parasite", from the Latin "parasitus", the latinisation of the Greek "παράσιτος" ("parasitos"), "one who eats at the table of another" and that from "παρά" ("para"), "beside, by" + "σῖτος" ("sitos"), "wheat", hence "food". The related term "parasitism" appears in English from 1611.


title: Parasitism

text: Parasitism is a kind of symbiosis, a close and persistent long-term biological interaction between a parasite and its host. Unlike saprotrophs, parasites feed on living hosts, though some parasitic fungi, for instance, may continue to feed on hosts they have killed. Unlike commensalism and mutualism, the parasitic relationship harms the host, either feeding on it or, as in the case of intestinal parasites, consuming some of its food. Because parasites interact with other species, they can readily act as vectors of pathogens, causing disease. Predation is by definition not a symbiosis, as the interaction is brief, but the entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one".


title: Parasitism

text: Within that scope are many possible strategies. Taxonomists classify parasites in a variety of overlapping schemes, based on their interactions with their hosts and on their life cycles, which are sometimes very complex. An obligate parasite depends completely on the host to complete its life cycle, while a facultative parasite does not. Parasite life cycles involving only one host are called "direct"; those with a definitive host (where the parasite reproduces sexually) and at least one intermediate host are called "indirect". An endoparasite lives inside the host's body; an ectoparasite lives outside, on the host's surface. Mesoparasites—like some copepods, for example—enter an opening in the host's body and remain partly embedded there. Some parasites can be generalists, feeding on a wide range of hosts, but many parasites, and the majority of protozoans and helminths that parasitise animals, are specialists and extremely host-specific. An early basic, functional division of parasites distinguished microparasites and macroparasites. These each had a mathematical model assigned in order to analyse the population movements of the host–parasite groupings. The microorganisms and viruses that can reproduce and complete their life cycle within the host are known as microparasites. Macroparasites are the multicellular organisms that reproduce and complete their life cycle outside of the host or on the host's body.


title: Parasitism

text: Much of the thinking on types of parasitism has focussed on terrestrial animal parasites of animals, such as helminths. Those in other environments and with other hosts often have analogous strategies. For example, the snubnosed eel is probably a facultative endoparasite (i.e., it is semiparasitic) that opportunistically burrows into and eats sick and dying fish. Plant-eating insects such as scale insects, aphids, and caterpillars closely resemble ectoparasites, attacking much larger plants; they serve as vectors of bacteria, fungi and viruses which cause plant diseases. As female scale insects cannot move, they are obligate parasites, permanently attached to their hosts.


title: Parasitism

text: The sensory inputs that a parasite employs to identify and approach a potential host are known as "host cues". Such cues can include, for example, vibration, exhaled carbon dioxide, skin odours, visual and heat signatures, and moisture. Parasitic plants can use, for example, light, host physiochemistry, and volatiles to recognize potential hosts.


title: Parasitism

text: There are six major parasitic strategies, namely parasitic castration; directly transmitted parasitism; trophically-transmitted parasitism; vector-transmitted parasitism; parasitoidism; and micropredation. These apply to parasites whose hosts are plants as well as animals. These strategies represent adaptive peaks; intermediate strategies are possible, but organisms in many different groups have consistently converged on these six, which are evolutionarily stable.


title: Parasitism

text: A perspective on the evolutionary options can be gained by considering four key questions: the effect on the fitness of a parasite's hosts; the number of hosts they have per life stage; whether the host is prevented from reproducing; and whether the effect depends on intensity (number of parasites per host). From this analysis, the major evolutionary strategies of parasitism emerge, alongside predation.


title: Parasitism

text: Parasitic castrators partly or completely destroy their host's ability to reproduce, diverting the energy that would have gone into reproduction into host and parasite growth, sometimes causing gigantism in the host. The host's other systems remain intact, allowing it to survive and to sustain the parasite. Parasitic crustaceans such as those in the specialised barnacle genus "Sacculina" specifically cause damage to the gonads of their many species of host crabs. In the case of "Sacculina", the testes of over two-thirds of their crab hosts degenerate sufficiently for these male crabs to develop female secondary sex characteristics such as broader abdomens, smaller claws and egg-grasping appendages. Various species of helminth castrate their hosts (such as insects and snails). This may happen directly, whether mechanically by feeding on their gonads, or by secreting a chemical that destroys reproductive cells; or indirectly, whether by secreting a hormone or by diverting nutrients. For example, the trematode "Zoogonus lasius", whose sporocysts lack mouths, castrates the intertidal marine snail "Tritia obsoleta" chemically, developing in its gonad and killing its reproductive cells.


title: Parasitism

text: Directly transmitted parasites, not requiring a vector to reach their hosts, include such parasites of terrestrial vertebrates as lice and mites; marine parasites such as copepods and cyamid amphipods; monogeneans; and many species of nematodes, fungi, protozoans, bacteria, and viruses. Whether endoparasites or ectoparasites, each has a single host-species. Within that species, most individuals are free or almost free of parasites, while a minority carry a large number of parasites; this is known as an aggregated distribution.


title: Parasitism

text: Trophically-transmitted parasites are transmitted by being eaten by a host. They include trematodes (all except schistosomes), cestodes, acanthocephalans, pentastomids, many roundworms, and many protozoa such as "Toxoplasma". They have complex life cycles involving hosts of two or more species. In their juvenile stages they infect and often encyst in the intermediate host. When the intermediate-host animal is eaten by a predator, the definitive host, the parasite survives the digestion process and matures into an adult; some live as intestinal parasites. Many trophically transmitted parasites modify the behaviour of their intermediate hosts, increasing their chances of being eaten by a predator. As with directly transmitted parasites, the distribution of trophically transmitted parasites among host individuals is aggregated. Coinfection by multiple parasites is common. Autoinfection, where (by exception) the whole of the parasite's life cycle takes place in a single primary host, can sometimes occur in helminths such as "Strongyloides stercoralis".


title: Parasitism

text: Vector-transmitted parasites rely on a third party, an intermediate host, where the parasite does not reproduce sexually, to carry them from one definitive host to another. These parasites are microorganisms, namely protozoa, bacteria, or viruses, often intracellular pathogens (disease-causers). Their vectors are mostly hematophagic arthropods such as fleas, lice, ticks, and mosquitoes. For example, the deer tick "Ixodes scapularis" acts as a vector for diseases including Lyme disease, babesiosis, and anaplasmosis. Protozoan endoparasites, such as the malarial parasites in the genus "Plasmodium" and sleeping-sickness parasites in the genus "Trypanosoma", have infective stages in the host's blood which are transported to new hosts by biting insects.


title: Parasitism

text: Parasitoids are insects which sooner or later kill their hosts, placing their relationship close to predation. Most parasitoids are parasitoid wasps or other hymenopterans; others include dipterans such as phorid flies. They can be divided into two groups, idiobionts and koinobionts, differing in their treatment of their hosts.


title: Parasitism

text: Idiobiont parasitoids sting their often large prey on capture, either killing them outright or paralysing them immediately. The immobilised prey is then carried to a nest, sometimes alongside other prey if it is not large enough to support a parasitoid throughout its development. An egg is laid on top of the prey and the nest is then sealed. The parasitoid develops rapidly through its larval and pupal stages, feeding on the provisions left for it.


title: Parasitism

text: Koinobiont parasitoids, which include flies as well as wasps, lay their eggs inside young hosts, usually larvae. These are allowed to go on growing, so the host and parasitoid develop together for an extended period, ending when the parasitoids emerge as adults, leaving the prey dead, eaten from inside. Some koinobionts regulate their host's development, for example preventing it from pupating or making it moult whenever the parasitoid is ready to moult. They may do this by producing hormones that mimic the host's moulting hormones (ecdysteroids), or by regulating the host's endocrine system.


title: Parasitism

text: A micropredator attacks more than one host, reducing each host's fitness by at least a small amount, and is only in contact with any one host intermittently. This behavior makes micropredators suitable as vectors, as they can pass smaller parasites from one host to another. Most micropredators are hematophagic, feeding on blood. They include annelids such as leeches, crustaceans such as branchiurans and gnathiid isopods, various dipterans such as mosquitoes and tsetse flies, other arthropods such as fleas and ticks, vertebrates such as lampreys, and mammals such as vampire bats.


title: Parasitism

text: Parasites use a variety of methods to infect animal hosts, including physical contact, the fecal–oral route, free-living infectious stages, and vectors, suiting their differing hosts, life cycles, and ecological contexts. Examples to illustrate some of the many possible combinations are given in the table.


title: Parasitism

text: Among the many variations on parasitic strategies are hyperparasitism, social parasitism, brood parasitism, kleptoparasitism, sexual parasitism, and adelphoparasitism.


title: Parasitism

text: Hyperparasites feed on another parasite, as exemplified by protozoa living in helminth parasites, or facultative or obligate parasitoids whose hosts are either conventional parasites or parasitoids. Levels of parasitism beyond secondary also occur, especially among facultative parasitoids. In oak gall systems, there can be up to five levels of parasitism.


title: Parasitism

text: Hyperparasites can control their hosts' populations, and are used for this purpose in agriculture and to some extent in medicine. The controlling effects can be seen in the way that the CHV1 virus helps to control the damage that chestnut blight, "Cryphonectria parasitica", does to American chestnut trees, and in the way that bacteriophages can limit bacterial infections. It is likely, though little researched, that most pathogenic microparasites have hyperparasites which may prove widely useful in both agriculture and medicine.


title: Parasitism

text: Social parasites take advantage of interspecific interactions between members of eusocial animals such as ants, termites, and bumblebees. Examples include the large blue butterfly, "Phengaris arion", its larvae employing ant mimicry to parasitise certain ants, "Bombus bohemicus", a bumblebee which invades the hives of other bees and takes over reproduction while their young are raised by host workers, and "Melipona scutellaris", a eusocial bee whose virgin queens escape killer workers and invade another colony without a queen. An extreme example of interspecific social parasitism is found in the ant "Tetramorium inquilinum", an obligate parasite which lives exclusively on the backs of other "Tetramorium" ants. A mechanism for the evolution of social parasitism was first proposed by Carlo Emery in 1909. Now known as "Emery's rule", it states that social parasites tend to be closely related to their hosts, often being in the same genus.


title: Parasitism

text: Intraspecific social parasitism occurs in parasitic nursing, where some individual young take milk from unrelated females. In wedge-capped capuchins, higher ranking females sometimes take milk from low ranking females without any reciprocation.


title: Parasitism

text: In brood parasitism, the hosts act as parents as they raise the young as their own. Brood parasites include birds in different families such as cowbirds, whydahs, cuckoos, and black-headed ducks. These do not build nests of their own, but leave their eggs in nests of other species. The eggs of some brood parasites mimic those of their hosts, while some cowbird eggs have tough shells, making them hard for the hosts to kill by piercing, both mechanisms implying selection by the hosts against parasitic eggs. The adult female European cuckoo further mimics a predator, the European sparrowhawk, giving her time to lay her eggs in the host's nest unobserved.


title: Parasitism

text: In kleptoparasitism (from Greek κλέπτης ("kleptēs"), "thief"), parasites steal food gathered by the host. The parasitism is often on close relatives, whether within the same species or between species in the same genus or family. For instance, the many lineages of cuckoo bees lay their eggs in the nest cells of other bees in the same family. Kleptoparasitism is uncommon generally but conspicuous in birds; some such as skuas are specialised in pirating food from other seabirds, relentlessly chasing them down until they disgorge their catch.


title: Parasitism

text: A unique approach is seen in some species of anglerfish, such as "Ceratias holboelli", where the males are reduced to tiny sexual parasites, wholly dependent on females of their own species for survival, permanently attached below the female's body, and unable to fend for themselves. The female nourishes the male and protects him from predators, while the male gives nothing back except the sperm that the female needs to produce the next generation.


title: Parasitism

text: Adelphoparasitism, (from Greek ἀδελφός ("adelphós"), brother), also known as sibling-parasitism, occurs where the host species is closely related to the parasite, often in the same family or genus. In the citrus blackfly parasitoid, "Encarsia perplexa", unmated females of which may lay haploid eggs in the fully developed larvae of their own species, producing male offspring, while the marine worm "Bonellia viridis" has a similar reproductive strategy, although the larvae are planktonic.


title: Parasitism

text: Parasitism has an extremely wide taxonomic range, including animals, plants, fungi, protozoans, bacteria, and viruses.


title: Parasitism

text: Parasitism is widespread in the animal kingdom, and has evolved independently from free-living forms hundreds of times. Many types of helminth including flukes and cestodes have complete life cycles involving two or more hosts. By far the largest group is the parasitoid wasps in the Hymenoptera. The phyla and classes with the largest numbers of parasitic species are listed in the table. Numbers are conservative minimum estimates. The columns for Endo- and Ecto-parasitism refer to the definitive host, as documented in the Vertebrate and Invertebrate columns.


title: Parasitism

text: A hemiparasite or "partial parasite" such as mistletoe derives some of its nutrients from another living plant, whereas a holoparasite such as dodder derives all of its nutrients from another plant. Parasitic plants make up about one per cent of angiosperms and are in almost every biome in the world. All these plants have modified roots, haustoria, which penetrate the host plants, connecting them to the conductive system—either the xylem, the phloem, or both. This provides them with the ability to extract water and nutrients from the host. A parasitic plant is classified depending on where it latches onto the host, either the stem or the root, and the amount of nutrients it requires. Since holoparasites have no chlorophyll and therefore cannot make food for themselves by photosynthesis, they are always obligate parasites, deriving all their food from their hosts. Some parasitic plants can locate their host plants by detecting chemicals in the air or soil given off by host shoots or roots, respectively. About 4,500 species of parasitic plant in approximately 20 families of flowering plants are known.


title: Parasitism

text: Species within the "Orobanchaceae" (broomrapes) are among the most economically destructive of all plants. Species of "Striga" (witchweeds) are estimated to cost billions of dollars a year in crop yield loss, infesting over 50 million hectares of cultivated land within Sub-Saharan Africa alone. "Striga" infects both grasses and grains, including corn, rice, and sorghum, undoubtedly some of the most important food crops. "Orobanche" also threatens a wide range of other important crops, including peas, chickpeas, tomatoes, carrots, and varieties of cabbage. Yield loss from "Orobanche" can be total; despite extensive research, no method of control has been entirely successful.


title: Parasitism

text: Many plants and fungi exchange carbon and nutrients in mutualistic mycorrhizal relationships. Some 400 species of myco-heterotrophic plants, mostly in the tropics, however effectively cheat by taking carbon from a fungus rather than exchanging it for minerals. They have much reduced roots, as they do not need to absorb water from the soil; their stems are slender with few vascular bundles, and their leaves are reduced to small scales, as they do not photosynthesize. Their seeds are very small and numerous, so they appear to rely on being infected by a suitable fungus soon after germinating.


title: Parasitism

text: Parasitic fungi derive some or all of their nutritional requirements from plants, other fungi, or animals. Unlike mycorrhizal fungi which have a mutualistic relationship with their host plants, they are pathogenic. For example, the honey fungi in the genus "Armillaria" grow in the roots of a wide variety of trees, and eventually kill them. They then continue to live in the dead wood, feeding saprophytically.


title: Parasitism

text: Fungal infection (mycosis) is widespread in animals including humans; it kills some 1.6 million people each year. Microsporidia are obligate intracellular parasitic fungi that can also be hyperparasites. They largely affect insects, but some affect vertebrates including humans, where they can cause the intestinal infection microsporidiosis.


title: Parasitism

text: Protozoa such as "Plasmodium", "Trypanosoma", and "Entamoeba" are endoparasitic. They cause serious diseases in vertebrates including humans—in these examples, malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery—and have complex life cycles.


title: Parasitism

text: Many bacteria are parasitic, though they are more generally thought of as pathogens causing disease. Parasitic bacteria are extremely diverse, and infect their hosts by a variety of routes. To give a few examples, "Bacillus anthracis", the cause of anthrax, is spread by contact with infected domestic animals; its spores, which can survive for years outside the body, can enter a host through an abrasion or may be inhaled. "Borrelia", the cause of Lyme disease and relapsing fever, is transmitted by vectors, ticks of the genus "Ixodes", from the diseases' reservoirs in animals such as deer. "Campylobacter jejuni", a cause of gastroenteritis, is spread by the fecal–oral route from animals, or by eating insufficiently cooked poultry, or by contaminated water. "Haemophilus influenzae", an agent of bacterial meningitis and respiratory tract infections such as influenza and bronchitis, is transmitted by droplet contact. "Treponema pallidum", the cause of syphilis, is spread by sexual activity.


title: Parasitism

text: Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites, characterised by extremely limited biological function, to the point where, while they are evidently able to infect all other organisms from bacteria and archaea to animals, plants and fungi, it is unclear whether they can themselves be described as living. They can be either RNA or DNA viruses consisting of a single or double strand of genetic material (RNA or DNA, respectively), covered in a protein coat and sometimes a lipid envelope. They thus lack all the usual machinery of the cell such as enzymes, relying entirely on the host cell's ability to replicate DNA and synthesise proteins. Most viruses are bacteriophages, infecting bacteria.


title: Parasitism

text: Parasitism is a major aspect of evolutionary ecology; for example, almost all free-living animals are host to at least one species of parasite. Vertebrates, the best-studied group, are hosts to between 75,000 and 300,000 species of helminths and an uncounted number of parasitic microorganisms. On average, a mammal species hosts four species of nematode, two of trematodes, and two of cestodes. Humans have 342 species of helminth parasites, and 70 species of protozoan parasites. Some three-quarters of the links in food webs include a parasite, important in regulating host numbers. Perhaps 40 percent of described species are parasitic.


title: Parasitism

text: Parasitism is hard to demonstrate from the fossil record, but holes in the mandibles of several specimens of "Tyrannosaurus" may have been caused by "Trichomonas"-like parasites.