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Concept
Terrestrial animal
Summary
Terrestrial animals are animals that live predominantly or entirely on land (e.g. cats, chickens, ants, spiders), as compared with aquatic animals, which live predominantly or entirely in the water (e.g. fish, lobsters, octopuses), and amphibians, which rely on a combination of aquatic and terrestrial habitats (e.g. frogs and newts). Some groups of insects are terrestrial, such as ants, butterflies, earwigs, cockroaches, grasshoppers and many others, while other groups are partially aquatic, such as mosquitoes and dragonflies, which pass their larval stages in water.
The term "terrestrial" is typically applied to species that live primarily on the ground, in contrast to arboreal species, which live primarily in trees.
There are other less common terms that apply to specific groups of terrestrial animals:
Saxicolous creatures are rock dwelling. "Saxicolous" is derived from the Latin word saxum, meaning a rock.
Arenicolous creatures live in the sand.
Troglofauna predominantly live in caves.
Terrestrial invasion is one of the most important events in the history of life. Terrestrial lineages evolved in several animal phyla, among which arthropods, vertebrates and mollusks are representatives of more successful groups of terrestrial animals.
Terrestrial animals do not form a unified clade; rather, they share only the fact that they live on land. The transition from an aquatic to terrestrial life by various groups of animals has occurred independently and successfully many times. Most terrestrial lineages originated under a mild or tropical climate during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, whereas few animals became fully terrestrial during the Cenozoic.
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Ontological neighbourhood
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