Cercal do Alentejo is a parish in the municipality of Santiago do Cacém, Portugal. The population in 2011 was 3,362,Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE), Census 2011 results according to the 2013 administrative division of Portugal in an area of 137.49 km². It was a municipality seat between 1836 and 1855. It comprises the towns of Cercal, Colos and Vila Nova de Milfontes.
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Its population in 1849 was 3,255. It was raised to the status of a town on 20 June 1991 and its name was changed from Cercal to Cercal do Alentejo. Being located within 15 miles of the beaches of the Alentejo coast, it has a temperate climate which gives it one of the most diverse fauna and flora in Southwest Alentejo.
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A similar experiment was performed on the cricket (Acheta domestica), an arthropod like the crayfish. The cercal system in the cricket senses the displacement of particles due to air currents utilizing filiform hairs covering the cerci, the two antenna-like appendages extending from the posterior section of the abdomen. Sensory interneurons in terminal abdominal ganglion carry information about intensity and direction of pressure perturbations. Crickets were presented with signal plus noise stimuli and the spikes from cercal interneurons due to this input were recorded.
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Estêvão held the comenda of Cercal and possibly Seixal on behalf of the Order. Estêvão da Gama married Isabel Sodré, a daughter of João Sodré (also known as João de Resende), scion of a well-connected family of English origin.The Sodrés were said to have been descended from Frederick Sudley, of Gloucestershire, who accompanied the Earl of Cambridge to Portugal in 1381, and subsequently settled down there (Subrahmanyam 1997: p.61) She was the sister of Vicente Sodré and Brás Sodré.
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Pentecopterus also lacks the cercal blades that occur in Megalograptus, where they have been interpreted as functioning as a biological rudder, like the pterygotid telson. This suggests that Pentecopterus was less able to swim than Megalograptus. Further, Pentecopterus has some features unique among the eurypterids, notably the shape of its carapace and the unusual shape of the sixth podomere of appendage VI. Pentecopterus also possesses lateral scales on the telson, something otherwise only seen in pterygotid eurypterids. This feature likely arose through convergent evolution.
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In the second half of the 19th century, pyrite from Pias and Moinho dos Paneiros (Sines) and ore from Cercal are transported from the small island. The ore arrived in carts pulled by bulls, transported over a large bridge, and by boats to larger ships on the island. Near the mouth of the ravine on Pessegueiro there still remain abandoned deposits of accumulated ore, that were never transported. During the first decade of the 19th century, the populous of Sines lived in fear during the French occupation of the country.
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The eighth joint was a small triangular spine. An epimera (the part of a segment next to an articulation of an appendage) of the first tergite whose edge slopes back proves that the entire mesosoma was very tumid, as in the carcinosomatids. The most surprising morphological feature of Holmipterus is the pretelson-telson assemblage which includes the cercal blades, as in other megalograptids. It can be stated that the pretelson, and therefore probably the entire cauda (tail), was almost round in cross section, as in Megalograptidae, Carcinosomatidae and Mixopteridae, who had a rounded tail capable of being pushed "overhead", as in current scorpions.
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Built in 1849 by Tomás de Aquino, architect, for Alexandrino Antonio de Melo, 1st Baron do Cercal, the two story pink facade structure is one of the historic properties preserving Portuguese influence in Macau and located on Avenida da Praia Grande, in the St. Lawrence Parish. The building used Pombaline style imported from Portugal and popular in the 18th to mid 19th Century. The office is the former residence of the Governor of Macau (relocated to another residence further west at Macau Government House) and the offices of the governor prior to the handover in 1999. The building is surrounded by shops, residences and other office buildings.
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At the time of description, the amber specimen was residing in the private collection of James Zigras and only available for study through the American Museum of Natural History. The Toxolabis type specimen, recovered from amber bearing outcrops in Kachin State, was first studied by paleoentomologists Michael S. Engel of the Division of Entomology at the University of Kansas, and David Grimaldi of the American Museum of Natural History. Engel and Grimaldi's 2014 type description of the new species was published in the journal Novitates Paleoentomologicae. The genus name Toxolabis was coined by Engel and Grimaldi as a combination of Greek words labis, which means "forceps" and toxon meaning "bow", a reference to the shape of the cercal forceps.
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The shape of this cleft, which first appears in the second instar and becomes more pronounced until the eighth instar, allows the distinction of the sex. A small cleft in the female’s eighth sternum, which develops in early instars and completely divides this sternum in later instars, further facilitates sex determination. The genitalia lobes remain short in males until the shape of the penis can be distinguished in the 11th nymphal instar, when the internal reproductive organs will also have developed, including seven large testicles. The two short vasa deferentia, which fuse immediately anterior to the penis, are thin-walled and slightly dilated at their distal ends; they lengthen in the next instar and form two loops between the two cercal nerves.
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Its eastern border with Cercal meanders along the foothills until southeast of Herdade da Cabeça da Cabra, before the border joins that of the civil parish of Vila de Milfontes meandering west (following the Ribeira da Azenha) reaching the coast 1.5 kilometres south of the island of Pessegueiro. The space includes, apart from the town of Porto Covo, several other localities, including: Barradinha, Brejos do Morgave, Caeiro, Cabeça da Cabra, Camarneira, Casa Nova, Fonte do Muro, Fonte Nova, Foros da Pouca Farinha, Herdade de Cabeça da Cabra, Monte das Pias and Vale Travesso. The area is part of the Southwest Alentejo and Vicentine Coast Natural Park consisting of protected landscapes and habitats for migratory and endemic species. The original projects for the community never materialized in the plans of Henrique Guilherme de Oliveira.
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The Atlantic Ocean, as seen from Porto Covo The port of Porto Covo, view from the East The civil parish of Porto Covo has of area, and today includes 1400 inhabitants (based on 2008 census). A coastal parish, it is located about south of the municipal seat Sines, but comprises an interior catchment that extends seven kilometres into the interior. While it is fronted to its north by the civil parish of Sines, it is surrounded to the west by the civil parish of Cercal (in the municipality of Santiago do Cacém) and south by the civil parish of Vila Nova de Milfontes (in the municipality of Odemira). Its northern frontier extends from the beach of Vieirinha into the interior, until reaching the IC4 motorway (each of Brejos do Morgave) and extending south to the village of Sonega.
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