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Amazonian Oropendola
The olive oropendola (''Psarocolius bifasciatus'') is the largest member of the icterid family and rivals the Amazonian umbrellabird as the largest passerine bird in South America. It is sometimes placed in the genus '' Gymnostinops'' instead of '' Psarocolius''. As suggested by its name, it is found widely – but often in low densities – throughout humid lowland forests of the Amazon Basin, with the notable exception of most of the Guiana Shield. It is sometimes split into two species, the western olive oropendola (''P. yuracares'') and the eastern Pará oropendola (''P. bifasciatus''), but the subspecies ''P. y. neivae'' is widely recognized as a hybrid swarm, and the vast majority of authorities consider them a single species. Description The sexes of this icterid are very different in size: the male is 52 cm (21 in) long and weighs 550 g (1.2 lbs); the smaller female is 41 cm (16 in) long and weighs 260 g (9.2 oz). Confusingly, the ...
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Johann Baptist Von Spix
Johann Baptist Ritter von Spix (9 February 1781 – 13 March 1826) was a German natural history, biologist. From his expedition to Brazil, he brought to Germany a large variety of specimens of plants, insects, mammals, birds, amphibians and fish. They constitute an important basis for today's National Zoological Collection in Munich. Numerous examples of his ethnographic collections, such as dance masks and the like, are now part of the collection of the Museum Five Continents, Museum of Ethnography in Munich. Biography Spix was born in Höchstadt, in present-day Middle Franconia, as the seventh of eleven children. His childhood home is the site of the Spix Museum, open to the public since 2004. He studied philosophy in Bamberg and graduated with a doctoral degree. Later he studied theology in Würzburg. After attending lectures of the young professor Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, F. W. J. Schelling, Spix became interested in nature. He quit his theology studi ...
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Rectrices
Flight feathers (''Pennae volatus'') are the long, stiff, asymmetrically shaped, but symmetrically paired pennaceous feathers on the wings or tail of a bird; those on the wings are called remiges (), singular remex (), while those on the tail are called rectrices (), singular rectrix (). The primary function of the flight feathers is to aid in the generation of both thrust and lift, thereby enabling flight. The flight feathers of some birds have evolved to perform additional functions, generally associated with territorial displays, courtship rituals or feeding methods. In some species, these feathers have developed into long showy plumes used in visual courtship displays, while in others they create a sound during display flights. Tiny serrations on the leading edge of their remiges help owls to fly silently (and therefore hunt more successfully), while the extra-stiff rectrices of woodpeckers help them to brace against tree trunks as they hammer on them. Even flightless birds ...
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Birds Of Brazil
Brazil has one of the richest bird diversities in the world. The avifauna of Brazil include a total of 1858 confirmed species of which 238 are endemic. Five have been introduced by humans, 96 are rare or vagrants, and five are extinct or extirpated. An additional 14 species are hypothetical (see below). Brazil hosts about 60% of the bird species recorded for all of South America. These numbers are still increasing almost every year, due to new occurrences, new species being described, or splits of existing species. About 10% of the bird species found in Brazil are, nonetheless, threatened. In June 2013 a simultaneous discovery of fifteen bird species in Brazil was announced, the first such since 1871, when August von Pelzeln described forty new species. The birds were from the families Corvidae, Thamnophilidae, Dendrocolaptidae, Tyrannidae, and Polioptilidae. Eleven of the new species are endemics of Brazil and four also inhabit Peru and Bolivia. Except as an entry is cited ...
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Helm Identification Guides
The ''Helm Identification Guides'' are a series of books that identify groups of birds. The series include two types of guides, those that are: * Taxonomic, dealing with a particular family of birds on a worldwide scale—most early Helm Guides were this type, as well as many more-recent ones, although some later books deal with identification of such groups on a regional scale only (e.g., ''The Gulls Guide,'' which covers only species in Europe, Asia, and North America) * Geographic, including all bird species in an area (e.g., ''The Birds of the West Indies'') Early volumes were sometimes published under the Croom Helm or Christopher Helm imprints. In addition, a parallel set of guides, very similar in design, was published by Pica Press in the 1990s (marked ''Pica'' in the list below); Pica was later absorbed into A & C Black (now part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc), and all guides are now marketed as a single series. Several of the books have won the British Birds ''Bird B ...
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Tiputini Biodiversity Station
Tiputini Biodiversity Station (TBS) is a scientific field research center in the Ecuadorian Amazon. It was established in 1995 by Universidad San Francisco de Quito in collaboration with Boston University, and is jointly managed by them as a center of education, research and conservation. A higher diversity of reptiles, amphibians, insects, birds and bats has been found there than anywhere else in South America, and possibly the world. It is located in the province of Orellana, about 280 km ESE from Quito, the capital city of Ecuador. It is located on the northern bank of the Tiputini River, and although separated from the Yasuní National Park by the river, the station forms part of the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve. The research site It is a field study facility in which students and other scientists perform different research projects. Although the station is geared towards research and education it is not strictly off limits to tourists. There are however no regular tours t ...
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Fruit
In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particular have long propagated using the movements of humans and animals in a symbiotic relationship that is the means for seed dispersal for the one group and nutrition for the other; in fact, humans and many animals have become dependent on fruits as a source of food. Consequently, fruits account for a substantial fraction of the world's agricultural output, and some (such as the apple and the pomegranate) have acquired extensive cultural and symbolic meanings. In common language usage, "fruit" normally means the seed-associated fleshy structures (or produce) of plants that typically are sweet or sour and edible in the raw state, such as apples, bananas, grapes, lemons, oranges, and strawberries. In botanical usage, the term "fruit" also i ...
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Nectar
Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries or nectarines, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists, which in turn provide herbivore protection. Common nectar-consuming pollinators include mosquitoes, hoverflies, wasps, bees, butterflies and moths, hummingbirds, honeyeaters and bats. Nectar plays a crucial role in the foraging economics and evolution of nectar-eating species; for example, nectar foraging behavior is largely responsible for the divergent evolution of the African honey bee, ''A. m. scutellata'' and the western honey bee. Nectar is an economically important substance as it is the sugar source for honey. It is also useful in agriculture and horticulture because the adult stages of some predatory insects feed on nectar. For example, a number of parasitoid wasps (e.g. the social wasp species ''Apoica flavissima'') rely ...
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Insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes and one pair of antennae. Their blood is not totally contained in vessels; some circulates in an open cavity known as the haemocoel. Insects are the most diverse group of animals; they include more than a million described species and represent more than half of all known living organisms. The total number of extant species is estimated at between six and ten million; In: potentially over 90% of the animal life forms on Earth are insects. Insects may be found in nearly all environments, although only a small number of species reside in the oceans, which are dominated by another arthropod group, crustaceans, which recent research has indicated insects are nested within. Nearly all insects hatch from eggs. ...
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Reptile
Reptiles, as most commonly defined are the animals in the class Reptilia ( ), a paraphyletic grouping comprising all sauropsids except birds. Living reptiles comprise turtles, crocodilians, squamates (lizards and snakes) and rhynchocephalians (tuatara). As of March 2022, the Reptile Database includes about 11,700 species. In the traditional Linnaean classification system, birds are considered a separate class to reptiles. However, crocodilians are more closely related to birds than they are to other living reptiles, and so modern cladistic classification systems include birds within Reptilia, redefining the term as a clade. Other cladistic definitions abandon the term reptile altogether in favor of the clade Sauropsida, which refers to all amniotes more closely related to modern reptiles than to mammals. The study of the traditional reptile orders, historically combined with that of modern amphibians, is called herpetology. The earliest known proto-reptiles originated around ...
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Amphibian
Amphibians are tetrapod, four-limbed and ectothermic vertebrates of the Class (biology), class Amphibia. All living amphibians belong to the group Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terrestrial animal, terrestrial, fossorial, arboreal or freshwater aquatic ecosystems. Thus amphibians typically start out as larvae living in water, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this. The young generally undergo metamorphosis from larva with gills to an adult air-breathing form with lungs. Amphibians use their skin as a secondary respiratory surface and some small terrestrial salamanders and frogs lack lungs and rely entirely on their skin. They are superficially similar to reptiles like lizards but, along with mammals and birds, reptiles are amniotes and do not require water bodies in which to breed. With their complex reproductive needs and permeable skins, amphibians are often ecological indicators; in re ...
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Vertebrate
Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () ( chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with currently about 69,963 species described. Vertebrates comprise such groups as the following: * jawless fish, which include hagfish and lampreys * jawed vertebrates, which include: ** cartilaginous fish (sharks, rays, and ratfish) ** bony vertebrates, which include: *** ray-fins (the majority of living bony fish) *** lobe-fins, which include: **** coelacanths and lungfish **** tetrapods (limbed vertebrates) Extant vertebrates range in size from the frog species ''Paedophryne amauensis'', at as little as , to the blue whale, at up to . Vertebrates make up less than five percent of all described animal species; the rest are invertebrates, which lack vertebral columns. The vertebrates traditionally include the hagfish, which do no ...
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Omnivorous
An omnivore () is an animal that has the ability to eat and survive on both plant and animal matter. Obtaining energy and nutrients from plant and animal matter, omnivores digest carbohydrates, protein, fat, and fiber, and metabolize the nutrients and energy of the sources absorbed. Often, they have the ability to incorporate food sources such as algae, fungi, and bacteria into their diet. Omnivores come from diverse backgrounds that often independently evolved sophisticated consumption capabilities. For instance, dogs evolved from primarily carnivorous organisms (Carnivora) while pigs evolved from primarily herbivorous organisms (Artiodactyla). Despite this, physical characteristics such as tooth morphology may be reliable indicators of diet in mammals, with such morphological adaptation having been observed in bears. The variety of different animals that are classified as omnivores can be placed into further sub-categories depending on their feeding behaviors. Frugivores ...
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