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Debrigarh Wildlife Sanctuary
The Debrigarh wildlife sanctuary is located in the Sambalpur district in the Indian state of Odisha, covering a total area of 346.91 km2. It is situated near the city of Sambalpur's Hirakud Dam. The Debrigarh Wildlife Sanctuary is an important location for the conservation of various local wildlife and their habitat. It is home to a wide variety of flora and fauna. Over 40 species of mammals, 200 species of birds, 40 species of reptiles, 12 species of amphibians, 42 species of fishes, 39 species of odonates, 85 species of butterflies and 38 species of spiders have been found living in the sanctuary. The sanctuary is bound on the east and north by the huge Hirakud reservoir. It is one of the select few sanctuaries in the state supporting both terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity; which further attracts a significant number of migratory waterfowl during winter; and is also home to over 250 plant species, many of which have ethno-botanical and medicinal value. Debrigarh Wildlife ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Odonata
Odonata is an order of flying insects that includes the dragonflies and damselflies. Members of the group first appeared during the Triassic, though members of their total group, Odonatoptera, first appeared in Late Carboniferous. The two common groups are distinguished with dragonflies, placed in the suborder Epiprocta, usually being larger, with eyes together and wings up or out at rest, while damselflies, suborder Zygoptera, are usually smaller with eyes placed apart and wings along body at rest. All Odonata have aquatic larvae called naiads (nymphs), and all of them, larvae and adults, are carnivorous. The adults can land, but rarely walk. Their legs are specialised for catching prey. They are almost entirely insectivorous. Etymology and terminology Fabricius coined the term ''Odonata'' in 1793 from the Ancient Greek ( Ionic form of ) 'tooth'. One hypothesis is that it was because their maxillae are notably toothed. Most insects also have toothed mandibles. The wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wildlife Sanctuaries In Odisha
Wildlife refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous to game: those birds and mammals that were hunted for sport. Wildlife can be found in all ecosystems. Deserts, plains, grasslands, woodlands, forests, and other areas, including the most developed urban areas, all have distinct forms of wildlife. While the term in popular culture usually refers to animals that are untouched by human factors, most scientists agree that much wildlife is affected by human activities. Some wildlife threaten human safety, health, property, and quality of life. However, many wild animals, even the dangerous ones, have value to human beings. This value might be economic, educational, or emotional in nature. Humans have historically tended to separate civilization from wildlife in a number of ways, including the legal, social, and moral senses. Some animals, howeve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern Dry Deciduous Forests
The Northern dry deciduous forests, presently known as the North Deccan dry deciduous forests, is a tropical dry broadleaf forest ecoregion of east-central India. Geography It covers an area of , mostly in western Odisha state, with portions in neighboring Chhattisgarh. The region extends northeast–southwest in the dry western rain shadow of the Eastern Ghats range, which block the moisture-laden monsoon winds from the Bay of Bengal to the east. It is surrounded by the more humid Eastern Highlands moist deciduous forests ecoregion. The ecoregion lies mostly in the middle basin of the Mahanadi River and its tributary the Tel. The southern portion of the ecoregion lies in the upper basin of the Indravati River, a tributary of the Godavari. Flora The original vegetation was a multi-storied forest of mostly dry-season deciduous trees, dominated by sal (''Shorea robusta''). Little of the original forest remains. Teak (''Tectona grandis''), which favors drier conditions, is mor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biophysical Environment
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale from microscopic to global in extent. It can also be subdivided according to its attributes. Examples include the marine environment, the atmospheric environment and the terrestrial environment. The number of biophysical environments is countless, given that each living organism has its own environment. The term ''environment'' can refer to a singular global environment in relation to humanity, or a local biophysical environment, e.g. the UK's Environment Agency. Life-environment interaction All life that has survived must have adapted to the conditions of its environment. Temperature, light, humidity, soil nutrients, etc., all influence the species within an environment. However, life in turn modifies, in various forms, its conditions. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps with the closely related sciences of biogeography, evolutionary biology, genetics, ethology, and natural history. Ecology is a branch of biology, and it is not synonymous with environmentalism. Among other things, ecology is the study of: * The abundance, biomass, and distribution of organisms in the context of the environment * Life processes, antifragility, interactions, and adaptations * The movement of materials and energy through living communities * The successional development of ecosystems * Cooperation, competition, and predation within and between species * Patterns of biodiversity and its effect on ecosystem processes Ecology has practical applications in conservation biology, wetland management, natural resource managemen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eco-Sensitive Zone
Eco-Sensitive Zones (ESZs) or Ecologically Fragile Areas (EFAs) are areas in India notified by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Government of India around Protected Areas, National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries. The purpose of declaring ESZs is to create some kind of "shock absorbers" to the protected areas by regulating and managing the activities around such areas. They also act as a transition zone from areas of high protection to areas involving lesser protection. Authority ESZs are regulated by central government through the Min. of Environment, Forests and Climate change (MoEFCC). The Ministry came out with new guidelines for the regulation of such areas in 2011. Statutory backing The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 does not mention the word "Eco-Sensitive Zones". However, Section 3(2)(v) of the Act, says that Central Government can restrict areas in which any industries, operations or processes or class of industries, operations o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medicinal Plants
Medicinal plants, also called medicinal herbs, have been discovered and used in traditional medicine practices since prehistoric times. Plants synthesize hundreds of chemical compounds for various functions, including defense and protection against insects, fungi, diseases, and herbivorous mammals. The earliest historical records of herbs are found from the Sumerian civilization, where hundreds of medicinal plants including opium are listed on clay tablets, c. 3000 BC. The Ebers Papyrus from ancient Egypt, c. 1550 BC, describes over 850 plant medicines. The Greek physician Dioscorides, who worked in the Roman army, documented over 1000 recipes for medicines using over 600 medicinal plants in ''De materia medica'', c. 60 AD; this formed the basis of pharmacopoeias for some 1500 years. Drug research sometimes makes use of ethnobotany to search for pharmacologically active substances, and this approach has yielded hundreds of useful compounds. These include the common drugs asp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethnobotany
Ethnobotany is the study of a region's plants and their practical uses through the traditional knowledge of a local culture and people. An ethnobotanist thus strives to document the local customs involving the practical uses of local flora for many aspects of life, such as plants as medicines, foods, intoxicants and clothing. Richard Evans Schultes, often referred to as the "father of ethnobotany", explained the discipline in this way: Ethnobotany simply means ... investigating plants used by societies in various parts of the world. Since the time of Schultes, the field of ethnobotany has grown from simply acquiring ethnobotanical knowledge to that of applying it to a modern society, primarily in the form of pharmaceuticals. Intellectual property rights and benefit-sharing arrangements are important issues in ethnobotany. History The idea of ethnobotany was first proposed by the early 20th century botanist John William Harshberger. While Harshberger did perform ethnobotanical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Waterfowl
Anseriformes is an order of birds also known as waterfowl that comprises about 180 living species of birds in three families: Anhimidae (three species of screamers), Anseranatidae (the magpie goose), and Anatidae, the largest family, which includes over 170 species of waterfowl, among them the ducks, geese, and swans. Most modern species in the order are highly adapted for an aquatic existence at the water surface. With the exception of screamers, males have penises, a trait that has been lost in the Neoaves. Due to their aquatic nature, most species are web-footed. Evolution Anseriformes are one of only two types of modern bird to be confirmed present during the Mesozoic alongside the other dinosaurs, and in fact were among the very few birds to survive their extinction, along with their cousins the galliformes. These two groups only occupied two ecological niches during the Mesozoic, living in water and on the ground, while the toothed enantiornithes were the dominant bird ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spider
Spiders ( order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all orders of organisms. Spiders are found worldwide on every continent except for Antarctica, and have become established in nearly every land habitat. , 50,356 spider species in 132 families have been recorded by taxonomists. However, there has been debate among scientists about how families should be classified, with over 20 different classifications proposed since 1900. Anatomically, spiders (as with all arachnids) differ from other arthropods in that the usual body segments are fused into two tagmata, the cephalothorax or prosoma, and the opisthosoma, or abdomen, and joined by a small, cylindrical pedicel, however, as there is currently neither paleontological nor embryological evidence that spiders ever had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Butterfly
Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the Order (biology), order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The group comprises the large superfamily (zoology), superfamily Papilionoidea, which contains at least one former group, the skippers (formerly the superfamily "Hesperioidea"), and the most recent analyses suggest it also contains the moth-butterflies (formerly the superfamily "Hedyloidea"). Butterfly fossils date to the Paleocene, about 56 million years ago. Butterflies have a four-stage life cycle, as like most insects they undergo Holometabolism, complete metamorphosis. Winged adults lay eggs on the food plant on which their larvae, known as caterpillars, will feed. The caterpillars grow, sometimes very rapidly, and when fully developed, pupate in a chrysalis. When metamorphosis is complete, the pupal skin splits, the adult insect climbs o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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