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Elliot's Short-tailed Shrew
Elliot's short-tailed shrew (''Blarina hylophaga'') is a small, slate grey, short-tailed species of shrew. Its common name comes from Daniel Giraud Elliot, who first described the species in 1899. Description Elliot's short-tailed shrew is similar in appearance to the closely related southern short-tailed shrew, although slightly larger on average, and was long thought to belong to the same species. It is a heavily built shrew with short legs and tail, and a long, pointed snout with long whiskers. The ears and eyes are both small, the eyelids being permanently closed in some individuals, a feature otherwise unknown among shrews. The fur is velvety in texture, and uniformly colored greyish to brown. Adults range from in total length, including the tail, and weigh . Distribution and habitat Elliot's short-tailed shrew is found in lowland environments with heavy vegetation from southern Iowa and Nebraska in the north to parts of Texas and northern Louisiana in the south, includin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daniel Giraud Elliot
Daniel Giraud Elliot (March 7, 1835 – December 22, 1915) was an American zoologist and the founder of the American Ornithologist Union. Life He was born in New York City on March 7, 1835, to George and Rebecca Elliot. In 1858, he married Ann Eliza Henderson. From 1869 to 1879, he was in London and established strong links to British ornithologists and naturalists. Elliot used his wealth to publish a series of sumptuous color-plate books on birds and other animals. Elliot wrote the text himself and commissioned artists such as Joseph Wolf and Joseph Smit, both of whom had worked for John Gould, to provide the illustrations. The books included ''A Monograph of the Phasianidae (Family of the Pheasants)'' (1870–72), ''A Monograph of the Paradiseidae or Birds of Paradise'' (1873), ''A Monograph of the Felidae or Family of Cats'' (1878) and ''Review of the Primates'' (1913). In 1890, he was President of the American Ornithologists' Union. Elliot became the first curator of zoolo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is the eighth most extensive and 21st most populous U.S. state. The 2020 United States census enumerated the population of Colorado at 5,773,714, an increase of 14.80% since the 2010 United States census. The region has been inhabited by Native Americans and their ancestors for at least 13,500 years and possibly much longer. The eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains was a major migration route for early peoples who spread throughout the Americas. "''Colorado''" is the Spanish adjective meaning "ruddy", the color of the Fountain Formation outcroppings found up and down the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28, 1861, and on August 1, 1876, U.S. President Ulyss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blarina
The genus ''Blarina'' is a group of relatively large shrews with relatively short tails found in North America. They have 32 teeth and are in the red-toothed shrew subfamily. They generally have dark fur and thick feet. The saliva of these animals is toxic and is used to subdue prey. Species are: *Northern short-tailed shrew ''B. brevicauda'' *Southern short-tailed shrew ''B. carolinensis'' *Elliot's short-tailed shrew ''B. hylophaga'' *Everglades short-tailed shrew ''B. peninsulae'' Ecoepidemiology Short-tailed shrews are one of the animal reservoirs of the agents of Lyme disease and human babesiosis Babesiosis or piroplasmosis is a malaria-like parasitic disease caused by infection with a eukaryotic parasite in the order Piroplasmida, typically a ''Babesia'' or '' Theileria'', in the phylum Apicomplexa. Human babesiosis transmission via ....Telford III, S. R., Mather, T. N., Adler, G. H., & Spielman, A. (1990). ''Short-tailed shrews as reservoirs of the agents of Lym ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wisconsinan Glaciation
The Wisconsin Glacial Episode, also called the Wisconsin glaciation, was the most recent glacial period of the North American ice sheet complex. This advance included the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which nucleated in the northern North American Cordillera; the Innuitian ice sheet, which extended across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago; the Greenland ice sheet; and the massive Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered the high latitudes of central and eastern North America. This advance was synchronous with global glaciation during the last glacial period, including the North American alpine glacier advance, known as the Pinedale glaciation. The Wisconsin glaciation extended from approximately 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, between the Sangamonian Stage and the current interglacial, the Holocene. The maximum ice extent occurred approximately 25,000–21,000 years ago during the last glacial maximum, also known as the ''Late Wisconsin'' in North America. This glaciation radically altered th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family (taxonomy), family. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus. :E.g. ''Panthera leo'' (lion) and ''Panthera onca'' (jaguar) are two species within the genus ''Panthera''. ''Panthera'' is a genus within the family Felidae. The composition of a genus is determined by taxonomy (biology), taxonomists. The standards for genus classification are not strictly codified, so different authorities often produce different classifications for genera. There are some general practices used, however, including the idea that a newly defined genus should fulfill these three criteria to be descriptively useful: # monophyly – all descendants ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blarina Brevicauda
The northern short-tailed shrew (''Blarina brevicauda'') is the largest shrew in the genus ''Blarina'', and occurs in the northeastern region of North America. It is a semifossorial, highly active, and voracious insectivore and is present in a variety of habitats like broadleaved and pine forests among shrubs and hedges as well as grassy river banks. It is notable in that it is one of the few venomous mammals. The specific epithet, ''brevicauda'', is a combination of the Latin ''brevis'' and ''cauda'', meaning "short tail". Taxonomy ''B. brevicauda'' is a red-toothed shrew, one of three or four species (depending on the authority) in the genus ''Blarina''. It was formerly considered to be a sister subspecies of the southern short-tailed shrew (''B. carolinensis''). The species has been divided into 11 subspecies based on morphological characteristics, which are grouped into two semispecies: ''B. b. brevicauda'' and ''B. b. talpoides''; these groupings were mirrored by a molec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Animal Echolocation
Echolocation, also called bio sonar, is a biological sonar used by several animal species. Echolocating animals emit calls out to the environment and listen to the echoes of those calls that return from various objects near them. They use these echoes to locate and identify the objects. Echolocation is used for navigation, foraging, and hunting in various environments. Echolocating animals include some mammals (most notably Laurasiatheria) and a few birds, especially some bat species and odontocetes (toothed whales and dolphins), but also in simpler forms in other groups such as shrews, and two cave-dwelling bird groups, the so-called cave swiftlets in the genus ''Aerodramus'' (formerly ''Collocalia'') and the unrelated oilbird ''Steatornis caripensis''. Early research The term ''echolocation'' was coined in 1938 by the American zoologist Donald Griffin, who, with Robert Galambos, first demonstrated the phenomenon in bats. As Griffin described in his book, the 18th century I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nocturnality
Nocturnality is an animal behavior characterized by being active during the night and sleeping during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal", versus diurnal meaning the opposite. Nocturnal creatures generally have highly developed senses of hearing, smell, and specially adapted eyesight. Some animals, such as cats and ferrets, have eyes that can adapt to both low-level and bright day levels of illumination (see metaturnal). Others, such as bushbabies and (some) bats, can function only at night. Many nocturnal creatures including tarsiers and some owls have large eyes in comparison with their body size to compensate for the lower light levels at night. More specifically, they have been found to have a larger cornea relative to their eye size than diurnal creatures to increase their : in the low-light conditions. Nocturnality helps wasps, such as ''Apoica flavissima'', avoid hunting in intense sunlight. Diurnal animals, including squirrels and songbirds, are active d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swift Fox
The swift fox (''Vulpes velox'') is a small light orange-tan fox around the size of a domestic cat found in the western grasslands of North America, such as Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. It also lives in southern Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta in Canada, where it was previously extirpated. It is closely related to the kit fox (''V. macrotis'') and some mammalogists classify them as conspecific. However, molecular systematics imply that the two species are distinct. Interbreeding between the two species does occur where their ranges overlap (eastern New Mexico and western Texas), but this hybridization is quite restricted in scope. The swift fox lives primarily in short-grass prairies and deserts. It became nearly extinct in the 1930s as a result of predator control programs, but was successfully reintroduced later. Currently, the conservation status of the species is considered by the IUCN as Least Concern owing to stable populations elsewhere. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peromyscus Maniculatus
''Peromyscus maniculatus'' is a rodent native to eastern North America. It is most commonly called the eastern deer mouse; when formerly grouped with the western deer mouse (''P. sonoriensis''), it was referred to as the North American deermouse and is fairly widespread across most of North America east of the Mississippi River, with the major exception being the lowland southeastern United States. Like other ''Peromyscus'' species, it can be a vector and carrier of emerging infectious diseases such as hantaviruses and Lyme disease. It is closely related to ''Peromyscus leucopus'', the white-footed mouse. Overview The species in its former broad sense had 61 subspecies, but some of these now belong to ''P. sonoriensis''. They are all tiny mammals that are plentiful in number. The deer mouse is a small rodent that lives in eastern North America and is closely related to the white-footed mouse, ''Peromyscus leucopus''.The New Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. (Vol. 12, p. 631). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insectivore
A robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivorous animal or plant that eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects. The first vertebrate insectivores were amphibians. When they evolved 400 million years ago, the first amphibians were piscivores, with numerous sharp conical teeth, much like a modern crocodile. The same tooth arrangement is however also suited for eating animals with exoskeletons, thus the ability to eat insects is an extension of piscivory. At one time, insectivorous mammals were scientifically classified in an order called Insectivora. This order is now abandoned, as not all insectivorous mammals are closely related. Most of the Insectivora taxa have been reclassified; those that have not yet been reclassified and found to be truly related to each other remain in the order Eulipotyphla. Although individually small, insects exist in enormous numbers. Insects make u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arkansas
Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage language, a Dhegiha Siouan language, and referred to their relatives, the Quapaw people. The state's diverse geography ranges from the mountainous regions of the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains, which make up the U.S. Interior Highlands, to the densely forested land in the south known as the Arkansas Timberlands, to the eastern lowlands along the Mississippi River and the Arkansas Delta. Arkansas is the 29th largest by area and the 34th most populous state, with a population of just over 3 million at the 2020 census. The capital and most populous city is Little Rock, in the central part of the state, a hub for transportation, business, culture, and government. The northwestern corner of the state, including the Fayetteville–Springdaleâ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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