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Fiery Minivet
The fiery minivet (''Pericrocotus igneus'') is a species of bird in the family Campephagidae. Its range includes Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Its natural habitats are broadleaf, secondary and coastal forests. It is threatened by forest clearance and has been assessed as near-threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Taxonomy This species was described from Malacca by Edward Blyth in 1846. The species name is from the Latin ''igneus'' "fiery". Harry C. Oberholser described the larger subspecies ''Pericrocotus igneus trophis'' from Simeulue in 1912. A 2010 molecular phylogenetic study confirmed the previously hypothesised relationship that the fiery minivet and small minivet (''Pericrocotus cinnamomeus'') are sister species. Description The fiery minivet is long. It is sexually dimorphic. The male has a glossy black head and mantle and an orange-red back. The wings are mostly glossy black, with orange-red edges to the secon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Blyth
Edward Blyth (23 December 1810 – 27 December 1873) was an English zoologist who worked for most of his life in India as a curator of zoology at the museum of the Asiatic Society of India in Calcutta. Blyth was born in London in 1810. In 1841 he travelled to India to become the curator of the museum of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. He set about updating the museum's catalogues, publishing a ''Catalogue of the Birds of the Asiatic Society'' in 1849. He was prevented from doing much fieldwork himself, but received and described bird specimens from A.O. Hume, Samuel Tickell, Robert Swinhoe and others. He remained as curator until 1862, when ill-health forced his return to England. His ''Natural History of the Cranes'' was published posthumously in 1881. Avian species bearing his name include Blyth's hornbill, Blyth's leaf warbler, Blyth's hawk-eagle, Blyth's olive bulbul, Blyth's parakeet, Blyth's frogmouth, Blyth's reed warbler, Blyth's rosefinch, Blyth's shrike-babbl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sumatra
Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent islands such as the Simeulue, Nias, Mentawai, Enggano, Riau Islands, Bangka Belitung and Krakatoa archipelago. Sumatra is an elongated landmass spanning a diagonal northwest–southeast axis. The Indian Ocean borders the northwest, west, and southwest coasts of Sumatra, with the island chain of Simeulue, Nias, Mentawai, and Enggano off the western coast. In the northeast, the narrow Strait of Malacca separates the island from the Malay Peninsula, which is an extension of the Eurasian continent. In the southeast, the narrow Sunda Strait, containing the Krakatoa Archipelago, separates Sumatra from Java. The northern tip of Sumatra is near the Andaman Islands, while off the southeastern coast lie the islands of Bangka and Belitung, Karim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moulting
In biology, moulting (British English), or molting (American English), also known as sloughing, shedding, or in many invertebrates, ecdysis, is the manner in which an animal routinely casts off a part of its body (often, but not always, an outer layer or covering), either at specific times of the year, or at specific points in its life cycle. In medieval times it was also known as "mewing" (from the French verb "muer", to moult), a term that lives on in the name of Britain's Royal Mews where the King's hawks used to be kept during moulting time before becoming horse stables after Tudor times. Moulting can involve shedding the Epidermis (skin), epidermis (skin), pelage (hair, feathers, fur, wool), or other external layer. In some groups, other body parts may be shed, for example, the entire exoskeleton in arthropods, including the wings in some insects. Examples In birds In birds, moulting is the periodic replacement of feathers by shedding old feathers while producing new o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cup Nest
A bird nest is the spot in which a bird lays and incubates its eggs and raises its young. Although the term popularly refers to a specific structure made by the bird itself—such as the grassy cup nest of the American robin or Eurasian blackbird, or the elaborately woven hanging nest of the Montezuma oropendola or the village weaver—that is too restrictive a definition. For some species, a nest is simply a shallow depression made in sand; for others, it is the knot-hole left by a broken branch, a burrow dug into the ground, a chamber drilled into a tree, an enormous rotting pile of vegetation and earth, a shelf made of dried saliva or a mud dome with an entrance tunnel. The smallest bird nests are those of some hummingbirds, tiny cups which can be a mere across and high. At the other extreme, some nest mounds built by the dusky scrubfowl measure more than in diameter and stand nearly tall. The study of birds' nests is known as ''caliology''. Not all bird species bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contact Call
Contact calls are seemingly haphazard sounds made by many social animals (such as a chicken's cluck). Contact calls are unlike other calls (such as alarm calls) in that they are not usually widely used, conspicuous calls, but rather short exclamations that differ between individuals. Often, the message that the call is meant to convey is specific to the individual or group's activity, such as informing other members of the group about one's location while foraging for food. Some social animal species communicate the signal of potential danger by stopping contact calls, without the use of alarm calls. Charles Darwin wrote about this in relation to wild horse and cattle. Humming as contact calls Joseph Jordania suggested that human humming could have played a function of contact calls in early human ancestors. According to his suggestion, humans find it distressing to be in full silence (which is a sign of danger for them), and this is why humans who are alone sometimes hum, whistle, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mixed-species Foraging Flock
A mixed-species feeding flock, also termed a mixed-species foraging flock, mixed hunting party or informally bird wave, is a flock of usually insectivorous birds of different species that join each other and move together while foraging. These are different from feeding aggregations, which are congregations of several species of bird at areas of high food availability. While it is currently unknown how mixed-species foraging flocks originate, researchers have proposed a few mechanisms for their initiation. Many believe that nuclear species play a vital role in mixed-species flock initiation. Additionally, the forest structure is hypothesized to play a vital role in these flocks' formation. In Sri Lanka, for example, vocal mimicry by the greater racket-tailed drongo might have a key role in the initiation of mixed-species foraging flocks, while in parts of the American tropics packs of foraging golden-crowned warblers might play the same role. Composition Mixed-species foraging ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mangrove
A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline water, saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in several plant families. They occur worldwide in the tropics and subtropics and even some temperate coastal areas, mainly between latitudes 30° N and 30° S, with the greatest mangrove area within 5° of the equator. Mangrove plant families first appeared during the Late Cretaceous to Paleocene epochs, and became widely distributed in part due to the plate tectonics, movement of tectonic plates. The oldest known fossils of Nypa fruticans, mangrove palm date to 75 million years ago. Mangroves are salt-tolerant trees, also called halophytes, and are adapted to live in harsh coastal conditions. They contain a complex salt filtration system and a complex root system to cope with saltwater immersion and wave action. They are ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secondary Forest
A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. It is distinguished from an old-growth forest (primary or primeval forest), which has not recently undergone such disruption, and complex early seral forest, as well as third-growth forests that result from harvest in second growth forests. Secondary forest regrowing after timber harvest differs from forest regrowing after natural disturbances such as fire, insect infestation, or windthrow because the dead trees remain to provide nutrients, structure, and water retention after natural disturbances. However, often after natural disturbance the timber is harvested and removed from the system, in which case the system more closely resembles secondary forest rather than seral forest. Description Depending on the forest, the development of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peat Swamp Forest
Peat swamp forests are tropical moist forests where waterlogged soil prevents dead leaves and wood from fully decomposing. Over time, this creates a thick layer of acidic peat. Large areas of these forests are being logged at high rates. Peat swamp forests are typically surrounded by lowland rain forests on better-drained soils, and by brackish or salt-water mangrove forests near the coast. Tropical peatlands, which coexist with swamp forests within the tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests biome, store and accumulate vast amounts of carbon as soil organic matter - much more than natural forests contain. Their stability has important implications for climate change; they are among the largest near-surface reserves of terrestrial organic carbon. Peat swamp forests, which have ecological importance, are one of the most threatened, yet least studied and most poorly understood biotypes. Since the 1970s, peat swamp forest deforestation and drainage have greatly increase ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forest Edge
A woodland edge or forest edge is the transition zone (ecotone) from an area of woodland or forest to fields or other open spaces. Certain species of plants and animals are adapted to the forest edge, and these species are often more familiar to humans than species only found deeper within forests. A classic example of a forest edge species is the white-tailed deer in North America. The woodland edge on maps On topographic maps woods and forests are generally depicted in a soft green colour. Their edges are - like other features - usually determined from aerial photographs, but sometimes also by terrestrial survey. However, they only represent a snapshot in time because almost all woods have a tendency to spread or to gradually fill clearings. In addition, working out the exact edge of the wood or forest may be difficult where it transitions into scrub or bushes or the trees thin out slowly. Differences of opinion here often involved several tens of metres. In addition, many car ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broadleaf Forest
A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines a forest as, "Land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees higher than 5 meters and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach these thresholds ''in situ''. It does not include land that is predominantly under agricultural or urban use." Using this definition, '' Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020'' (FRA 2020) found that forests covered , or approximately 31 percent of the world's land area in 2020. Forests are the predominant terrestrial ecosystem of Earth, and are found around the globe. More than half of the world's forests are found in only five countries (Brazil, Canada, China, Russia, and the United States). The largest share of forests (45 percent) are in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bordering the Strait of Malacca to the west, the Singapore Strait to the south, the South China Sea to the east, and the Straits of Johor to the north. The country's territory is composed of one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet; the combined area of these has increased by 25% since the country's independence as a result of extensive land reclamation projects. It has the third highest population density in the world. With a multicultural population and recognising the need to respect cultural identities of the major ethnic groups within the nation, Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. English is the lingua franca and numerous public services are available only in Eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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