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Island Night Lizard
The island night lizard (''Xantusia riversiana'') is a species of night lizard native to three of the Channel Islands of California: San Nicolas Island, Santa Barbara Island, and San Clemente Island. A small number of island night lizards also live on Sutil Island, near Santa Barbara Island. Etymology The specific name, ''riversiana'', is in honor of James John Rivers (1824–1913), a London-born physician and naturalist, who was Curator of Natural History at the University of California.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . (''Klauberina riversiana'', p. 222). Subspecies The San Clemente Island population is a recognized subspecies, the San Clemente night lizard (''Xantusia riversiana reticulata''). Conservation status The Island night lizard was listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in the United States since 1977; the Interna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope (July 28, 1840 – April 12, 1897) was an American zoologist, paleontologist, comparative anatomist, herpetologist, and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science; he published his first scientific paper at the age of 19. Though his father tried to raise Cope as a gentleman farmer, he eventually acquiesced to his son's scientific aspirations. Cope married his cousin and had one child; the family moved from Philadelphia to Haddonfield, New Jersey, although Cope would maintain a residence and museum in Philadelphia in his later years. Cope had little formal scientific training, and he eschewed a teaching position for field work. He made regular trips to the American West, prospecting in the 1870s and 1880s, often as a member of United States Geological Survey teams. A personal feud between Cope and paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh led to a period of intense fossil-finding competition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Desert Night Lizard
The desert night lizard (''Xantusia vigilis'') is a night lizard native to the Southern California Eastern Sierra and the San Gabriel Mountains into Baja California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah and extreme western areas of Arizona. Description The desert night lizard attains a snout-to-vent length (SVL) of with a tail roughly the same length. The lizard's coloring is usually grey, yellow-brownish, or olive. Despite their name, night lizards are active during the day. They are known to easily change their color, from light olive (usually during the evening) to dark brown during the day. It is a good climber and usually eats termites, small insects, spiders and other arthropods. The desert night lizard is small for a reptile, with the average adult female at 80 mm in total length and 1.3 g in weight. The average adult male ''Xantusia vigilis'' is 65mm in total length and 1.1 g in weight. Male desert night lizards are distinguishable from females as they are lighter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fauna Of The California Chaparral And Woodlands
Fauna is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is ''flora'', and for fungi, it is '' funga''. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as '' biota''. Zoologists and paleontologists use ''fauna'' to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess Shale fauna". Paleontologists sometimes refer to a sequence of faunal stages, which is a series of rocks all containing similar fossils. The study of animals of a particular region is called faunistics. Etymology ''Fauna'' comes from the name Fauna, a Roman goddess of earth and fertility, the Roman god Faunus, and the related forest spirits called Fauns. All three words are cognates of the name of the Greek god Pan, and ''panis'' is the Greek equivalent of fauna. ''Fauna'' is also the word for a book that catalogues the animals in such a manner. The term was first used b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fauna Of The Channel Islands Of California
The wildlife of the Channel Islands of California is wide and diverse, including many endemic species. While the land wildlife is slightly limited, there being only one large, naturally predatory, and native mammal, the small island fox, marine life can include anything from kelp forests to great white sharks. Flora Flora on the Channel Islands include endemic subspecies of pine, oak, and the island tree mallow. Santa Rosa Island holds two groves of the Torrey pine subspecies ''Pinus torreyana'' var. ''insularis'', which is endemic to the island. Torrey pines are the United States' rarest pine species. The islands also house many rare and endangered plants, including the island barberry, the island rushrose, and the Santa Cruz Island lace pod. Giant kelp forests surround the islands and act as a source of nutrition and protection for other animals. Invasive species, such as the Australian blue gum tree, olive tree, sweet fennel and Harding grass threaten native species thro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemic Fauna Of California
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa and is therefore said to be ''endemic'' to that particular part of the world. An endemic species can be also be referred to as an ''endemism'' or in scientific literature as an ''endemite''. For example '' Cytisus aeolicus'' is an endemite of the Italian flora. '' Adzharia renschi'' was once believed to be an endemite of the Caucasus, but it was later discovered to be a non-indigenous species from South America belonging to a different genus. The extreme opposite of an endemic species is one with a cosmopolitan distribution, having a global or widespread range. A rare alternative term for a species that is endemic is "precinctive", which applies to s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reptiles Of The United States
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 31 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xantusia
''Xantusia'' is one of three genera of night lizards (family '' Xantusiidae''). Species of ''Xantusia'' are small to medium-sized, viviparous (live-bearing) lizards found in the U.S. Southwest and in northern Mexico. Taxonomy and etymology The names and descriptions of the genus ''Xantusia'' and the type species ''X. vigilis'' were published in 1859 by Spencer Fullerton Baird, the generic name commemorating the naturalist John Xantus. Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . (Genus ''Xantusia'', p. 291). Species The following is a list of species in the genus. *'' Xantusia arizonae'' Klauber, 1931 – Arizona night lizard *'' Xantusia bezyi'' Papenfuss, Macey & J.A. Schulte, 2001 – Bezy's night lizard *'' Xantusia bolsonae'' Webb, 1970 – bolsón night lizard *'' Xantusia extorris'' Webb, 1965 – Durango night lizard *'' Xantusia gilberti'' Van Denburg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Barbour
Thomas Barbour (August 19, 1884 – January 8, 1946) was an American herpetologist. From 1927 until 1946, he was director of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) founded in 1859 by Louis Agassiz at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Life and career Barbour, the eldest of four brothers, was born in 1884 to Colonel William Barbour, and his wife, Julia Adelaide Sprague. Colonel Barbour was founder and president of The Linen Thread Company, Inc., a successful thread manufacturing enterprise having much business in the United States, Ireland, and Scotland. Although born on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where the family was spending the summer, Barbour grew up in Monmouth, New Jersey, where one of his younger brothers, William Warren Barbour, entered the political arena, eventually serving as U.S. Senator from New Jersey from 1931 to 1937 and again from 1938 to 1943. At age fifteen, Thomas Barbour was taken to visit Harvard University, which, entranced by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonhard Stejneger
Leonhard Hess Stejneger (30 October 1851 – 28 February 1943) was a Norwegian-born American ornithologist, herpetologist and zoologist. Stejneger specialized in vertebrate natural history studies. He gained his greatest reputation with reptiles and amphibians. Wetmore, Alexander (1945). "Leonhard Hess Stejneger (1851-1943)". ''Biographical Memoir. Nat. Acad. Sci.'' 24: 145-195PDF/ref> Early life and family Stejneger was born in Bergen, Norway. His father was Peter Stamer Steineger, a merchant and auditor; his mother was Ingeborg Catharine (née Hess). Leonhard was the eldest of seven children. His sister Agnes Steineger was a Norwegian artist. Until 1880, the Steineger family had been one of the wealthy families in Bergen; at that time business reverses led to the father declaring bankruptcy. Stejneger attended the Smith Theological School in Bergen from 1859 to 1860, and Bergen Latin School until 1869. His interests in zoology developed early. By age sixteen he had a print ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert C
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honour, praise, renown" and ''berht'' "bright, light, shining"). It is the second most frequently used given name of ancient Germanic origin. It is also in use as a surname. Another commonly used form of the name is Rupert. After becoming widely used in Continental Europe it entered England in its Old French form ''Robert'', where an Old English cognate form (''Hrēodbēorht'', ''Hrodberht'', ''Hrēodbēorð'', ''Hrœdbœrð'', ''Hrœdberð'', ''Hrōðberχtŕ'') had existed before the Norman Conquest. The feminine version is Roberta. The Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish form is Roberto. Robert is also a common name in many Germanic languages, including English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Scots, Danish, and Icelandic. It can be use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmund D
Edmund is a masculine given name or surname in the English language. The name is derived from the Old English elements ''ēad'', meaning "prosperity" or "riches", and ''mund'', meaning "protector". Persons named Edmund include: People Kings and nobles *Edmund the Martyr (died 869 or 870), king of East Anglia *Edmund I (922–946), King of England from 939 to 946 *Edmund Ironside (989–1016), also known as Edmund II, King of England in 1016 *Edmund of Scotland (after 1070 – after 1097) *Edmund Crouchback (1245–1296), son of King Henry III of England and claimant to the Sicilian throne *Edmund, 2nd Earl of Cornwall (1249–1300), earl of Cornwall; English nobleman of royal descent * Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York (1341–1402), son of King Edward III of England * Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond (1430–1456), English and Welsh nobleman * Edmund, Prince of Schwarzenberg (1803–1873), the last created Austrian field marshal of the 19th century In religion * Saint Edmund (d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hobart Muir Smith
Hobart Muir Smith, born Frederick William Stouffer (September 26, 1912 – March 4, 2013), was an American herpetologist. He is credited with describing more than 100 new species of American reptiles and amphibians. In addition, he has been honored by having at least six species named after him, including the southwestern blackhead snake (''Tantilla hobartsmithi)'', Smith's earth snake (''Uropeltis grandis''), Smith's arboreal alligator lizard (''Abronia smithi)'', Hobart's anadia ('' Anadia hobarti)'', Hobart Smith's anole ('' Anolis hobartsmithi)'', and Smith's rose-bellied lizard ('' Sceloporus smithi'')''. At 100 years of age, Smith continued to be an active and productive herpetologist. Although he published on a wide range of herpetological subjects, his main focus throughout his career was on the amphibians and reptiles of Mexico, including taxonomy, bibliographies, and history. Having published more than 1,600 manuscripts, he surpassed all contemporaries and remai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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