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Lava Heron
The lava heron (''Butorides sundevalli''), also known as the Galápagos heron, is a species of heron endemic to the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador. It is considered by some authorities — including the American Ornithological Society and BirdLife International — to be a subspecies (or even just a colour morph) of the striated heron (''B. striata''), and was formerly " lumped" with this species and the green heron (''B. virescens'') as the green-backed heron. Description The adult is slate-grey to black, which allows it to blend in with the hardened lava. The back feathers typically have a silvery sheen and it has a short crest on its head. When breeding, the heron has a black beak and bright orange legs, but these fade to grey after the breeding season. Distribution and habitat These highly territorial birds are found in intertidal zones and mangrove swamps on all of the islands of Galápagos Province Galápagos () is a province of Ecuador in the country's Insular region ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Santa Fe Island
Santa Fe Island (Spanish: ''Isla Santa Fe''), also called Barrington Island after admiral Samuel Barrington, is a small island of which lies in the centre of the Galápagos archipelago, to the south-east of Santa Cruz Island. Visitor access is by a wet landing in Barrington Bay on the north-eastern side of the island. Environment Geologically, the island is one of the oldest of the archipelago; volcanic rocks of about 4 million years old have been found. The vegetation of the island is characterized by brush, palo santo trees and stands of a large subvariety of the Galápagos prickly pear cactus, ''Opuntia galapageia'' subvar. ''barringtonensis''. Santa Fe is home to two endemic species and two endemic subspecies: the Barrington land iguana (''Conolophus pallidus''), the Barrington leaf-toed gecko (''Phyllodactylus barringtonensis''), www.reptile-database.org. the Santa Fe marine iguana (''Amblyrhynchus cristatus trillmichi'') and the Santa Fe rice rat (''Aegialomys gal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Green Heron
The green heron (''Butorides virescens'') is a small heron of North and Central America. ''Butorides'' is from Middle English ''butor'' "bittern" and Ancient Greek ''-oides'', "resembling", and ''virescens'' is Latin for "greenish". It was long considered conspecific with its sister species the striated heron (''Butorides striata''), and together they were called "green-backed heron". Birds of the nominate subspecies (no matter which taxonomic arrangement is preferred) are extremely rare vagrants to western Europe—for example, a sighting in Pembrokeshire in 2018 was only the second recorded sighting in Wales; individuals from the Pacific coast of North America may similarly stray as far as Hawaii. Description The green heron is relatively small; adult body length is about . The neck is often pulled in tight against the body. Adults have a glossy, greenish-black cap, a greenish back and wings that are grey-black grading into green or blue, a chestnut neck with a white line d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemic Birds Of The Galápagos Islands
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] |
Butorides
''Butorides'' is a genus of small herons. It contains three similar species, the green heron or green-backed heron, ''Butorides virescens'', the lava heron (''Butorides sundevalli''), and the striated heron, ''Butorides striatus''. A fossil species, ''Butorides validipes'', is known from the Early Pleistocene of Florida in the United States. ''Butorides'' is from Middle English ''Butor'' "bittern" and Ancient Greek ''-oides'', "resembling". Adults of both extant species are about long, and have a blue-black back and wings, a black cap and short yellow legs. Juveniles are browner above and streaked below, and have greenish-yellow legs. The species have different underpart colours, chestnut with a white line down the front in green heron, and white or grey in striated. Both breed in small wetlands on a platform of sticks often in shrubs or trees, sometimes on the ground. The female lays three to five eggs. Both parents incubate for about 20 days until hatching, and feed the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monogamy
Monogamy ( ) is a form of dyadic relationship in which an individual has only one partner during their lifetime. Alternately, only one partner at any one time (serial monogamy) — as compared to the various forms of non-monogamy (e.g., polygamy or polyamory). The term is also applied to the social behavior of some animals, referring to the state of having only one mate at any one time. A monogamous relationship can be sexual or emotional, but it's usually both. Many modern relationships are monogamous. Terminology The word ''monogamy'' derives from the Greek μονός, ''monos'' ("alone"), and γάμος, ''gamos'' ("marriage").Cf. "Monogamy" in ''Britannica World Language Dictionary'', R.C. Preble (ed.), Oxford-London 1962, p. 1275:''1. The practice or principle of marrying only once. opp. to digamy now ''rare'' 2. The condition, rule or custom of being married to only one person at a time (opp. to polygamy or bigamy) 1708. 3. Zool. The habit of living in pairs, or havin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galápagos Province
Galápagos () is a province of Ecuador in the country's Insular region, located approximately off the western coast of the mainland. The capital is Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. The province administers the Galápagos Islands, a group of tiny volcanic islands that sit on the equator, famous for their unique biodiversity popularized by naturalist Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Demographics Ethnic groups as of the Ecuadorian census of 2010: *Mestizo 74.5% *White 9.7% *Indigenous 7.0% *Afro-Ecuadorian 5.2% * Montubio 1.9% *Other 1.7% History It is estimated that the islands were formed 8 million years ago as a result of tectonic activity on the seabed. The archipelago was likely inhabited long ago: the explorer Thor Heyerdahl in 1963 reported that he found Inca archaeological sites and objects. The Galapagos Islands were discovered by chance on 10 March 1535, when the Dominican friar Fray Tomas de Berlanga, Bishop of Panama, went to Peru in pursuance of an order ... [...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] |
Intertidal Zone
The intertidal zone, also known as the foreshore, is the area above water level at low tide and underwater at high tide (in other words, the area within the tidal range). This area can include several types of habitats with various species of life, such as seastars, sea urchins, and many species of coral with regional differences in biodiversity. Sometimes it is referred to as the ''littoral zone'' or '' seashore'', although those can be defined as a wider region. The well-known area also includes steep rocky cliffs, sandy beaches, bogs or wetlands (e.g., vast mudflats). The area can be a narrow strip, as in Pacific islands that have only a narrow tidal range, or can include many meters of shoreline where shallow beach slopes interact with high tidal excursion. The peritidal zone is similar but somewhat wider, extending from above the highest tide level to below the lowest. Organisms in the intertidal zone are adapted to an environment of harsh extremes, living in water pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lava
Lava is molten or partially molten rock (magma) that has been expelled from the interior of a terrestrial planet (such as Earth) or a moon onto its surface. Lava may be erupted at a volcano or through a fracture in the crust, on land or underwater, usually at temperatures from . The volcanic rock resulting from subsequent cooling is also often called ''lava''. A lava flow is an outpouring of lava during an effusive eruption. (An explosive eruption, by contrast, produces a mixture of volcanic ash and other fragments called tephra, not lava flows.) The viscosity of most lava is about that of ketchup, roughly 10,000 to 100,000 times that of water. Even so, lava can flow great distances before cooling causes it to solidify, because lava exposed to air quickly develops a solid crust that insulates the remaining liquid lava, helping to keep it hot and inviscid enough to continue flowing. The word ''lava'' comes from Italian and is probably derived from the Latin word ''labes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Green-backed Heron
"Green-backed heron" is a collective term for certain herons. Small and compact among herons, these birds often feature green plumage – rare among the Ardeidae –, in particular on the back, wings and scapulars. They were formerly believed to make up a single species ''Butorides striata'', but are now treated as three largely allopatric species: * Striated heron, ''Butorides striata'' – Widespread throughout the Old World tropics and in South America (Note that the grammatical gender of the specific name has been corrected from ''striatus'') * Lava heron, ''Butorides sundevalli'' – Endemic to the Galápagos Islands off Ecuador * Green heron, ''Butorides virescens'' – Widespread from temperate North America south to Panama These herons are tool-using animals. They are regularly seen picking up objects to use as a fishing lure, attracting prey fish.Norris (1975), Boswall (1983), Walsh ''et al.'' (1985), Robinson (1994) Image:Striated Heron (But ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lumpers And Splitters
Lumpers and splitters are opposing factions in any discipline that has to place individual examples into rigorously defined categories. The lumper–splitter problem occurs when there is the desire to create classifications and assign examples to them, for example schools of literature, biological taxa and so on. A "lumper" is a person who assigns examples broadly, assuming that differences are not as important as signature similarities. A "splitter" is one who makes precise definitions, and creates new categories to classify samples that differ in key ways. Origin of the terms The earliest known use of these terms was by Charles Darwin, in a letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1857: ''It is good to have hair-splitters & lumpers''. They were introduced more widely by George G. Simpson in his 1945 work ''The Principles of Classification and a Classification of Mammals''. As he put it: A later use can be found in the title of a 1969 paper "On lumpers and splitters ..." by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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