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Nightingale Bunting
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The Nightingale Island finch (''Nesospiza questi'') is a species of bird in the family Thraupidae (formerly in Emberizidae). It is endemic to Nightingale Island of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago where its natural habitats are temperate shrubland and subantarctic grassland. It is threatened by habitat loss. References Nightingale Island finch Nightingale Island finch Nightingale Island finch The Nightingale Island finch (''Nesospiza questi'') is a species of bird in the family Thraupidae (formerly in Emberizidae). It is endemic to Nightingale Island of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago where its natural habitats are temperate shrubl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Percy Roycroft Lowe
Percy Roycroft Lowe (2 January 1870 – 18 August 1948) was an English surgeon and ornithologist. Life Lowe was born at Stamford, Lincolnshire and studied medicine at Jesus College, Cambridge. He served as a civil surgeon in the Second Boer War, and it was whilst in South Africa that he became interested in ornithology. On his return he became private physician to Sir Frederick Johnstone, 8th Baronet. During World War One he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps; he was Officer in Command on Princess Christian Ambulance Train for which he was awarded the OBE in 1920. Lowe worked with Dorothea Bate on fossil ostriches in China. In November 1919 he succeeded William Robert Ogilvie-Grant as Curator of Birds at the Natural History Museum, retiring on his sixty-fifth birthday in 1935. He was succeeded by Norman Boyd Kinnear. He was editor of the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club from 1920 to 1925 and president of the British Ornithologists' Union from 1938 to 1943. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thraupidae
The tanagers (singular ) comprise the bird family Thraupidae, in the order Passeriformes. The family has a Neotropical distribution and is the second-largest family of birds. It represents about 4% of all avian species and 12% of the Neotropical birds. Traditionally, the family contained around 240 species of mostly brightly colored fruit-eating birds. As more of these birds were studied using modern molecular techniques, it became apparent that the traditional families were not monophyletic. ''Euphonia'' and ''Chlorophonia'', which were once considered part of the tanager family, are now treated as members of the Fringillidae, in their own subfamily (Euphoniinae). Likewise, the genera ''Piranga'' (which includes the scarlet tanager, summer tanager, and western tanager), '' Chlorothraupis'', and '' Habia'' appear to be members of the cardinal family, and have been reassigned to that family by the American Ornithological Society. Description Tanagers are small to medium-sized b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emberizidae
The buntings are a group of Old World passerine birds forming the genus ''Emberiza'', the only genus in the family Emberizidae. The family contains 45 species. They are seed-eating birds with stubby, conical bills. Taxonomy The family Emberizidae was formerly much larger and included the species now placed in the Passerellidae (New World sparrows) and Calcariidae (longspurs and snow buntings). Molecular phylogenetic studies found that the large family consisted of distinct clades that were better treated as separate families. The genus ''Emberiza'' is now the only genus placed in the family Emberizidae. The genus was introduced by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his ''Systema Naturae''. The type species was subsequently designated as the yellowhammer (''Emberiza citrinella''). The genus name ''Emberiza'' is from Old German ''Embritz'', a bunting. The origin of the English "bunting" is unknown. A 2008 genetic study found that three emberizid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemic
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nightingale Island
Nightingale Island is an active volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean, in area, part of the Tristan da Cunha group of islands. They are administered by the United Kingdom as part of the British overseas territory, overseas territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. Nightingale Island is part of the Nightingale Islands, which also includes islets Middle Island, Tristan da Cunha, Middle Island and Stoltenhoff Island. All three are uninhabited, but are regularly visited for scientific purposes and research. Geography Nightingale has two peaks on its north end. One is high while the other is high. The rest of the island is ringed by cliffs. However, these cliffs are not nearly as high as those surrounding Nightingale's neighbour Inaccessible Island, Tristan da Cunha, Inaccessible Island, which is approximately 16 km away and has cliffs approximately 300m high. Thus human access is much easier on Nightingale than on Inaccessible. The island is a volcano, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tristan Da Cunha
Tristan da Cunha (), colloquially Tristan, is a remote group of volcanic islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, lying approximately from Cape Town in South Africa, from Saint Helena and from the Falkland Islands. The territory consists of the inhabited island, Tristan da Cunha, which has a diameter of roughly and an area of ; the wildlife reserves of Gough Island and Inaccessible Island; and the smaller, uninhabited Nightingale Islands. , the main island has 250 permanent inhabitants, who all carry British Overseas Territories citizenship. The other islands are uninhabited, except for the South African personnel of a weather station on Gough Island. Tristan da Cunha is a British Overseas Territory with its own constitution. There is no airstrip on the main island; the only way of travelling in and out of Tristan is by boat, a six-day trip from South Africa. History Discovery The uninhabited islands were f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archipelago
An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Archipelago, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Lakshadweep Islands, the Galápagos Islands, the Japanese archipelago, the Philippine Archipelago, the Maldives, the Balearic Islands, The Bahamas, the Aegean Islands, the Hawaiian Islands, the Canary Islands, Malta, the Azores, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the British Isles, the islands of the Archipelago Sea, and Shetland. They are sometimes defined by political boundaries. For example, the Gulf archipelago off the northeastern Pacific coast forms part of a larger archipelago that geographically includes Washington state's San Juan Islands; while the Gulf archipelago and San Juan Islands are geographically related, they are not technically included in the same archipelago due to manmad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Habitat
In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ecological niche. Thus "habitat" is a species-specific term, fundamentally different from concepts such as environment or vegetation assemblages, for which the term "habitat-type" is more appropriate. The physical factors may include (for example): soil, moisture, range of temperature, and light intensity. Biotic factors will include the availability of food and the presence or absence of predators. Every species has particular habitat requirements, with habitat generalist species able to thrive in a wide array of environmental conditions while habitat specialist species requiring a very limited set of factors to survive. The habitat of a species is not necessarily found in a geographical area, it can be the interior ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shrubland
Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally or be the result of human activity. It may be the mature vegetation type in a particular region and remain stable over time, or a transitional community that occurs temporarily as the result of a disturbance, such as fire. A stable state may be maintained by regular natural disturbance such as fire or browsing. Shrubland may be unsuitable for human habitation because of the danger of fire. The term was coined in 1903. Shrubland species generally show a wide range of adaptations to fire, such as heavy seed production, lignotubers, and fire-induced germination. Botanical structural form In botany and ecology a shrub is defined as a much-branched woody plant less than 8 m high and usually with many stems. Tall shrubs are mostly 2–8 m high, small shrubs 1–2 m high and su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grassland
A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominated by grasses (Poaceae). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush (Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes, like clover, and other herbs. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica and are found in most ecoregions of the Earth. Furthermore, grasslands are one of the largest biomes on earth and dominate the landscape worldwide. There are different types of grasslands: natural grasslands, semi-natural grasslands, and agricultural grasslands. They cover 31–69% of the Earth's land area. Definitions Included among the variety of definitions for grasslands are: * "...any plant community, including harvested forages, in which grasses and/or legumes make up the dominant vegetation." * "...terrestrial ecosystems dominated by herbaceous and shrub vegetation, and maintained by fire, grazing, drought and/or freezing temperatures." (Pilot Assessment of Global Ecosystems, 2000) * "A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Habitat Loss
Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby reducing biodiversity and species abundance. Habitat destruction is the leading cause of biodiversity loss. Fragmentation and loss of habitat have become one of the most important topics of research in ecology as they are major threats to the survival of endangered species. Activities such as harvesting natural resources, industrial production and urbanization are human contributions to habitat destruction. Pressure from agriculture is the principal human cause. Some others include mining, logging, trawling, and urban sprawl. Habitat destruction is currently considered the primary cause of species extinction worldwide. Environmental factors can contribute to habitat destruction more indirectly. Geological processes, climate change, introdu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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