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Rattus Fuscipes
The bush rat or Australian bush rat (''Rattus fuscipes'') is a small Australian nocturnal animal. It is an omnivore and one of the most common indigenous species of rat on the continent, found in many heathland areas of Victoria and New South Wales. Taxonomy The description of the species by G. R. Waterhouse was published in the second part of the series '' Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle'', edited by Charles Darwin. The species was assigned to the genus '' Mus'', a once broader classification, and later placed with the genus ''Rattus''. The collection of the type specimen was made when HMS ''Beagle'' was anchored at King George Sound, a port at the southwest of the continent. The capture was noted by Darwin as "caught in a trap baited with cheese, amongst the bushes …". The type locality has been determined as Little Grove, Western Australia, south of Mount Melville in the city of Albany. The population is regarded as the ''fuscipes'' species group, as the spe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Robert Waterhouse
George Robert Waterhouse (6 March 1810 – 21 January 1888) was an English natural history, naturalist. He was a keeper at the department of geology and later curator of the Zoological Society of London's museum. Early life George was born in Somers Town to James Edward Waterhouse and Mary Newman. His father was a solicitor's clerk and an amateur entomologist. He was the brother of Frederick George Waterhouse, who also became a zoologist. George went to school at Koekelberg, near Brussels. He returned to England in 1824 and worked as an apprentice to an architect. Part of the work was in designing the garden of Charles Knight in the Vale of Health, Hampstead and the ornamentation for St. Dunstan's Church. Natural history George became interested in entomology through his father and he founded the Entomological Society of London along with Frederick William Hope in 1833 with himself as honorary curator. He became its president in 1849–50. He wrote articles for Knight's ''P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australian Swamp Rat
The Australian swamp rat (''Rattus lutreolus''), also known as the eastern swamp rat, is a species of rat native to the coasts of southern and eastern Australia. Description The Australian swamp rat grows to have a body length of approximately with a tail length of approximately and a mass of about . It has a stocky build with black-brown fur and black feet. Its ventral surface is cream to brown color and it has small ears nearly concealed by hair. The tail is dark grey, scaly and sparsely haired. Ecology Range and habitat The swamp rat is found near the coast of south and eastern Australia. It occurs in lowland country from Fraser Island down the coast of New South Wales and Victoria to the Mount Lofty Ranges in South Australia. A subspecies ''velutinus'' can be found in Tasmania, and another subspecies ''lacus'' lives in isolated patches of high altitude rainforest near Atherton, Queensland. The preferred habitat of the swamp rat is thick vegetation along watercourses and in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nomad
A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the population of nomadic pastoral tribes slowly decreased, reaching an estimated 30–40 million nomads in the world . Nomadic hunting and gathering—following seasonally available wild plants and game—is by far the oldest human subsistence method. Pastoralists raise herds of domesticated livestock, driving or accompanying them in patterns that normally avoid depleting pastures beyond their ability to recover. Nomadism is also a lifestyle adapted to infertile regions such as steppe, tundra, or desert, ice and sand, where mobility is the most efficient strategy for exploiting scarce resources. For example, many groups living in the tundra are reindeer herders and are semi-nomadic, following forage for their animals. Sometimes also described as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nocturnal
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 du ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Zoology Of The Voyage Of H
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun ''thee'') when followed by a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Predation
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the host) and parasitoidism (which always does, eventually). It is distinct from scavenging on dead prey, though many predators also scavenge; it overlaps with herbivory, as seed predators and destructive frugivores are predators. Predators may actively search for or pursue prey or wait for it, often concealed. When prey is detected, the predator assesses whether to attack it. This may involve ambush or pursuit predation, sometimes after stalking the prey. If the attack is successful, the predator kills the prey, removes any inedible parts like the shell or spines, and eats it. Predators are adapted and often highly specialized for hunting, with acute senses such as vision, hearing, or smell. Many predatory animals, both vertebrate and inv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Introduced Species
An introduced species, alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there by human activity, directly or indirectly, and either deliberately or accidentally. Non-native species can have various effects on the local ecosystem. Introduced species that become established and spread beyond the place of introduction are considered naturalized. The process of human-caused introduction is distinguished from biological colonization, in which species spread to new areas through "natural" (non-human) means such as storms and rafting. The Latin expression neobiota captures the characteristic that these species are ''new'' biota to their environment in terms of established biological network (e.g. food web) relationships. Neobiota can further be divided into neozoa (also: neozoons, sing. neozoon, i.e. animals) and neophyt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cats In Australia
Cats are an invasive species in Australia. Because they are not native to Australia and were only introduced by colonisers as pets in the early 1800s, native Australian animals did not co-evolve with them. , some 3.8 million domestic cats and up to 6.3 million feral cats continue to live in Australia. Every year domestic and feral cats in Australia kill 1,067,000,000 mammals, 399,000,000 birds, 609,000,000 reptiles, and 92,000,000 frogs. As one of the most ecologically damaging and the most costly invasive species in Australia, predation by both domestic and feral cats has played a role in the extinction of many of Australia's Indigenous animals. For instance, cats are found to have significantly contributed to the extinction of at least 22 endemic Australian mammals since the arrival of Europeans. For biosecurity reasons, any cats that are imported into Australia must meet conditions set by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. Historical context Histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Foxes In Australia
Red foxes pose a serious conservation problem in Australia. 2012 estimates indicate that there are more than 7.2 million red foxes (''Vulpes vulpes'') and growing with a range extending throughout most of the continental mainland. The species became established in Australia through successive introductions by settlers in 1830s. Due to its rapid spread and ecological impact it has classified as one of the most damaging invasive species in Australia. Introduction and spread Red foxes were introduced to the British colonies of Van Diemen's Land (as early as 1833) and the Port Phillip District and Sydney Regions of New South Wales (as early as 1845) for the purpose of the traditional English sport of fox hunting. Curiously a permanent fox population was not established on the island of Tasmania and it is widely held that they were outcompeted by the Tasmanian devil. On the mainland, however, the species was successful as an apex predator. The spread of red foxes across the south ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sclerophyll Forest
Sclerophyll is a type of vegetation that is adapted to long periods of dryness and heat. The plants feature hard leaves, short internodes (the distance between leaves along the stem) and leaf orientation which is parallel or oblique to direct sunlight. The word comes from the Greek ''sklēros'' (hard) and ''phyllon'' (leaf). The term was coined by A.F.W. Schimper in 1898 (translated in 1903), originally as a synonym of xeromorph, but the two words were later differentiated. Sclerophyllous plants occur in many parts of the world, but are most typical of areas with low rainfall or seasonal droughts, such as Australia, Africa, and western North and South America. They are prominent throughout Australia, parts of Argentina, the Cerrado biogeographic region of Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil, and in the Mediterranean biomes that cover the Mediterranean Basin, California, Chile, and the Cape Province of South Africa. In the Mediterranean basin, holm oak, cork oak and olives are typ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kangaroo Island
Kangaroo Island, also known as Karta Pintingga (literally 'Island of the Dead' in the language of the Kaurna people), is Australia's third-largest island, after Tasmania and Melville Island. It lies in the state of South Australia, southwest of Adelaide. Its closest point to the mainland is Snapper Point in Backstairs Passage, which is from the Fleurieu Peninsula. The native population of Aboriginal Australians that once occupied the island (sometimes referred to as the Kartan people) disappeared from the archaeological record sometime after the land became an island following the rising sea levels associated with the Last Glacial Period around 10,000 years ago. It was subsequently settled intermittently by sealers and whalers in the early 19th century, and from 1836 on a permanent basis during the British colonisation of South Australia. Since then the island's economy has been principally agricultural, with a southern rock lobster fishery and with tourism growing in impo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australian Alps
The Australian Alps is a mountain range in southeast Australia. It comprises an interim Australian bioregion,IBRA Version 6.1 data and is the highest mountain range in Australia. The range straddles the borders of eastern , southeastern , and the . It contains Australia's only peaks exceeding in elevation, and is the only bioregion on the Australian main ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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