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Wahlberg's Cormorant
The bank cormorant (''Phalacrocorax neglectus''), also known as Wahlberg's cormorant, is a medium-sized cormorant that is endemic to Namibia and the western seaboard of South Africa, living in and around coastal waters; it is rarely recorded more than 15 km offshore. Description The bank cormorant is a heavy-bodied bird, roughly 75 cm in length. It is generally black in appearance with a bronze sheen, though the wings are a dark brown rather than a true black. Adults have a small crest on their heads, and normally have a white rump. Pale eye in an all black face is considered to be diagnostic for adults, with immature birds having a dark eye.Princeton Illustrated Checklists-Birds of Southern Africa-Ber Van Perlo, 1999 Ecology A prime food for these birds is the cape rock lobster ''Jasus lalandii'', and their feeding distribution closely matches the kelp beds where these lobsters live, though the birds will also take a variety of other crustacean and fish prey, notabl ...
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Johan August Wahlberg
Johan August Wahlberg (9 October 1810, in Lackarebäck, Sweden – 6 March 1856, in Lake Ngami, Bechuanaland) was a Swedish naturalist and explorer. Wahlberg started studying chemistry at the University of Uppsala in 1829, and later forestry, agronomy and natural science, graduating from the Swedish Forestry Institute in 1834. In 1832 he joined Professor Carl Henrik Boheman, a famous entomologist, on a collecting trip to Norway. In 1833 and 1834 he travelled in Sweden and Germany on forestry research projects. He joined the Office of Land Survey and was appointed an engineer in 1836, becoming an instructor at the Swedish Land Survey College. He travelled in southern Africa between 1838 and 1856, sending thousands of natural history specimens back to Sweden. He was exploring the Okavango area when he was killed, along the Thamalakane river about 10 km northwest of Maun in today's Botswana, by a wounded elephant. Before his death was known in Sweden, on October 8, 1856 ...
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Kelp Gull
The kelp gull (''Larus dominicanus''), also known as the Dominican gull, is a gull that breeds on coasts and islands through much of the Southern Hemisphere. The nominate ''L. d. dominicanus'' is the subspecies found around South America, parts of Australia (where it overlaps with the Pacific gull), and New Zealand (where it is known as the black-backed gull, the southern black-backed gull, mollyhawk – particularly the juveniles, or by its Māori name ''karoro''). ''L. d. vetula'' (known as the Cape gull) is a subspecies occurring around Southern Africa. The specific name comes from the Dominican Order of friars, who wear black and white habits. Description The kelp gull superficially resembles two gulls from further north in the Atlantic Ocean, the lesser black-backed gull and the great black-backed gull and is intermediate in size between these two species. This species ranges from in total length, from in wingspan and from in weight. Adult males and females weigh on ...
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Birds Of Southern Africa
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. ...
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Phalacrocorax
''Phalacrocorax'' is a genus of fish-eating birds in the cormorant family Phalacrocoracidae. Members of this genus are also known as the Old World cormorants. Taxonomy The genus ''Phalacrocorax'' was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 with the great cormorant (''Phalacrocorax carbo'') as the type species. ''Phalacrocorax'' is the Latin word for a cormorant. Formerly, many other species of cormorant were classified in ''Phalacrocorax'', but most of these have been split out into different genera. A 2014 study found ''Phalacrocrax'' to be the sister genus to ''Urile'', which are thought to have split from each other between 8.9 - 10.3 million years ago. Current taxonomy A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2014 found that the genus ''Phalacrocorax'' contains 12 species. This taxonomy was adopted by the IUCN Red List and BirdLife International, and later by the IOC. Alternative taxonomies Formerly, the genus ''Phalacrocorax'' include ...
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University Of Cape Town
The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest university in Sub-Saharan Africa in continuous operation. UCT is organised in 57 departments across six faculties offering bachelor's ( NQF 7) to doctoral degrees ( NQF 10) solely in the English language. Home to 30 000 students, it encompasses six campuses in the Capetonian suburbs of Rondebosch, Hiddingh, Observatory, Mowbray, and the Waterfront. Although UCT was founded by a private act of Parliament in 1918, the Statute of the University of Cape Town (issued in 2002 in terms of the Higher Education Act) sets out its structure and roles and places the Chancellor - currently, Dr Precious Moloi Motsepe - as the ceremonial figurehead and invests real leadership ...
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Animal Demography Unit
The Animal Demography Unit (ADU) is a formally recognized research unit of the University of Cape Town (UCT) located within the Department of Biological Sciences of UCT. (The Department of Biological Sciences was formed from the merger of the Department of Botany and the Department of Zoology at the start of the 2013 academic year). The Animal Demography Unit, popularly known as the ADU, was responsible for the management of the First and Second Southern African Bird Atlas Projects SABAP1 and SABAP2. The unit has submitted over eight million georeferenced biodiversity records to GBIF The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international organisation that focuses on making scientific data on biodiversity available via the Internet using web services. The data are provided by many institutions from around the .... History The Animal Demography Unit (formerly the Avian Demography Unit), or ADU as it is mostly known in the vernacular, is a research unit of the ...
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Ichaboe Island
Ichaboe Island is a small rocky island off Namibia's Diamond Coast. It is recognised by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBAs) for its seabird breeding colonies. Geography There are twelve small islands on the Namibian coast between Walvis Bay and Orange River. Due to the Benguela Current, the seas on the west coast of southern Africa are some of the most productive in the world. The current flows north from the Southern Ocean and offshore winds drive the surface water away from the coast. Water rises from depths of hundreds of metres and at speeds of up to 12 m per minute bringing nutrients to the surface. A combination of sunlight and nutrients provide the conditions for phytoplankton which are the foundation for other life in the Benguela marine ecosystem. Feeding on the phytoplankton are Zooplankton, which attract an abundance of shoaling pelagic fish and is the reason why southern Africa is home to one of the richest seabird communities in the world. Th ...
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Mercury Island
:''not to be confused with the Mercury Islands of New Zealand'' Mercury Island is a small rocky island off The Diamond Coast, Namibia. Despite its small size it is recognised by BirdLife International and other global conservation groups as an Important Bird Area (IBA) for its important coastal seabird breeding. Situation Mercury Island is situated 800 metres offshore in Spencer Bay, 110 kilometres north of Lüderitz. The island is only 750 metres long (North-South) and about 270 metres wide, reaching a height of 38 metres above the sea. Steep, rocky, without vegetation, covered in a thick layer of bird guano, and riddled with a number of caves (one of which completely bisects the island), Mercury Island's name comes from the shaking that reverberates through the island during westerly wave action. Its nearest neighbour and like bird habitat is Ichaboe Island, about 65 kilometres to the south. Ichaboe and Mercury are the two most important island seabird breeding sites along the ...
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Bank Cormorant At Living Coasts
A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because banks play an important role in financial stability and the economy of a country, most jurisdictions exercise a high degree of regulation over banks. Most countries have institutionalized a system known as fractional reserve banking, under which banks hold liquid assets equal to only a portion of their current liabilities. In addition to other regulations intended to ensure liquidity, banks are generally subject to minimum capital requirements based on an international set of capital standards, the Basel Accords. Banking in its modern sense evolved in the fourteenth century in the prosperous cities of Renaissance Italy but in many ways functioned as a continuation of ideas and concepts of credit and lending that had their roots in the anc ...
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Cormorant
Phalacrocoracidae is a family of approximately 40 species of aquatic birds commonly known as cormorants and shags. Several different classifications of the family have been proposed, but in 2021 the IOC adopted a consensus taxonomy of seven genera. The great cormorant (''Phalacrocorax carbo'') and the common shag (''Gulosus aristotelis'') are the only two species of the family commonly encountered in Britain and Ireland and "cormorant" and "shag" appellations have been later assigned to different species in the family somewhat haphazardly. Cormorants and shags are medium-to-large birds, with body weight in the range of and wing span of . The majority of species have dark feathers. The bill is long, thin and hooked. Their feet have webbing between all four toes. All species are fish-eaters, catching the prey by diving from the surface. They are excellent divers, and under water they propel themselves with their feet with help from their wings; some cormorant species have been ...
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Sufflogobius Bibarbatus
The pelagic goby (''Sufflogobius bibarbatus''), also known as the bearded goby , is a species of true goby from the family Gobiidae, native to the southeastern Atlantic Ocean. It is currently the only known member of its genus. Description It reaches a maximum length of . It has 7 dorsal spines and 12-13 dorsal soft rays. It has a single anal spine and 12-13 anal soft rays. Its fins are dusky to black in color. Range and habitat This goby is demersal, inhabiting depths of in subtropical waters ranging from in the coastal waters of Namibia and South Africa. The bearded goby is usually found offshore but was also recorded in shore pools. Juveniles are epipelagic, while adults migrate to deeper waters, and large adults are only recorded from demersal trawls. The gobies can stay on the ocean floor for at least 10 to 12 hours at a time in an area of de-oxygenated "toxic sludge" rich in hydrogen sulfide where hardly anything lives except bacteria and nematodes. When settled o ...
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Kelp
Kelps are large brown algae seaweeds that make up the order Laminariales. There are about 30 different genera. Despite its appearance, kelp is not a plant - it is a heterokont, a completely unrelated group of organisms. Kelp grows in "underwater forests" (kelp forests) in shallow oceans, and is thought to have appeared in the Miocene, 5 to 23 million years ago. The organisms require nutrient-rich water with temperatures between . They are known for their high growth rate—the genera ''Macrocystis'' and '' Nereocystis'' can grow as fast as half a metre a day, ultimately reaching .Thomas, D. 2002. ''Seaweeds.'' The Natural History Museum, London, p. 15. Through the 19th century, the word "kelp" was closely associated with seaweeds that could be burned to obtain soda ash (primarily sodium carbonate). The seaweeds used included species from both the orders Laminariales and Fucales. The word "kelp" was also used directly to refer to these processed ashes. Description In most kelp ...
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