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Western Tailed-blue
The western tailed-blue (''Cupido amyntula)'' is a Nearctic non-migratory butterfly that commonly takes flight during the spring and summer seasons of March–July. They can be best classified as having a presence of a tail on their hindwing, an upper surface that's bluish while the under surface is chalky-white with occasional black spots, and an orange spot toward the base of their tail. Their wingspan ranges from 0.875 to 1.125 inches (2.2 to 2.9 cm). Larvae feed on various plant species including ''Astragalus'' (several species), ''Lathyrus'' (several species), ''Oxytropis'', and ''Vicia'' (several species). Adults feed on various things such as flower nectar, horse and coyote manure, urine, and mud. Habitat The western tailed-blue can be most abundantly found in open areas containing low shrubs extending throughout western North America from as high as south Alaska to as low as northern Baja California. These species prefer to reside more in forest densities, with equal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Baptiste Boisduval
Jean Baptiste Alphonse Déchauffour de Boisduval (24 June 1799 – 30 December 1879) was a French lepidopterist, botanist, and physician. He was one of the most celebrated lepidopterists of France, and was the co-founder of the Société entomologique de France. While best known abroad for his work in entomology, he started his career in botany, collecting a great number of French plant specimens and writing broadly on the topic throughout his career, including the textbook ''Flores française'' in 1828. Early in his career, he was interested in Coleoptera and allied himself with both Jean Théodore Lacordaire and Pierre André Latreille. He was the curator of the Pierre Françoise Marie Auguste Dejean collection in Paris and described many species of beetles, as well as butterflies and moths, resulting from the voyages of the ''Astrolabe'', the expedition ship of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse and the '' Coquille'', that of Louis Isidore Duperrey. He left Paris ... [...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] |
Shrub
A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees by their multiple stems and shorter height, less than tall. Small shrubs, less than 2 m (6.6 ft) tall are sometimes termed as subshrubs. Many botanical groups have species that are shrubs, and others that are trees and herbaceous plants instead. Some definitions state that a shrub is less than and a tree is over 6 m. Others use as the cut-off point for classification. Many species of tree may not reach this mature height because of hostile less than ideal growing conditions, and resemble a shrub-sized plant. However, such species have the potential to grow taller under the ideal growing conditions for that plant. In terms of longevity, most shrubs fit in a class between perennials and trees; some may only last about five y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pupa
A pupa ( la, pupa, "doll"; plural: ''pupae'') is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in their life cycle, the stages thereof being egg, larva, pupa, and imago. The processes of entering and completing the pupal stage are controlled by the insect's hormones, especially juvenile hormone, prothoracicotropic hormone, and ecdysone. The act of becoming a pupa is called pupation, and the act of emerging from the pupal case is called eclosion or emergence. The pupae of different groups of insects have different names such as ''chrysalis'' for the pupae of butterflies and ''tumbler'' for those of the mosquito family. Pupae may further be enclosed in other structures such as cocoons, nests, or shells. Position in life cycle The pupal stage follows the larval stage and precedes adulthood (''imago'') in insects with complete metamorphosi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instar
An instar (, from the Latin '' īnstar'', "form", "likeness") is a developmental stage of arthropods, such as insects, between each moult (''ecdysis''), until sexual maturity is reached. Arthropods must shed the exoskeleton in order to grow or assume a new form. Differences between instars can often be seen in altered body proportions, colors, patterns, changes in the number of body segments or head width. After shedding their exoskeleton (moulting), the juvenile arthropods continue in their life cycle until they either pupate or moult again. The instar period of growth is fixed; however, in some insects, like the salvinia stem-borer moth, the number of instars depends on early larval nutrition. Some arthropods can continue to moult after sexual maturity, but the stages between these subsequent moults are generally not called instars. For most insect species, an ''instar'' is the developmental stage of the larval forms of holometabolous (complete metamorphism) or nymphal forms o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ovariole
An ovariole is a tubular component of the insect ovary, and the basic unit of egg production. Each ovariole is composed of a germarium (the germline stem cell niche) at the anterior tip, a set of developing oocytes contained within follicles, and a posterior connection to a common oviduct. While most insects have two ovaries, the number of ovarioles within each ovary varies across insect species. This number may also be variable across individuals within a species, or between the left and right ovaries within an individual. Types Ovarioles are often classified into one of several types by the presence and position of nurse cells. These specialized cells provide nutrition and molecules important for embryonic patterning to the developing oocyte. Ovarioles that lack nurse cells are referred to as ''panoistic'' and ovarioles with nurse cells are referred to as ''meroistic''. Meroistic ovarioles are further classified according to where nurse cells are located. In ''polytrophic m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seed Pods
This page provides a glossary of plant morphology. Botanists and other biologists who study plant morphology use a number of different terms to classify and identify plant organs and parts that can be observed using no more than a handheld magnifying lens. This page provides help in understanding the numerous other pages describing plants by their various taxa. The accompanying page—Plant morphology—provides an overview of the science of the external form of plants. There is also an alphabetical list: Glossary of botanical terms. In contrast, this page deals with botanical terms in a Systematics, systematic manner, with some illustrations, and organized by plant anatomy and function in plant physiology. This glossary primarily includes terms that deal with vascular plants (ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms), particularly flowering plants (angiosperms). Non-vascular plants (bryophytes), with their different evolutionary background, tend to have separate terminology. Although pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sedum Lanceolatum
''Sedum lanceolatum'' is a species of flowering plant in the family Crassulaceae known by the common names spearleaf stonecrop and lanceleaf stonecrop. It is native to western North America and occurs in western Canada and the United States. It is distributed from Alaska to Arizona and New Mexico and as far east as South Dakota and Nebraska. It grows in exposed, rocky mountainous habitat at moderate and high elevations, up to 4048 meters in the Rocky Mountains.DeChaine, E. G. and A. P. Martin. (2005)Marked genetic divergence among sky island populations of ''Sedum lanceolatum'' (Crassulaceae) in the Rocky Mountains.''American Journal of Botany'' 92:477-486. The plant persisted and evolved on sky islands and nunataks in these ranges during glaciation events during the Pleistocene epoch. This is a succulent plant forming basal rosettes of knobby or pointed leaves up to 3 centimeters long. Smaller leaves occur farther up the stem and often fall away by the time the plant blooms. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prairie
Prairies are ecosystems considered part of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome by ecologists, based on similar temperate climates, moderate rainfall, and a composition of grasses, herbs, and shrubs, rather than trees, as the dominant vegetation type. Temperate grassland regions include the Pampas of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, and the steppe of Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan. Lands typically referred to as "prairie" tend to be in North America. The term encompasses the area referred to as the Geography of North America, Interior Lowlands of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, which includes all of the Great Plains as well as the wetter, hillier land to the east. In the U.S., the area is constituted by most or all of the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, and sizable parts of the states of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and western and southern Minnesota. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meadow
A meadow ( ) is an open habitat, or field, vegetated by grasses, herbs, and other non-woody plants. Trees or shrubs may sparsely populate meadows, as long as these areas maintain an open character. Meadows may be naturally occurring or artificially created from cleared shrub or woodland. They can occur naturally under favourable conditions (see perpetual meadows), but they are often maintained by humans for the production of hay, fodder, or livestock. Meadow habitats, as a group, are characterized as "semi-natural grasslands", meaning that they are largely composed of species native to the region, with only limited human intervention. Meadows attract a multitude of wildlife, and support flora and fauna that could not thrive in other habitats. They are ecologically important as they provide areas for animal courtship displays, nesting, food gathering, pollinating insects, and sometimes sheltering, if the vegetation is high enough. There are multiple types of meadows, in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Field (agriculture)
In agriculture, a field is an area of land, enclosed or otherwise, used for agricultural purposes such as cultivating crops or as a paddock or other enclosure for livestock. A field may also be an area left to lie fallow or as arable land. Many farms have a field border, usually composed of a strip of shrubs and vegetation, used to provide food and cover necessary for the survival of wildlife. It has been found that these borders may lead to an increased variety of animals and plants in the area, but also in some cases a decreased yield of crops. Paddock In Australian and New Zealand English, any agricultural field may be called a ''paddock'', especially if for keeping sheep or cattle. If stock are grazed there, the space may be called a ''run'', e.g. ''sheep run''; ''cattle run''. The term paddock is used more specifically in animal husbandry for a system in which grazing land is divided into small areas, paddocks, and the stock graze each paddock in turn for a short peri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
