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King Bird-of-paradise
The king bird-of-paradise (''Cicinnurus regius'') is a passerine bird of the Paradisaeidae (bird-of-paradise) family. It is considered by the IOC checklist to be the only member of the genus ''Cicinnurus'', although the genus ''Diphyllodes'' is closely related and is subsumed under ''Cicinnurus'' by many other authorities. The king bird-of-paradise is a common and wide-ranging species, distributed throughout lowland forests of New Guinea and western satellite islands. Some populations range quite high into the hills and lower mountains, and these are poorly known as yet. The first captive breeding of this species was by Sten Bergman of Sweden in 1958. He was awarded a commemorative medal by the Foreign Bird League to mark this achievement. Taxonomy The king bird-of-paradise was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his ''Systema Naturae'' under the binomial name ''Paradisaea regius''. The type locality is the Aru Islands. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot
Louis Pierre Vieillot (10 May 1748, Yvetot – 24 August 1830, Sotteville-lès-Rouen) was a French ornithologist. Vieillot is the author of the first scientific descriptions and Linnaean names of a number of birds, including species he collected himself in the West Indies and North America and South American species discovered but not formally named by Félix de Azara and his translator Sonnini de Manoncourt. He was among the first ornithologists to study changes in plumage and one of the first to study live birds. At least 77 of the genera erected by Vieillot are still in use. Biography Vieillot was born in Yvetot. He represented his family's business interests in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) on Hispaniola, but fled to the United States during the Haitian rebellions that followed the French Revolution. On Buffon's advice, he collected material for the ''Histoire naturelle des oiseaux de l'Amérique Septentrionale,'' the first two volumes of which were published in France beginning i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild
Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild, (8 February 1868 – 27 August 1937) was a British banker, politician, zoologist and soldier, who was a member of the Rothschild family. As a Zionist leader, he was presented with the Balfour Declaration, which pledged British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. Rothschild was the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1925 to 1926. Early life Walter Rothschild was born in London as the eldest son and heir of Emma Louise von Rothschild and Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, an immensely wealthy financier of the international Rothschild financial dynasty and the first Jewish peer in England. The eldest of three children, Walter was deemed to have delicate health and was educated at home. As a young man, he travelled in Europe, attending the University of Bonn for a year before entering Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1889, leaving Cambridge after two years, he was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sexual Reproduction
Sexual reproduction is a type of reproduction that involves a complex life cycle in which a gamete ( haploid reproductive cells, such as a sperm or egg cell) with a single set of chromosomes combines with another gamete to produce a zygote that develops into an organism composed of cells with two sets of chromosomes ( diploid). This is typical in animals, though the number of chromosome sets and how that number changes in sexual reproduction varies, especially among plants, fungi, and other eukaryotes. Sexual reproduction is the most common life cycle in multicellular eukaryotes, such as animals, fungi and plants. Sexual reproduction also occurs in some unicellular eukaryotes. Sexual reproduction does not occur in prokaryotes, unicellular organisms without cell nuclei, such bacteria and archaea. However, some process in bacteria may be considered analogous to sexual reproduction in that they incorporate new genetic information, including bacterial conjugation, transformatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Courtship Display
A courtship display is a set of display behaviors in which an animal, usually a male, attempts to attract a mate; the mate exercises choice, so sexual selection acts on the display. These behaviors often include ritualized movement ("dances"), vocalizations, mechanical sound production, or displays of beauty, strength, or agonistic ability. Male display In some species, males will perform ritualized movements to attract females. The male six-plumed bird-of-paradise ( ''Parotia lawesii'') exemplifies male courtship display with its ritualized "ballerina dance" and unique occipital and breast feathers that serve to stimulate the female visual system. In ''Drosophila subobscura,'' male courtship display is seen through the male's intricate wing scissoring patterns and rapid sidestepping. These stimulations, along with many other factors, result in subsequent copulation or rejection. In other species, males may exhibit courtship displays that serve as both visual and auditory st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Courtship
Courtship is the period wherein some couples get to know each other prior to a possible marriage. Courtship traditionally may begin after a betrothal and may conclude with the celebration of marriage. A courtship may be an informal and private matter between two people or may be a public affair, or a formal arrangement with family approval. Traditionally, in the case of a formal engagement, it is the role of a male to actively "court" or "woo" a female, thus encouraging her to understand him and her receptiveness to a marriage proposal. Duration The average duration of courtship varies considerably throughout the world. Furthermore, there is vast individual variation between couples. Courtship may be completely omitted, as in cases of some arranged marriages where the couple do not meet before the wedding. In the United Kingdom, a poll of 3,000 [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lek Mating
A lek is an aggregation of male animals gathered to engage in competitive displays and courtship rituals, known as lekking, to entice visiting females which are surveying prospective partners with which to mate. A lek can also indicate an available plot of space able to be utilized by displaying males to defend their own share of territory for the breeding season. A lekking species is characterised by male displays, strong female mate choice, and the conferring of indirect benefits to males and reduced costs to females. Although most prevalent among birds such as black grouse, lekking is also found in a wide range of vertebrates including some bony fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, and arthropods including crustaceans and insects. A classical lek consists of male territories in visual and auditory range of each other. An exploded lek, as seen in the kakapo (the owl parrot), has more widely separated territories, but still in auditory range. Lekking is associated with an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polygyny In Animals
Polygyny (; from Neo-Greek πολυγυνία, from πολύ- ''poly-'', "many", and γυνή ''gyne'', "woman" or "wife") is a mating system in which one male lives and mates with multiple females but each female only mates with a single male. Systems where several females mate with several males are defined either as promiscuity or polygynandry. Lek mating is frequently regarded as a form of polygyny, because one male mates with many females, but lek-based mating systems differ in that the male has no attachment to the females with whom he mates, and that mating females lack attachment to one another.Clutton-Brock T.H. (1989). ‘Review lecture: mammalian mating systems.' ''Proceedings of the Royal Society of London''. Series B, Biological Sciences 236: 339–372. Polygyny is typical of one-male, multi-female groupsBoyd, R., & Silk, J. B. (2009). How Humans Evolved (preferably the downloadable pdf version): WW Norton & Company, New York. and can be found in many species includi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secondary Forest
A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. It is distinguished from an old-growth forest (primary or primeval forest), which has not recently undergone such disruption, and complex early seral forest, as well as third-growth forests that result from harvest in second growth forests. Secondary forest regrowing after timber harvest differs from forest regrowing after natural disturbances such as fire, insect infestation, or windthrow because the dead trees remain to provide nutrients, structure, and water retention after natural disturbances. However, often after natural disturbance the timber is harvested and removed from the system, in which case the system more closely resembles secondary forest rather than seral forest. Description Depending on the forest, the development of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forest Edge
A woodland edge or forest edge is the transition zone (ecotone) from an area of woodland or forest to fields or other open spaces. Certain species of plants and animals are adapted to the forest edge, and these species are often more familiar to humans than species only found deeper within forests. A classic example of a forest edge species is the white-tailed deer in North America. The woodland edge on maps On topographic maps woods and forests are generally depicted in a soft green colour. Their edges are - like other features - usually determined from aerial photographs, but sometimes also by terrestrial survey. However, they only represent a snapshot in time because almost all woods have a tendency to spread or to gradually fill clearings. In addition, working out the exact edge of the wood or forest may be difficult where it transitions into scrub or bushes or the trees thin out slowly. Differences of opinion here often involved several tens of metres. In addition, many car ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gallery Forest
A gallery forest is one formed as a corridor along rivers or wetlands, projecting into landscapes that are otherwise only sparsely treed such as savannas, grasslands, or deserts. The gallery forest maintains a more temperate microclimate above the river. Defined as long and narrow forest vegetation associated with rivers, gallery forests are structurally and floristically heterogeneous. The habitats of these forests differ from the surrounding landscapes because they are, for example, more nutrient-rich or moister and/or there is less chance of fires. The forests are sometimes only a few meters wide, because they depend on the water they lie along. Ecology characteristics The riparian zones in which they grow offer greater protection from fire which would kill tree seedlings. In addition, the alluvial soils of the gallery habitat are often of higher fertility and have better drainage than the soils of the surrounding landscape with a more reliable water supply at depth. As a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rainforests
Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforest can be classified as tropical rainforest or temperate rainforest, but other types have been described. Estimates vary from 40% to 75% of all biotic species being indigenous to the rainforests. There may be many millions of species of plants, insects and microorganisms still undiscovered in tropical rainforests. Tropical rainforests have been called the "jewels of the Earth" and the " world's largest pharmacy", because over one quarter of natural medicines have been discovered there. Rainforests as well as endemic rainforest species are rapidly disappearing due to deforestation, the resulting habitat loss and pollution of the atmosphere. Definition Rainforest are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, high humidity, the presence of moisture-dependent vegetation, a moist layer of leaf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Misool
Misool, formerly spelled Mysol (Dutch: Misoöl) or Misol, is one of the four major islands in the Raja Ampat Islands in Southwest Papua, Indonesia. Its area is 2,034 km2. The highest point is 561 m and the main towns are Waigama, located on the island's northwest coast, and Lilinta on the island's southeast coast. The inhabitants speak the Ma'ya language, Biga language and Matbat language, as well as Indonesian and its dialect, Papuan Malay. Other main islands of this group off the western end of Southwest Papua are Salawati, Batanta and Waigeo, and there are numerous smaller islands such as Kofiau. Etymology The name ''Misool'' is from Ma'ya language which meant port or harbour relating to when the first king from Waigeo arrived on the island. Original inhabitants ( Matbat) called the island with the name ''Batan Me''. Ecology Terrestrial Misool is part of the Vogelkop–Aru lowland rain forests ecoregion, which includes the other Raja Ampat Islands and the Bird's H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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