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Large-footed Finch
The large-footed finch (''Pezopetes capitalis'') is a passerine bird endemic to the highlands of Costa Rica and western Panama. Despite its name, it is not a true finch, but rather a member of the large family Passerellidae, which also includes American sparrows, juncos and towhees. It is the only member of the genus ''Pezopetes''. This is a common bird in the undergrowth of mountain forests, second growth, bamboo clumps, and scrubby pastures from 2150 m altitude to the scrubby páramo at 3350 m. It is readily seen in favoured sites such as Cerro de la Muerte. The nest, built by the female, is a large loose cup of plant material placed less than 2 m up in bamboo or a dense shrub. The typical clutch is one or two brown-marked white or blue-white eggs, which are incubated by the female alone for 12–14 days before hatching. The large-footed finch is a large, robust terrestrial species, long and weighing . It has a slender bill, a modestly sized tail and very ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Cabanis
Jean Louis Cabanis (8 March 1816 – 20 February 1906) was a German ornithologist. Cabanis was born in Berlin to an old Huguenot family who had moved from France. Little is known of his early life. He studied at the University of Berlin from 1835 to 1839, and then travelled to North America, returning in 1841 with a large natural history collection. He was assistant and later director of the Natural History Museum of Berlin (which was at the time the Berlin University Museum), taking over from Martin Lichtenstein. He founded the ''Journal für Ornithologie'' in 1853, editing it for the next forty-one years, when he was succeeded by his son-in-law Anton Reichenow. He died in Friedrichshagen. A number of birds are named after him, including Cabanis's bunting ''Emberiza cabanisi'', Cabanis's spinetail ''Synallaxis cabanisi'', Azure-rumped tanager The azure-rumped tanager or Cabanis's tanager (''Poecilostreptus cabanisi'') is a species of bird in the family Thraupidae. It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bamboo
Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, but it probably comes from the Dutch or Portuguese language, which originally borrowed it from Malay or Kannada. In bamboo, as in other grasses, the internodal regions of the stem are usually hollow and the vascular bundles in the cross-section are scattered throughout the stem instead of in a cylindrical arrangement. The dicotyledonous woody xylem is also absent. The absence of secondary growth wood causes the stems of monocots, including the palms and large bamboos, to be columnar rather than tapering. Bamboos include some of the fastest-growing plants in the world, due to a unique rhizome-dependent system. Certain species of bamboo can grow within a 24-hour period, at a rate of almost an hour (equivalent to 1 mm every 90 seco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Passerellidae
New World sparrows are a group of mainly New World passerine birds, forming the family Passerellidae. They are seed-eating birds with conical bills, brown or gray in color, and many species have distinctive head patterns. Although they share the name sparrow, New World sparrows are more closely related to Old World buntings than they are to the Old World sparrows (family Passeridae). New World sparrows are also similar in both appearance and habit to finches, with which they sometimes used to be classified. Taxonomy The genera now assigned to the family Passerellidae were previously included with the buntings in the family Emberizidae. A phylogenetic analysis of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences published in 2015 found that the Passerellidae formed a monophyletic group that had an uncertain relationship to the Emberizidae. Emberizidae was therefore split and the family Passerellidae resurrected. It had originally been introduced, as the subfamily Passerellinae, by the Ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spider
Spiders ( order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all orders of organisms. Spiders are found worldwide on every continent except for Antarctica, and have become established in nearly every land habitat. , 50,356 spider species in 132 families have been recorded by taxonomists. However, there has been debate among scientists about how families should be classified, with over 20 different classifications proposed since 1900. Anatomically, spiders (as with all arachnids) differ from other arthropods in that the usual body segments are fused into two tagmata, the cephalothorax or prosoma, and the opisthosoma, or abdomen, and joined by a small, cylindrical pedicel, however, as there is currently neither paleontological nor embryological evidence that spiders ever had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes and one pair of antennae. Their blood is not totally contained in vessels; some circulates in an open cavity known as the haemocoel. Insects are the most diverse group of animals; they include more than a million described species and represent more than half of all known living organisms. The total number of extant species is estimated at between six and ten million; In: potentially over 90% of the animal life forms on Earth are insects. Insects may be found in nearly all environments, although only a small number of species reside in the oceans, which are dominated by another arthropod group, crustaceans, which recent research has indicated insects are nested within. Nearly all insects hatch from eggs. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cup Nest
A bird nest is the spot in which a bird lays and incubates its eggs and raises its young. Although the term popularly refers to a specific structure made by the bird itself—such as the grassy cup nest of the American robin or Eurasian blackbird, or the elaborately woven hanging nest of the Montezuma oropendola or the village weaver—that is too restrictive a definition. For some species, a nest is simply a shallow depression made in sand; for others, it is the knot-hole left by a broken branch, a burrow dug into the ground, a chamber drilled into a tree, an enormous rotting pile of vegetation and earth, a shelf made of dried saliva or a mud dome with an entrance tunnel. The smallest bird nests are those of some hummingbirds, tiny cups which can be a mere across and high. At the other extreme, some nest mounds built by the dusky scrubfowl measure more than in diameter and stand nearly tall. The study of birds' nests is known as ''caliology''. Not all bird species bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cerro De La Muerte
Cerro de la Muerte is a mountain peak of a massif in Costa Rica, it is located within the Tapantí — Cerro de la Muerte Massif National Park, and is the highest point on the Pan-American Highway. Toponymy Its name means "Mountain of Death", "Hill of Death" or "Summit of Death," since in the past crossing the mountains from the Valle Central meant a three- or four-day journey, on foot or on horseback, and many ill-prepared travelers succumbed to the cold and rain. However, the peak is now easily accessible since the Route 2 runs close by. Description A drivable track from the highway (Kilometer 89) leads to a peak, with its cluster of telecommunications aerials. A short hike is also available from the highway to another peak marked with a barrel. A sign marks the high point of the highway (Route 2) at , from where the vehicle track and hiking trail begin. At this altitude, overnight temperatures can dip below freezing, but the sun soon raises the temperatures in the morning, wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Páramo
Páramo () can refer to a variety of alpine tundra ecosystems located in the Andes Mountain Range, South America. Some ecologists describe the páramo broadly as "all high, tropical, montane vegetation above the continuous timberline". A narrower term classifies the páramo according to its regional placement in the northern Andes of South America and adjacent southern Central America. The páramo is the ecosystem of the regions above the continuous forest line, yet below the permanent snowline. It is a "Neotropical high mountain biome with a vegetation composed mainly of giant rosette plants, shrubs and grasses". According to scientists, páramos may be "evolutionary hot spots", that meaning that it's among the fastest evolving regions on Earth. Location The Northern Andean Páramo global ecoregion includes the Cordillera Central páramo (Ecuador, Peru), Santa Marta páramo (Colombia), Cordillera de Merida páramo (Venezuela) and Northern Andean páramo (Colombia, Ecuador) ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Towhee
A towhee is any one of a number of species of birds in the genus ''Pipilo'' or ''Melozone'' within the family Passerellidae (which also includes American sparrows, and juncos). Towhees typically have longer tails than other Passerellidae. Most species tend to avoid humans, so they are not well known, though the eastern towhee ''P. erythrophthalmus'' is bolder. This species, and some others, may be seen in urban parks and gardens. There has been considerable debate over the taxonomy of the towhees in recent years. Two species complexes have been identified, the rufous-sided complex (involving ''Pipilo erythrophthalmus'', ''P. maculatus'', ''P. socorroensis'', ''P. ocai'' and ''P. chlorurus''), and the brown towhee complex (involving ''Melozone crissalis'', ''M. fuscus'', ''M. aberti'' and ''M. albicollis''). The distinction of species within these is uncertain and opinions have differed over the years. Modern authorities distinguish all four species in the brown towhee complex, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Passerine
A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by the arrangement of their toes (three pointing forward and one back), which facilitates perching. With more than 140 families and some 6,500 identified species, Passeriformes is the largest clade of birds and among the most diverse clades of terrestrial vertebrates, representing 60% of birds.Ericson, P.G.P. et al. (2003Evolution, biogeography, and patterns of diversification in passerine birds ''J. Avian Biol'', 34:3–15.Selvatti, A.P. et al. (2015"A Paleogene origin for crown passerines and the diversification of the Oscines in the New World" ''Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution'', 88:1–15. Passerines are divided into three clades: Acanthisitti (New Zealand wrens), Tyranni (suboscines), and Passeri (oscines or songbirds). The passeri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Junco
A junco , genus ''Junco'', is a small North American bird in the New World sparrow family Passerellidae. Junco systematics are still confusing after decades of research, with various authors accepting between three and twelve species. Despite having a name that appears to derive from the Spanish term for the plant genus ''Juncus'' (rushes), these birds are seldom found among rush plants, which prefer wet ground, while juncos prefer dry soil. Their breeding habitat is coniferous or mixed forest areas throughout North America, ranging from subarctic taiga to high-altitude mountain forests in Mexico and Central America south to Panama. Northern birds usually migrate farther south; southern populations are permanent residents or altitudinal migrants, moving only a short distance downslope to avoid severe winter weather in the mountains. These birds forage on the ground. In winter, they often forage in flocks. They eat mainly insects and seeds. They usually nest in a well-hidde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Sparrow
New World sparrows are a group of mainly New World passerine birds, forming the family Passerellidae. They are seed-eating birds with conical bills, brown or gray in color, and many species have distinctive head patterns. Although they share the name sparrow, New World sparrows are more closely related to Old World buntings than they are to the Old World sparrows (family Passeridae). New World sparrows are also similar in both appearance and habit to finches, with which they sometimes used to be classified. Taxonomy The genera now assigned to the family Passerellidae were previously included with the buntings in the family Emberizidae. A phylogenetic analysis of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences published in 2015 found that the Passerellidae formed a monophyletic group that had an uncertain relationship to the Emberizidae. Emberizidae was therefore split and the family Passerellidae resurrected. It had originally been introduced, as the subfamily Passerellinae, by the Ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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