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Mesic Habitat
In ecology, a mesic habitat is a type of habitat with a well-balanced or moderate supply of moisture throughout the growing season (e.g., a mesic forest, temperate hardwood forest, or dry-mesic prairie). The term derives from the Greek ''misos'', meaning middle, indicating its relative moisture content between hydric (moist) and xeric (dry) habitats. The word "mesic" can apply to the plants or soils within the mesic habitat (i.e. mesic plants, mesic soils). Mesic habitats provide a moderate moisture content that remains relatively constant during crucial growing periods. A variety of outside factors contribute to the presence of water in the system, including streams and their offshoots, wet meadows, springs, seeps, irrigated fields, and high-elevation habitats. These factors effectively provide drought insurance during the growing season against climatic factors such as increasing temperatures, lack of rain, and the effects of urbanization. Other habitat types, such as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cloud Forest (32108298811)
A cloud forest, also called a water forest, primas forest, or tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF), is a generally tropical or subtropical, evergreen, montane, moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud cover, usually at the canopy level, formally described in the '' International Cloud Atlas'' (2017) as silvagenitus. Cloud forests often exhibit an abundance of mosses covering the ground and vegetation, in which case they are also referred to as mossy forests. Mossy forests usually develop on the saddles of mountains, where moisture introduced by settling clouds is more effectively retained. Cloud forests are among the most biodiversity rich ecosystems in the world with a large amount of species directly or indirectly depending on them. Other moss forests include black spruce/ feathermoss climax forest, with a moderately dense canopy and a forest floor of feathermosses including ''Hylocomium splendens'', '' Pleurozium schreberi'' an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hammock (ecology)
Hammock is a term used in the southeastern United States for stands of trees, usually hardwood, that form an ecological island in a contrasting ecosystem. Hammocks grow on elevated areas, often just a few inches high, surrounded by wetlands that are too wet to support them. The term ''hammock'' is also applied to stands of hardwood trees growing on slopes between wetlands and drier uplands supporting a mixed or coniferous forest. Types of hammocks found in the United States include tropical hardwood hammocks, temperate hardwood hammocks, and maritime or coastal hammocks. Hammocks are also often classified as hydric (wet soil), mesic (moist soil) or xeric (dry soil). The types are not exclusive, but often grade into each other. Unlike many ecosystems of the coastal plain of the southeastern United States, hammocks are not tolerant of fire. Hammocks tend to occur in locations where fire is not common, or where there is some protection from fire in neighboring ecosystems. Hammocks ... [...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] |
Centrocercus
Sage-grouse are grouse belonging to the bird genus ''Centrocercus.'' The genus includes two species: the Gunnison grouse (''Centrocercus minimus'') and the greater sage-grouse (''Centrocercus urophasianus''). These birds are distributed throughout large portions of the north-central and Western United States, as well as the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The International Union for Conservation of Nature classified the ''C. minimus'' species as endangered in 2020 and ''C. urophasianus'' as near threatened in 2016. Names The specific epithet is from another Greek word, "oura", plus "phasianos", pheasant. The noun "pheasant" was originally applied to a bird that was native to the valley of the Phasis River (now the Rioni River), which is located in Georgia (country), Georgia. In the time of Lewis and Clark the word "pheasant" stood for "a genus of gallinaceous birds", according to lexicographer Noah Webster (1806), and the explorers often used it in that sense. "G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruffed Grouse
The ruffed grouse (''Bonasa umbellus'') is a medium-sized grouse occurring in forests from the Appalachian Mountains across Canada to Alaska. It is the most widely distributed game bird in North America. It is non-migratory. It is the only species in the genus ''Bonasa''. The ruffed grouse is sometimes incorrectly referred to as a "partridge", an unrelated phasianid, and occasionally confused with the grey partridge, a bird of open areas rather than woodlands. The ruffed grouse is the state game bird of Pennsylvania, United States. Taxonomy ''Bonasa umbellus'' was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1766 12th edition of ''Systema Naturae''. He classified it as ''Tetrao umbellus'', placing it in a subfamily with Eurasian grouse. The genus ''Bonasa'' was applied by British naturalist John Francis Stephens in 1819. Ruffed grouse is the preferred common name because it applies only to this species. Misleading vernacular names abound, however, and it is often called partridge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forb
A forb or phorb is an herbaceous flowering plant that is not a graminoid (grass, sedge, or rush). The term is used in biology and in vegetation ecology, especially in relation to grasslands and understory. Typically these are dicots without woody stems. Etymology The word "forb" is derived from Greek ''phorbḗ'' (), meaning "pasture" or "fodder". The Hellenic spelling "phorb" is sometimes used, and in older usage this sometimes includes graminids and other plants currently not regarded as forbs. Guilds Forbs are members of a guilda group of plant species with broadly similar growth form. In certain contexts in ecology, guild membership may often be more important than the taxonomic relationships between organisms. In informal classification In addition to its use in ecology, the term "forb" may be used for subdividing popular guides to wildflowers, distinguishing them from other categories such as grasses, sedges, shrubs, and trees. Some examples of forbs are clovers, s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in the southwestern United States. Depending on differing definitions between Canada and the U.S., its northern terminus is located either in northern British Columbia's Terminal Range south of the Liard River and east of the Trench, or in the northeastern foothills of the Brooks Range/ British Mountains that face the Beaufort Sea coasts between the Canning River and the Firth River across the Alaska-Yukon border. Its southernmost point is near the Albuquerque area adjacent to the Rio Grande rift and north of the Sandia–Manzano Mountain Range. Being the easternmost portion of the North American Cordillera, the Rockies are distinct from the tectonically younger Cascade Range and Sierra Nevada, which both lie farther to its west. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Plains
The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. It is the southern and main part of the Interior Plains, which also include the tallgrass prairie between the Great Lakes and Appalachian Plateau, and the Taiga Plains and Boreal Plains ecozones in Northern Canada. The term Western Plains is used to describe the ecoregion of the Great Plains, or alternatively the western portion of the Great Plains. The Great Plains lies across both Central United States and Western Canada, encompassing: * The entirety of the U.S. states of Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota; * Parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming; * The southern portions of the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Basin
The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic basin, endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja California. It is noted for both its arid climate and the basin and range topography that varies from the North American low point at Badwater Basin in Death Valley to the highest point of the contiguous United States, less than away at the summit of Mount Whitney. The region spans several physical geography, physiographic divisions, biomes, ecoregions, and deserts. Definition The term "Great Basin" is applied to hydrography, hydrographic, ecology, biological, floristic province, floristic, physiographic, topography, topographic, and Ethnography, ethnographic geographic areas. The name was originally coined by John C. Frémont, who, based on information gleaned from Joseph R. Walker as well as his own travels, recognized the hydrographic nature o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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