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Steatornis Caripensis
The oilbird (''Steatornis caripensis''), locally known as the , is a bird species found in the northern areas of South America including the Caribbean island of Trinidad. It is the only species in the genus ''Steatornis'', the family Steatornithidae, and the order Steatornithiformes. Nesting in colonies in caves, oilbirds are nocturnal feeders on the fruits of the oil palm and tropical laurels. They are the only nocturnal flying fruit-eating birds in the world (the kakapo, also nocturnal, is flightless). They forage at night, with specially adapted eyesight. However, they navigate by echolocation in the same way as bats, one of the few birds to do so. They produce a high-pitched clicking sound of around 2 kHz that is audible to humans. Taxonomy and etymology Oilbirds are related to the nightjars and have sometimes been placed with these in the order Caprimulgiformes. However, the nightjars and their relatives are insectivores while the oilbird is a specialist fructivore, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Lucien Bonaparte
Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte, 2nd Prince of Canino and Musignano (24 May 1803 – 29 July 1857), was a French naturalist and ornithologist. Lucien and his wife had twelve children, including Cardinal Lucien Bonaparte. Life and career Bonaparte was the son of Lucien Bonaparte and Alexandrine de Bleschamp. Lucien was a younger brother of Napoleon I, making Charles the emperor’s nephew. Born in Paris, he was raised in Italy. On 29 June 1822, he married his cousin, Zénaïde, in Brussels. Soon after the marriage, the couple left for Philadelphia in the United States to live with Zénaïde's father, Joseph Bonaparte (who was also the paternal uncle of Charles). Before leaving Italy, Charles had already discovered a warbler new to science, the moustached warbler, and on the voyage he collected specimens of a new storm-petrel. On arrival in the United States, he presented a paper on this new bird, which was later named after Alexander Wilson. Bonaparte then set about ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caripe
Caripe is a town in Caripe Municipality in the mountainous north of the state of Monagas in eastern Venezuela. The official name of the town is Caripe del Guácharo 'Caripe of the Oilbird', referring to a colony of nocturnal birds which lives in a nearby cave, the ''Cueva del Guácharo''. The species was unknown to science until 1799 when Alexander von Humboldt came to Caripe during his Latin American Expedition. At the time of Humboldt's visit Caripe was the home of a Capuchin mission. The name of the town is doubtless originally from the Carib language. It was said that there was a chief named Caripe, whose son, named Caripito ('little Caripe') went down the Caripe river towards its confluence with the Río San Juan (which empties into the Golfo de Paria near the Orinoco River delta) and founded the town of Caripito in the lowlands. It is not clear how much history lies behind the legend. The climate of the area is exceptionally pleasant, a result of its altitude (much of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roosting Oilbirds
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. Birds ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swift (bird)
The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows, but are not closely related to any passerine species. Swifts are placed in the order Apodiformes with hummingbirds. The treeswifts are closely related to the true swifts, but form a separate family, the Hemiprocnidae. Resemblances between swifts and swallows are due to convergent evolution, reflecting similar life styles based on catching insects in flight. The family name, Apodidae, is derived from the Greek ἄπους (''ápous''), meaning "footless", a reference to the small, weak legs of these most aerial of birds.Jobling (2010) pp. 50–51.Kaufman (2001) p. 329. The tradition of depicting swifts without feet continued into the Middle Ages, as seen in the heraldic martlet. Taxonomy Taxonomists have long classified swifts and treeswifts as relatives of the hummingbirds, a judgment corroborated by the discovery of the Jungornithidae (apparently swift-like hummingbird-relati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cone Cell
Cone cells, or cones, are photoreceptor cells in the retinas of vertebrate eyes including the human eye. They respond differently to light of different wavelengths, and the combination of their responses is responsible for color vision. Cones function best in relatively bright light, called the photopic region, as opposed to rod cells, which work better in dim light, or the scotopic region. Cone cells are densely packed in the fovea centralis, a 0.3 mm diameter rod-free area with very thin, densely packed cones which quickly reduce in number towards the periphery of the retina. Conversely, they are absent from the optic disc, contributing to the blind spot. There are about six to seven million cones in a human eye (vs ~92 million rods), with the highest concentration being towards the macula. Cones are less sensitive to light than the rod cells in the retina (which support vision at low light levels), but allow the perception of color. They are also able to perceive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deep-sea Fish
Deep-sea fish are fish that live in the darkness below the sunlit surface waters, that is below the epipelagic or photic zone of the sea. The lanternfish is, by far, the most common deep-sea fish. Other deep sea fishes include the flashlight fish, cookiecutter shark, bristlemouths, anglerfish, viperfish, and some species of eelpout. Only about 2% of known marine species inhabit the pelagic environment. This means that they live in the water column as opposed to the benthic organisms that live in or on the sea floor. Deep-sea organisms generally inhabit bathypelagic (1000–4000m deep) and abyssopelagic (4000–6000m deep) zones. However, characteristics of deep-sea organisms, such as bioluminescence can be seen in the mesopelagic (200–1000m deep) zone as well. The mesopelagic zone is the disphotic zone, meaning light there is minimal but still measurable. The oxygen minimum layer exists somewhere between a depth of 700m and 1000m deep depending on the place in the ocean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rod Cell
Rod cells are photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye that can function in lower light better than the other type of visual photoreceptor, cone cells. Rods are usually found concentrated at the outer edges of the retina and are used in peripheral vision. On average, there are approximately 92 million rod cells (vs ~6 million cones) in the human retina. Rod cells are more sensitive than cone cells and are almost entirely responsible for night vision. However, rods have little role in color vision, which is the main reason why colors are much less apparent in dim light. Structure Rods are a little longer and leaner than cones but have the same basic structure. Opsin-containing disks lie at the end of the cell adjacent to the retinal pigment epithelium, which in turn is attached to the inside of the eye. The stacked-disc structure of the detector portion of the cell allows for very high efficiency. Rods are much more common than cones, with about 120 million rod cells compar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
F-number
In optics, the f-number of an optical system such as a camera lens is the ratio of the system's focal length to the diameter of the entrance pupil ("clear aperture").Smith, Warren ''Modern Optical Engineering'', 4th Ed., 2007 McGraw-Hill Professional, p. 183. It is also known as the focal ratio, f-ratio, or f-stop, and is very important in photography. It is a dimensionless number that is a quantitative measure of lens speed; increasing the f-number is referred to as ''stopping down''. The f-number is commonly indicated using a lower-case hooked f with the format ''N'', where ''N'' is the f-number. The f-number is the reciprocal of the relative aperture (the aperture diameter divided by focal length). Notation The f-number is given by: N = \frac \ where f is the focal length, and D is the diameter of the entrance pupil (''effective aperture''). It is customary to write f-numbers preceded by "", which forms a mathematical expression of the entrance pupil diameter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New World Vulture
The New World vulture or condor family, Cathartidae, contains seven extant species in five genera. It includes five extant vultures and two extant condors found in warm and temperate areas of the Americas. The "New World" vultures were widespread in both the Old World and North America during the Neogene. Old World vultures and New World vultures do not form a single clade, but the two groups are similar in appearance due to convergent evolution. Vultures are scavenging birds, feeding mostly from carcasses of dead animals without apparent ill effects. Bacteria in the food source, pathogenic to other vertebrates, dominate the vulture's gut flora, and vultures benefit from the bacterial breakdown of carrion tissue. Some species of New World vulture have a good sense of smell, whereas Old World vultures find carcasses exclusively by sight. A particular characteristic of many vultures is a bald head, devoid of feathers. Taxonomy and systematics The New World vultures comprise seven ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beak
The beak, bill, or rostrum is an external anatomical structure found mostly in birds, but also in turtles, non-avian dinosaurs and a few mammals. A beak is used for eating, preening, manipulating objects, killing prey, fighting, probing for food, courtship, and feeding young. The terms ''beak'' and ''rostrum'' are also used to refer to a similar mouth part in some ornithischians, pterosaurs, cetaceans, dicynodonts, anuran tadpoles, monotremes (i.e. echidnas and platypuses, which have a beak-like structure), sirens, pufferfish, billfishes and cephalopods. Although beaks vary significantly in size, shape, color and texture, they share a similar underlying structure. Two bony projections – the upper and lower mandibles – are covered with a thin keratinized layer of epidermis known as the rhamphotheca. In most species, two holes called ''nares'' lead to the respiratory system. Etymology Although the word "beak" was, in the past, generally restricted to the sharpened bills o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Upper Eocene
The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', "dawn") and (''kainós'', "new") and refers to the "dawn" of modern ('new') fauna that appeared during the epoch. The Eocene spans the time from the end of the Paleocene Epoch to the beginning of the Oligocene Epoch. The start of the Eocene is marked by a brief period in which the concentration of the carbon isotope 13C in the atmosphere was exceptionally low in comparison with the more common isotope 12C. The end is set at a major extinction event called the ''Grande Coupure'' (the "Great Break" in continuity) or the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event, which may be related to the impact of one or more large bolides in Siberia and in what is now Chesapeake Bay. As with other geologic periods, the strata that define the start and end of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Green River Formation
The Green River Formation is an Eocene geologic formation that records the sedimentation in a group of intermountain lakes in three basins along the present-day Green River in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. The sediments are deposited in very fine layers, a dark layer during the growing season and a light-hue inorganic layer in the dry season. Each pair of layers is called a varve and represents one year. The sediments of the Green River Formation present a continuous record of six million years. The mean thickness of a varve here is 0.18 mm, with a minimum thickness of 0.014 mm and maximum of 9.8 mm.Bradley, W. H. The varves and climate of the Green River epoch: U.S. Geol. Survey Prof. Paper 158, pp 87–110, 1929. The sedimentary layers were formed in a large area named for the Green River, a tributary of the Colorado River. The three separate basins lie around the Uinta Mountains (north, east, and south) of northeastern Utah: * an area in northwestern Colorado east ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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