Indicator (genus)
Indicator is a genus of near passerine birds in the honeyguide family. The name refers to the behaviour of some species, notably the greater honeyguide, which guide humans to bee colonies so that they can share in the spoils of wax and insects when the nest is broken into. Indicator honeyguides are brood parasites which lay eggs in a nest of another species, in a series of about five during five to seven days. Most favour hole-nesting species the related barbets and woodpeckers. Nestlings have been known to physically eject their host's chicks from the nest, they have hooks on their beaks with which they puncture the hosts' eggs or kill the nestlings, by repeated lacerations if not a fatal stab; the species in genus Indicator, in taxonomic order, are: Barlow, Tim Wacher, Tony Disley. A Field Guide to the Birds of the Gambia and Senegal. A. & C. Black Ltd. ISBN 1-873403-32-1. CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list
Honeyguide
Honeyguides are a near passerine bird species of the order Piciformes. They are known as indicator birds, or honey birds, although the latter term is used more narrowly to refer to species of the genus Prodotiscus, they have an Old World tropical distribution, with the greatest number of species in Africa and two in Asia. These birds are best known for their interaction with humans. Honeyguides are noted and named for one or two species that will deliberately lead humans directly to bee colonies, so that they can feast on the grubs and beeswax that are left behind. Most honeyguides are dull-colored. All have light outer tail feathers, they are among the few birds that feed on wax—beeswax in most species, the waxy secretions of scale insects in the genus Prodotiscus and to a lesser extent in Melignomon and the smaller species of Indicator. They feed on waxworms which are the larvae of the waxmoth Galleria mellonella, on bee colonies, on flying and crawling insects and occasional fruits. Many species join mixed-species feeding flocks.
Honeyguides are named for a remarkable habit seen in one or two species: guiding humans to bee colonies. Once the hive is open and the honey is taken, the bird feeds on wax; this behavior is well studied in the greater honeyguide. Wild honeyguides have demonstrated the capability to understand a human call to accompany them to locate honey. Despite popular belief, no evidence indicates that honeyguides guide the honey badger, though videos about this exist. Although most members of the family are not known to recruit "followers" in their quest for wax, they are referred to as "honeyguides" by linguistic extrapolation; the breeding behavior of eight species in Indicator and Prodotiscus is known. They are all brood parasites that lay one egg in a nest of another species, laying eggs in series of about five during a period of 5-7 days. Most favor hole-nesting species the related barbets and woodpeckers, but Prodotiscus parasitizes cup-nesters such as white-eyes and warblers. Honeyguide nestlings have been known to physically eject their hosts' chicks from the nests and they have needle-sharp hooks on their beaks with which they puncture the hosts' eggs or kill the nestlings.
African honeyguide birds are known to lay their eggs in underground nests of other bee-eating bird species. The honeyguide chicks kill the hatchlings of the host using their needle-sharp beaks just after hatching, much as cuckoo hatchlings do; the honeyguide mother ensures her chick hatches first by internally incubating the egg for an extra day before laying it, so that it has a head start in development compared to the hosts' offspring. The Indicatoridae contains seventeen species in four genera: FAMILY: INDICATORIDAE Genus: Indicator Spotted honeyguide, I. maculatus Scaly-throated honeyguide, I. variegatus Greater honeyguide, I. indicator Malaysian honeyguide, I. archipelagicus Lesser honeyguide, I. minor Thick-billed honeyguide, I. conirostris Willcocks's honeyguide, I. willcocksi Least honeyguide, I. exilis Dwarf honeyguide, I. pumilio Pallid honeyguide, I. meliphilus Yellow-rumped honeyguide, I. xanthonotus Genus: Melichneutes Lyre-tailed honeyguide, M. robustus Genus: Melignomon Yellow-footed honeyguide, M. eisentrauti Zenker's honeyguide, M. zenkeri Genus: Prodotiscus Cassin's honeybird, P. insignis Green-backed honeybird, P. zambesiae Brown-backed honeybird, P. regulus Friedmann, Herbert.
The Honeyguides. U. S. National Museum. Hdl:10088/10101. Short and Jennifer Horne. Toucans and Honeyguides. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-854666-5. CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list Don Roberson's Bird Families of the World Honey Guide Bird Guiding humans to Beehive on YouTube Honey Guide Bird on YouTube Lesser Honeyguide on YouTube
Honey
Honey is a sweet, viscous food substance produced by bees and some related insects. Bees produce honey from the sugary secretions of plants or from secretions of other insects, by regurgitation, enzymatic activity, water evaporation. Bees store honey in wax structures called a honeycomb; the variety of honey produced by honey bees is the best-known, due to its worldwide commercial production and human consumption. Honey is collected from wild bee colonies, or from hives of domesticated bees, a practice known as beekeeping or apiculture. Honey gets its sweetness from the monosaccharides fructose and glucose, has about the same relative sweetness as sucrose, it has attractive chemical properties for a distinctive flavor when used as a sweetener. Most microorganisms do not grow in honey, so sealed honey does not spoil after thousands of years. Honey provides 46 calories in a serving of one tablespoon. Honey is regarded as safe. Honey use and production have a long and varied history as an ancient activity.
Several cave paintings in Cuevas de la Araña, depict humans foraging for honey at least 8,000 years ago. Honey is produced by bees collecting nectar for use as sugars consumed to support metabolism of muscle activity during foraging or to be stored as a long-term food supply. During foraging, bees access part of the nectar collected to support metabolic activity of flight muscles, with the majority of collected nectar destined for regurgitation and storage as honey. In cold weather or when other food sources are scarce and larval bees use stored honey as food. By contriving for bee swarms to nest in human-made hives, people have been able to semidomesticate the insects and harvest excess honey. In the hive or in a wild nest, the three types of bees are: a single female queen bee a seasonally variable number of male drone bees to fertilize new queens 20,000 to 40,000 female worker beesLeaving the hive, a foraging bee collects sugar-rich flower nectar, sucking it through its proboscis and placing it in its proventriculus, which lies just dorsal to its food stomach.
The honey stomach holds about 40 mg of nectar, or 50% of the bee's unloaded weight, which can require over a thousand flowers and more than an hour to fill. The nectar begins with a water content of 70 to 80%. Salivary enzymes and proteins from the bee's hypopharyngeal gland are added to the nectar to begin breaking down the sugars, raising the water content slightly; the forager bees return to the hive, where they regurgitate and transfer nectar to the hive bees. The hive bees use their honey stomachs to ingest and regurgitate the nectar, forming bubbles between their mandibles until it is digested; the bubbles create a large surface area per volume and a portion of the water is removed through evaporation. Bee digestive enzymes hydrolyze sucrose to a mixture of glucose and fructose, break down other starches and proteins, increasing the acidity; the bees work together as a group with the regurgitation and digestion for as long as 20 minutes, passing the nectar from one bee to the next, until the product reaches the honeycombs in storage quality.
It is placed in honeycomb cells and left unsealed while still high in water content and natural yeasts which, would cause the sugars in the newly formed honey to ferment. Bees are some of the few insects that can generate large amounts of body heat, thus the hive bees regulate the hive temperature, either heating with their bodies or cooling with water evaporation, to maintain a constant temperature in the honey-storage areas around 35 °C; the process continues as hive bees flutter their wings to circulate air and evaporate water from the honey to a content around 18%, raising the sugar concentration beyond the saturation point and preventing fermentation. The bees cap the cells with wax to seal them; as removed from the hive by a beekeeper, honey has a long shelf life and will not ferment if properly sealed. Another source of honey is from a number of wasp species, such as Brachygastra lecheguana and Brachygastra mellifica, which are found in South and Central America; these species are known to produce honey.
Some wasps, such as Polistes versicolor consume honey themselves, alternating between feeding on pollen in the middle of their lifecycles and feeding on honey, which can better provide for their energy needs. Honey is collected from domesticated beehives. On average, a hive will produce about 65 pounds of honey per year. Wild bee nests are sometimes located by following a honeyguide bird. To safely collect honey from a hive, beekeepers pacify the bees using a bee smoker; the smoke triggers a feeding instinct, making them less aggressive and the smoke obscures the pheromones the bees use to communicate. The honeycomb is removed from the hive and the honey may be extracted from that, either by crushing or by using a honey extractor; the honey is usually filtered to remove beeswax and other debris. Before the invention of removable frames, bee colonies were sacrificed to conduct the harvest; the harvester would replace the entire colony the next spring. Since the invention of removable frames, the principles of husbandry led most beekeepers to ensure that their bees have enough stores to survive the winter, either by leaving some honey in the beehive or by providing the colony with a honey substitute such as sugar water or crystalline sugar.
The amount o
Machete
A machete is a broad blade used either as an implement like an axe, or in combat like a short sword. The blade is 32.5 to 45 centimetres long and under 3 millimetres thick. In the Spanish language, the word is a diminutive form of the word macho, used to refer to sledgehammers. In the English language, an equivalent term is matchet, though it is less used. In the English-speaking Caribbean, such as Jamaica, Barbados and Grenada and in Trinidad and Tobago, the term cutlass is used for these agricultural tools. In various tropical and subtropical countries, the machete is used to cut through rainforest undergrowth and for agricultural purposes. Besides this, in Latin America a common use is for such household tasks as cutting large foodstuffs into pieces—much as a cleaver is used—or to perform crude cutting tasks, such as making simple wooden handles for other tools, it is common to see people using machetes for other jobs, such as splitting open coconuts, yard work, removing small branches and plants, chopping animals' food, clearing bushes.
Machetes are considered tools and used by adults. However, many hunter–gatherer societies and cultures surviving through subsistence agriculture begin teaching babies to use sharp tools, including machetes, before their first birthdays; because the machete is common in many tropical countries, it is the weapon of choice for uprisings. For example, the Boricua Popular Army are unofficially called macheteros because of the machete-wielding laborers of sugar cane fields of past Puerto Rico. Many of the killings in the 1994 Rwandan genocide were performed with machetes, they were the primary weapon used by the Interahamwe militias there. Machetes were a distinctive tool and weapon of the Haitian Tonton Macoute. In 1762, the Kingdom of Great Britain invaded Cuba in the Battle of Havana, peasant guerrillas led by Pepe Antonio, a Guanabacoa councilman, used machetes in the defense of the city; the machete was the most iconic weapon during the independence wars in that country, although it saw limited battlefield use.
Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, owner of the sugar refinery La Demajagua near Manzanillo, freed his slaves on 10 October 1868. He proceeded to lead them, armed with machetes, in revolt against the Spanish government; the first cavalry charge using machetes as the primary weapon was carried out on 4 November 1868 by Máximo Gómez, a sergeant born in the Dominican Republic, who became the general in chief of the Cuban Army. The machete was a common side tool for many ethnic groups in West Africa. Machetes in this role are referenced in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart; some countries have a name for the blow of a machete. In the British Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, the word planass means to hit someone with the flat of the blade of a machete or cutlass. To strike with the sharpened edge is to "chop". Throughout the Caribbean, the term'cutlass' refers to a laborers' cutting tool; the Brazilian Army's Instruction Center on Jungle Warfare developed a machete with a blade 10 inches in length and a pronounced clip point.
This machete is issued with a sharpening stone in the scabbard. Many fictitious slashers have used it as a weapon in horror movies, the most notorious being Jason Voorhees, from the Friday the 13th movie series; the tsakat is used in southern Armenia and Artsakh when clearing areas or hiking. It's well suited for clearing the plentiful blackberry plants in these regions; the panga or tapanga is a variant used in Southern Africa. This name may be of Swahili etymology; the panga blade has a length of 16 to 18 inches. The upper inclined portion of the blade may be sharpened; this tool has been used as a weapon: during the Mau Mau Uprising. In the Philippines, the bolo is a similar tool, but with the blade swelling just before the tip to make the knife more efficient for chopping. Variations include the more pointed iták intended for combat. Filipinos still use the bolo for everyday tasks, such as clearing vegetation and chopping various large foodstuffs; these are commonly found in most Filipino kitchens, with some sets displayed on the walls and other sets for less practical use.
The bolo is used in training in eskrima, the indigenous martial art of the Philippines. Other similar tools include the golok; the Nepalese kukri is a curved blade, used for similar tasks. In Thailand, more variations exist, such as the e-nep, or nep, which translates as "leaf", it may resemble some forms of Muslim blades like the jambiya, or the Nepali khukuri, having aspects of both with the up-swept tip and protruding belly. Another design found in Thailand is the e-toh, prominent in Southern China and other northern parts
Habitat
In ecology, a habitat is the type of natural environment in which a particular species of organism lives. It is characterized by both biological features. A species' habitat is those places where it can find food, shelter and mates for reproduction; the physical factors are for example soil, range of temperature, light intensity as well as biotic factors such as the availability of food and the presence or absence of predators. Every organism has certain habitat needs for the conditions in which it will thrive, but some are tolerant of wide variations while others are specific in their requirements. A habitat is not a geographical area, it can be the interior of a stem, a rotten log, a rock or a clump of moss, for a parasitic organism it is the body of its host, part of the host's body such as the digestive tract, or a single cell within the host's body. Habitat types include polar, temperate and tropical; the terrestrial vegetation type may be forest, grassland, semi-arid or desert. Fresh water habitats include marshes, rivers and ponds, marine habitats include salt marshes, the coast, the intertidal zone, reefs, the open sea, the sea bed, deep water and submarine vents.
Habitats change over time. This may be due to a violent event such as the eruption of a volcano, an earthquake, a tsunami, a wildfire or a change in oceanic currents. Other changes come as a direct result of human activities; the introduction of alien species can have a devastating effect on native wildlife, through increased predation, through competition for resources or through the introduction of pests and diseases to which the native species have no immunity. The word "habitat" has been in use since about 1755 and derives from the Latin habitāre, to inhabit, from habēre, to have or to hold. Habitat can be defined as the natural environment of an organism, the type of place in which it is natural for it to live and grow, it is similar in meaning to a biotope. The chief environmental factors affecting the distribution of living organisms are temperature, climate, soil type and light intensity, the presence or absence of all the requirements that the organism needs to sustain it. Speaking, animal communities are reliant on specific types of plant communities.
Some plants and animals are generalists, their habitat requirements are met in a wide range of locations. The small white butterfly for example is found on all the continents of the world apart from Antarctica, its larvae feed on a wide range of Brassicas and various other plant species, it thrives in any open location with diverse plant associations. The large blue butterfly is much more specific in its requirements. Disturbance is important in the creation of biodiverse habitats. In the absence of disturbance, a climax vegetation cover develops that prevents the establishment of other species. Wildflower meadows are sometimes created by conservationists but most of the flowering plants used are either annuals or biennials and disappear after a few years in the absence of patches of bare ground on which their seedlings can grow. Lightning strikes and toppled trees in tropical forests allow species richness to be maintained as pioneering species move in to fill the gaps created. Coastal habitats can become dominated by kelp until the seabed is disturbed by a storm and the algae swept away, or shifting sediment exposes new areas for colonisation.
Another cause of disturbance is when an area may be overwhelmed by an invasive introduced species, not kept under control by natural enemies in its new habitat. Terrestrial habitat types include forests, grasslands and deserts. Within these broad biomes are more specific habitats with varying climate types, temperature regimes, soils and vegetation types. Many of these habitats grade into each other and each one has its own typical communities of plants and animals. A habitat may suit a particular species well, but its presence or absence at any particular location depends to some extent on chance, on its dispersal abilities and its efficiency as a coloniser. Freshwater habitats include rivers, lakes, ponds and bogs. Although some organisms are found across most of these habitats, the majority have more specific requirements; the water velocity, its temperature and oxygen saturation are important factors, but in river systems, there are fast and slow sections, pools and backwaters which provide a range of habitats.
Aquatic plants can be floating, semi-submerged, submerged or grow in permanently or temporarily saturated soils besides bodies of water. Marginal plants provide important habitat for both invertebrates and vertebrates, submerged plants provide oxygenation of the water, absorb nutrients and play a part in the reduction of pollution. Marine habitats include brackish water, bays, the open sea, the intertidal zone, the sea bed and deep / shallow water zones. Further variations include rock pools, sand banks, brackish lagoons and pebbly beaches, seagrass beds, all supporting their own flora and fauna; the benth
Bird
Birds known as Aves, are a group of endothermic vertebrates, characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds range in size from the 5 cm bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m ostrich. They rank as the world's most numerically-successful class of tetrapods, with ten thousand living species, more than half of these being passerines, sometimes known as perching birds. Birds have wings which are less developed depending on the species. Wings, which evolved from forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in flightless birds, including ratites and diverse endemic island species of birds; the digestive and respiratory systems of birds are uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming; the fossil record demonstrates that birds are modern feathered dinosaurs, having evolved from earlier feathered dinosaurs within the theropod group, which are traditionally placed within the saurischian dinosaurs.
The closest living relatives of birds are the crocodilians. Primitive bird-like dinosaurs that lie outside class Aves proper, in the broader group Avialae, have been found dating back to the mid-Jurassic period, around 170 million years ago. Many of these early "stem-birds", such as Archaeopteryx, were not yet capable of powered flight, many retained primitive characteristics like toothy jaws in place of beaks, long bony tails. DNA-based evidence finds that birds diversified around the time of the Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction event 66 million years ago, which killed off the pterosaurs and all the non-avian dinosaur lineages, but birds those in the southern continents, survived this event and migrated to other parts of the world while diversifying during periods of global cooling. This makes them the sole surviving dinosaurs according to cladistics; some birds corvids and parrots, are among the most intelligent animals. Many species annually migrate great distances. Birds are social, communicating with visual signals and bird songs, participating in such social behaviours as cooperative breeding and hunting and mobbing of predators.
The vast majority of bird species are monogamous for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years, but for life. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous or polyandrous. Birds produce offspring by laying eggs, they are laid in a nest and incubated by the parents. Most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching; some birds, such as hens, lay eggs when not fertilised, though unfertilised eggs do not produce offspring. Many species of birds are economically important as food for human consumption and raw material in manufacturing, with domesticated and undomesticated birds being important sources of eggs and feathers. Songbirds and other species are popular as pets. Guano is harvested for use as a fertiliser. Birds prominently figure throughout human culture. About 120–130 species have become extinct due to human activity since the 17th century, hundreds more before then. Human activity threatens about 1,200 bird species with extinction, though efforts are underway to protect them.
Recreational birdwatching is an important part of the ecotourism industry. The first classification of birds was developed by Francis Willughby and John Ray in their 1676 volume Ornithologiae. Carl Linnaeus modified that work in 1758 to devise the taxonomic classification system in use. Birds are categorised as the biological class Aves in Linnaean taxonomy. Phylogenetic taxonomy places Aves in the dinosaur clade Theropoda. Aves and a sister group, the clade Crocodilia, contain the only living representatives of the reptile clade Archosauria. During the late 1990s, Aves was most defined phylogenetically as all descendants of the most recent common ancestor of modern birds and Archaeopteryx lithographica. However, an earlier definition proposed by Jacques Gauthier gained wide currency in the 21st century, is used by many scientists including adherents of the Phylocode system. Gauthier defined Aves to include only the crown group of the set of modern birds; this was done by excluding most groups known only from fossils, assigning them, instead, to the Avialae, in part to avoid the uncertainties about the placement of Archaeopteryx in relation to animals traditionally thought of as theropod dinosaurs.
Gauthier identified four different definitions for the same biological name "Aves", a problem. Gauthier proposed to reserve the term Aves only for the crown group consisting of the last common ancestor of all living birds and all of its descendants, which corresponds to meaning number 4 below, he assigned other names to the other groups. Aves can mean all archosaurs closer to birds than to crocodiles Aves can mean those advanced archosaurs with feathers Aves can mean those feathered dinosaurs that fly Aves can mean the last common ancestor of all the living birds and all of its descendants (a "c
Brood parasite
Brood parasites are organisms that rely on others to raise their young. The strategy appears among birds and some fish; the brood parasite manipulates a host, either of the same or of another species, to raise its young as if it were its own, using brood mimicry, for example by having eggs that resemble the host's. Brood parasitism relieves the parasitic parents from the investment of rearing young or building nests for the young, enabling them to spend more time on other activities such as foraging and producing further offspring. Bird parasite species mitigate the risk of egg loss by distributing eggs amongst a number of different hosts; as this behaviour damages the host, it results in an evolutionary arms race between parasite and host as the pair of species coevolve. In many monogamous bird species, there are extra-pair matings resulting in males outside the pair bond siring offspring and used by males to escape from the parental investment in raising their offspring; this form of cuckoldry is taken a step further when females of the goldeneye lay their eggs in the nests of other individuals.
Intraspecific brood parasitism is seen in a number of duck species, where females lay their eggs in the nests of others. Interspecific brood-parasites include the indigobirds and honeyguides in Africa, Old World cuckoos, black-headed ducks, some New World cuckoos in the Americas. Seven independent origins of obligate interspecific brood parasitism in birds have been proposed. While there is still some controversy over when and how many origins of interspecific brood parasitism have occurred, recent phylogenetic analyses suggest two origins in Passeriformes. Most avian brood parasites are specialists which parasitize only a single host species or a small group of related host species, but four out of the five parasitic cowbirds are generalists which parasitize a wide variety of hosts, they lay only one egg per nest, although in some cases the cowbirds, several females may use the same host nest. The common cuckoo presents an interesting case in which the species as a whole parasitizes a wide variety of hosts, including the reed warbler and dunnock, but individual females specialize in a single species.
Genes regulating egg coloration appear to be passed down along the maternal line, allowing females to lay mimetic eggs in the nest of the species they specialize in. Females parasitize nests of the species which raised them. Male common cuckoos fertilize females of all lines, which maintains sufficient gene flow among the different maternal lines to prevent speciation; the mechanisms of host selection by female cuckoos are somewhat unclear, though several hypotheses have been suggested in attempt to explain the choice. These include genetic inheritance of host preference, host imprinting on young birds, returning to place of birth and subsequently choosing a host randomly, choice based on preferred nest site, choice based on preferred habitat. Of these hypotheses the nest-site selection and habitat selection have been most supported by experimental analysis. Among specialist avian brood parasites, mimetic eggs are a nearly universal adaptation; the generalist brown-headed cowbird may have evolved an egg coloration mimicking a number of their hosts.
Size may be important for the incubation and survival of parasitic species. The eggshells of brood parasites are thicker than those of the hosts. For example, the eggs of cuckoos are about 23.2 millimetres thicker than those the great reed warbler. The function of this thick eggshell is debated. One hypothesis, the puncture resistance hypothesis, states that the thicker eggshells serve to prevent hosts from breaking the eggshell, thus killing the embryo inside; this is supported by a study in which marsh warblers damaged their eggs more when attempting to break cuckoo eggs, but incurred less damage when trying to puncture great reed warbler eggs put in the nest by researchers. Another hypothesis is the laying damage hypothesis, which postulates that the eggshells are adapted to damage the eggs of the host when the former is being laid, prevent the parasite's eggs from being damaged when the host lays its eggs. In support of this hypothesis, eggs of the shiny cowbird parasitizing the house wren and the chalk-browed mockingbird and the brown-headed cowbird parasitizing the house wren and the red-winged blackbird damaged the host's eggs when dropped, sustained little damage when host eggs where dropped on them.
Most avian brood parasites have short egg incubation periods and rapid nestling growth. In many brood parasites, such as cuckoos and honeyguides, this short egg incubation period is due to internal incubation periods up to 24 hours longer in cuckoos than hosts; some non-parasitic cuckoos have longer internal incubation periods, suggesting that this longer internal incubation period was not an adaptation following brood parasitism, but predisposed birds to become brood parasites. This is facilitated by a heavier yolk in the egg providing more nutrients. Being larger than the hosts at growth is a further adaptation to being a brood parasite. There is a question as to why the maj
