1.
Taxonomy (biology)
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Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy, the broadest meaning of taxonomy is used here. The word taxonomy was introduced in 1813 by Candolle, in his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, the term alpha taxonomy is primarily used today to refer to the discipline of finding, describing, and naming taxa, particularly species. In earlier literature, the term had a different meaning, referring to morphological taxonomy, ideals can, it may be said, never be completely realized. They have, however, a value of acting as permanent stimulants. Some of us please ourselves by thinking we are now groping in a beta taxonomy, turrill thus explicitly excludes from alpha taxonomy various areas of study that he includes within taxonomy as a whole, such as ecology, physiology, genetics, and cytology. He further excludes phylogenetic reconstruction from alpha taxonomy, thus, Ernst Mayr in 1968 defined beta taxonomy as the classification of ranks higher than species. This activity is what the term denotes, it is also referred to as beta taxonomy. How species should be defined in a group of organisms gives rise to practical and theoretical problems that are referred to as the species problem. The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy, by extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at higher taxonomic ranks, from subgenus and above only, than species. While some descriptions of taxonomic history attempt to date taxonomy to ancient civilizations, earlier works were primarily descriptive, and focused on plants that were useful in agriculture or medicine. There are a number of stages in scientific thinking. Early taxonomy was based on criteria, the so-called artificial systems. Later came systems based on a complete consideration of the characteristics of taxa, referred to as natural systems, such as those of de Jussieu, de Candolle and Bentham. The publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species led to new ways of thinking about classification based on evolutionary relationships and this was the concept of phyletic systems, from 1883 onwards. This approach was typified by those of Eichler and Engler, the advent of molecular genetics and statistical methodology allowed the creation of the modern era of phylogenetic systems based on cladistics, rather than morphology alone. Taxonomy has been called the worlds oldest profession, and naming and classifying our surroundings has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate
2.
Animal
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Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia. The animal kingdom emerged as a clade within Apoikozoa as the group to the choanoflagellates. Animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently at some point in their lives and their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs, they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance, most known animal phyla appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years ago. Animals can be divided broadly into vertebrates and invertebrates, vertebrates have a backbone or spine, and amount to less than five percent of all described animal species. They include fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, the remaining animals are the invertebrates, which lack a backbone. These include molluscs, arthropods, annelids, nematodes, flatworms, cnidarians, ctenophores, the study of animals is called zoology. The word animal comes from the Latin animalis, meaning having breath, the biological definition of the word refers to all members of the kingdom Animalia, encompassing creatures as diverse as sponges, jellyfish, insects, and humans. Aristotle divided the world between animals and plants, and this was followed by Carl Linnaeus, in the first hierarchical classification. In Linnaeuss original scheme, the animals were one of three kingdoms, divided into the classes of Vermes, Insecta, Pisces, Amphibia, Aves, and Mammalia. Since then the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, in 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into two subkingdoms, Metazoa and Protozoa. The protozoa were later moved to the kingdom Protista, leaving only the metazoa, thus Metazoa is now considered a synonym of Animalia. Animals have several characteristics that set apart from other living things. Animals are eukaryotic and multicellular, which separates them from bacteria and they are heterotrophic, generally digesting food in an internal chamber, which separates them from plants and algae. They are also distinguished from plants, algae, and fungi by lacking cell walls. All animals are motile, if only at life stages. In most animals, embryos pass through a stage, which is a characteristic exclusive to animals. With a few exceptions, most notably the sponges and Placozoa and these include muscles, which are able to contract and control locomotion, and nerve tissues, which send and process signals
3.
Chordate
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Chordates are deuterostomes, as during the embryo development stage the anus forms before the mouth. They are also bilaterally symmetric coelomates, in the case of vertebrate chordates, the notochord is usually replaced by a vertebral column during development, and they may have body plans organized via segmentation. There are also additional extinct taxa, the Vertebrata are sometimes considered as a subgroup of the clade Craniata, consisting of chordates with a skull, the Craniata and Tunicata compose the clade Olfactores. Of the more than 65,000 living species of chordates, the worlds largest and fastest animals, the blue whale and peregrine falcon respectively, are chordates, as are humans. Fossil chordates are known from at least as early as the Cambrian explosion, Hemichordata, which includes the acorn worms, has been presented as a fourth chordate subphylum, but it now is usually treated as a separate phylum. The Hemichordata, along with the Echinodermata, form the Ambulacraria, the Chordata and Ambulacraria form the superphylum Deuterostomia, composed of the deuterostomes. Attempts to work out the relationships of the chordates have produced several hypotheses. All of the earliest chordate fossils have found in the Early Cambrian Chengjiang fauna. Because the fossil record of early chordates is poor, only molecular phylogenetics offers a prospect of dating their emergence. However, the use of molecular phylogenetics for dating evolutionary transitions is controversial and it has also proved difficult to produce a detailed classification within the living chordates. Attempts to produce family trees shows that many of the traditional classes are paraphyletic. While this has been known since the 19th century, an insistence on only monophyletic taxa has resulted in vertebrate classification being in a state of flux. Although the name Chordata is attributed to William Bateson, it was already in prevalent use by 1880, ernst Haeckel described a taxon comprising tunicates, cephalochordates, and vertebrates in 1866. Though he used the German vernacular form, it is allowed under the ICZN code because of its subsequent latinization, among the vertebrate sub-group of chordates the notochord develops into the spine, and in wholly aquatic species this helps the animal to swim by flexing its tail. In fish and other vertebrates, this develops into the spinal cord, the pharynx is the part of the throat immediately behind the mouth. In fish, the slits are modified to form gills, a muscular tail that extends backwards behind the anus. This is a groove in the wall of the pharynx. In filter-feeding species it produces mucus to gather food particles, which helps in transporting food to the esophagus and it also stores iodine, and may be a precursor of the vertebrate thyroid gland
4.
Bird
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Birds, a subgroup of Reptiles, are the last living examples of Dinosaurs. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the 5 cm bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m ostrich. They rank as the class of tetrapods with the most living species, at ten thousand. Birds are the closest living relatives of crocodilians, the fossil record indicates that birds evolved from feathered ancestors within the theropod group of saurischian dinosaurs. True birds first appeared during the Cretaceous period, around 100 million years ago, Birds, especially those in the southern continents, survived this event and then migrated to other parts of the world while diversifying during periods of global cooling. 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. Birds have wings which are more or less developed depending on the 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 evolved for swimming. Many species annually migrate great distances, Birds are social, communicating with visual signals, calls, and bird songs, and participating in such social behaviours as cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators. The vast majority of species are socially monogamous, usually for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous or, rarely, Birds produce offspring by laying eggs which are fertilised through sexual reproduction. They are usually 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 even when not fertilised, songbirds, parrots, 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, 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 currently 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
5.
Accipitridae
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The Accipitridae, one of the four families within the order Accipitriformes, are a family of small to large birds with strongly hooked bills and variable morphology based on diet. They feed on a range of items from insects to medium-sized mammals, with a number feeding on carrion. The Accipitridae have a distribution, being found on all the worlds continents. Many well-known birds, such as hawks, eagles, kites, harriers, the osprey is usually placed in a separate family, as is the secretary bird, and the New World vultures are also usually now regarded as a separate family or order. The accipitrids have been divided into some five to 10 subfamilies. Most share a similar morphology, but many of these groups contain taxa which are more aberrant. These are placed in their position more for lack of better evidence than anything else. It is thus not very surprising that the layout of the accipitrids has always been a matter of dispute. The accipitrids are recognizable by a rearrangement of their chromosomes. Apart from this, morphology and mtDNA cytochrome b sequence data give a picture of these birds interrelationships. These appear to form a group with the Milvinae, Accipitrinae and Circinae, the Perninae and possibly the Elaninae are older lineages, as are the Old World vultures. The latter are likely also poly- or paraphyletic, with some aberrant species like the bearded. The Accipitridae are a family with a great deal of variation in size. Wingspan can vary from 39 cm in the little sparrowhawk to more than 300 cm in the cinereous, in these extreme species, wing chord length can range from 113 to 890 mm and culmen length from 11 to 88 mm. Most accipitrids exhibit sexual dimorphism in size, although, unusually for birds and this sexual difference in size is most pronounced in active species that hunt birds, such as the Accipiter hawks, in which the size difference averages 25–50%. In a majority of species, such as generalist hunters and rodent-, reptile-, fish-, and insect-hunting specialists, in the carrion-eating Old World vultures and snail eating kites, the difference is almost non-existent. The beaks of accipitrids are strong and hooked, in some species, there is a notch or tooth in the upper mandible. In all accipitrids, the base of the mandible is covered by a fleshy membrane called the cere
6.
John Gould
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John Gould FRS was an English ornithologist and bird artist. He has been considered the father of study in Australia. His identification of the birds now nicknamed Darwins finches played a role in the inception of Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection, Goulds work is referenced in Charles Darwins book, On the Origin of Species. Gould was born in Lyme Regis, Dorset, the first son of a gardener and he and the boy probably had a scanty education. Shortly afterwards his father obtained a position on an estate near Guildford, Surrey and he was for some time under the care of J. T. Aiton, of the Royal Gardens of Windsor. The young Gould started training as a gardener, being employed under his father at Windsor from 1818 to 1824 and he became an expert in the art of taxidermy. In 1824 he set himself up in business in London as a taxidermist, Goulds position brought him into contact with the countrys leading naturalists. This meant that he was often the first to see new collections of birds given to the Zoological Society of London, in 1830 a collection of birds arrived from the Himalayas, many not previously described. Gould published these birds in A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains, the text was by Nicholas Aylward Vigors and the illustrations were lithographed by Goulds wife Elizabeth, daughter of Nicholas Coxen, of Kent. Most of Goulds work were rough sketches on paper from which artists created the lithographic plates. This work was followed by four more in the seven years. It was completed in 1837, Gould wrote the text, and his clerk, Edwin Prince, some of the illustrations were made by Edward Lear as part of his Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae in 1832. Lear, however, was in difficulty, and he sold the entire set of lithographs to Gould. The books were published in a large size, imperial folio. Eventually 41 of these volumes were published, with about 3000 plates and they appeared in parts at £3 3s. A number, subscribed for in advance, and in spite of the expense of preparing the plates, Gould succeeded in making his ventures pay. This was a period for Gould who also published Icones Avium in two parts containing 18 leaves of bird studies on 54 cm plates as a supplement to his previous works. No further monographs were published as in 1838 he and his moved to Australia to work on the Birds of Australia
7.
Argentina
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Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a federal republic in the southern half of South America. With a mainland area of 2,780,400 km2, Argentina is the eighth-largest country in the world, the second largest in Latin America, and the largest Spanish-speaking one. The country is subdivided into provinces and one autonomous city, Buenos Aires. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system, Argentina claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The earliest recorded presence in the area of modern-day Argentina dates back to the Paleolithic period. The country has its roots in Spanish colonization of the region during the 16th century, Argentina rose as the successor state of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, a Spanish overseas viceroyalty founded in 1776. The country thereafter enjoyed relative peace and stability, with waves of European immigration radically reshaping its cultural. The almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity led to Argentina becoming the seventh wealthiest developed nation in the world by the early 20th century, Argentina retains its historic status as a middle power in international affairs, and is a prominent regional power in the Southern Cone and Latin America. Argentina has the second largest economy in South America, the third-largest in Latin America and is a member of the G-15 and it is the country with the second highest Human Development Index in Latin America with a rating of very high. Because of its stability, market size and growing high-tech sector, the description of the country by the word Argentina has to be found on a Venice map in 1536. In English the name Argentina probably comes from the Spanish language, however the naming itself is not Spanish, Argentina means in Italian of silver, silver coloured, probably borrowed from the Old French adjective argentine of silver > silver coloured already mentioned in the 12th century. The French word argentine is the form of argentin and derives of argent silver with the suffix -in. The Italian naming Argentina for the country implies Argentina Terra land of silver or Argentina costa coast of silver, in Italian, the adjective or the proper noun is often used in an autonomous way as a substantive and replaces it and it is said lArgentina. The name Argentina was probably first given by the Venitian and Genoese navigators, in Spanish and Portuguese, the words for silver are respectively plata and prata and of silver is said plateado and prateado. Argentina was first associated with the silver mountains legend, widespread among the first European explorers of the La Plata Basin. The first written use of the name in Spanish can be traced to La Argentina, a 1602 poem by Martín del Barco Centenera describing the region, the 1826 constitution included the first use of the name Argentine Republic in legal documents. The name Argentine Confederation was also used and was formalized in the Argentine Constitution of 1853. In 1860 a presidential decree settled the name as Argentine Republic
8.
Chile
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Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a South American country occupying a long, narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, Chilean territory includes the Pacific islands of Juan Fernández, Salas y Gómez, Desventuradas, and Easter Island in Oceania. Chile also claims about 1,250,000 square kilometres of Antarctica, the arid Atacama Desert in northern Chile contains great mineral wealth, principally copper. Southern Chile is rich in forests and grazing lands, and features a string of volcanoes and lakes, the southern coast is a labyrinth of fjords, inlets, canals, twisting peninsulas, and islands. Spain conquered and colonized Chile in the century, replacing Inca rule in northern and central Chile. After declaring its independence from Spain in 1818, Chile emerged in the 1830s as a relatively stable authoritarian republic, in the 1960s and 1970s the country experienced severe left-right political polarization and turmoil. The regime, headed by Augusto Pinochet, ended in 1990 after it lost a referendum in 1988 and was succeeded by a coalition which ruled through four presidencies until 2010. Chile is today one of South Americas most stable and prosperous nations and it leads Latin American nations in rankings of human development, competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, state of peace, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption. It also ranks high regionally in sustainability of the state, Chile is a founding member of the United Nations, the Union of South American Nations and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. There are various theories about the origin of the word Chile, another theory points to the similarity of the valley of the Aconcagua with that of the Casma Valley in Peru, where there was a town and valley named Chili. Another origin attributed to chilli is the onomatopoeic cheele-cheele—the Mapuche imitation of the warble of a locally known as trile. The Spanish conquistadors heard about this name from the Incas, ultimately, Almagro is credited with the universalization of the name Chile, after naming the Mapocho valley as such. The older spelling Chili was in use in English until at least 1900 before switching over to Chile, stone tool evidence indicates humans sporadically frequented the Monte Verde valley area as long as 18,500 years ago. About 10,000 years ago, migrating Native Americans settled in fertile valleys, settlement sites from very early human habitation include Monte Verde, Cueva del Milodon and the Pali Aike Craters lava tube. They fought against the Sapa Inca Tupac Yupanqui and his army, the result of the bloody three-day confrontation known as the Battle of the Maule was that the Inca conquest of the territories of Chile ended at the Maule river. The next Europeans to reach Chile were Diego de Almagro and his band of Spanish conquistadors, the Spanish encountered various cultures that supported themselves principally through slash-and-burn agriculture and hunting. The conquest of Chile began in earnest in 1540 and was carried out by Pedro de Valdivia, one of Francisco Pizarros lieutenants, who founded the city of Santiago on 12 February 1541. Although the Spanish did not find the gold and silver they sought, they recognized the agricultural potential of Chiles central valley
9.
Tierra del Fuego
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Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of the island, Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, with an area of 48,100 km2. Tierra del Fuego is divided between Chile and Argentina, with the controlling the eastern half of the main island. The southernmost extent of the archipelago is at about latitude 55 S, the earliest known human settlement in Tierra del Fuego dates to around 8,000 B. C. Europeans first explored the islands during Ferdinand Magellans expedition of 1520, Tierra del Fuego, today, petroleum extraction dominates economic activity in the north of Tierra del Fuego, while tourism, manufacturing, and Antarctic logistics are important in the south. The earliest human settlement occurred around 8,000 B. C, the Yaghan were some of the earliest known humans to settle in Tierra del Fuego. Archeological sites with characteristics of their culture have found at locations such as Navarino Island. The name Tierra del Fuego derives from the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, sailing for the Spanish Crown and he believed he was seeing the many fires of the Yaghan, which were visible from the sea, and that the Indians were waiting in the forests to ambush his armada. In 1525 Francisco de Hoces was the first to speculate that Tierra del Fuego was one or more islands rather than part of what was then called Terra Australis, francis Drake in 1578 and a Dutch VOC expedition in 1616 learned more about the geography. The latter expedition named Cape Horn, on his first voyage with the HMS Beagle in 1830, Robert FitzRoy picked up four native Fuegians, including Jemmy Button and brought them to England. The surviving three were taken to London to meet the King and Queen and were, for a time and they returned to Tierra del Fuego in the Beagle with FitzRoy and Charles Darwin, who made extensive notes about his visit to the islands. During the second half of the 19th century, the archipelago began to come under Chilean, both countries sought to claim the whole archipelago based on de jure Spanish colonial titles. Salesian Catholic missions were established in Río Grande and Dawson Island, anglican missions were established by British colonists at Keppel Island in the Falklands in 1855 and in 1870 at Ushuaia on the main island, which continued to operate through the 19th century. Thomas Bridges learned the language and compiled a 30, 000-word Yaghan grammar and it was published in the 20th century and considered an important ethnological work. An 1879 Chilean expedition led by Ramón Serrano Montaner reported large amounts of gold in the streams. This prompted massive immigration to the island between 1883 and 1909. Numerous Argentines, Chileans and Croatians settled in the main island, julius Popper, a Romanian explorer, was one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the region. Granted rights by the Argentine government to exploit any gold deposits he found in Tierra del Fuego, despite the missionaries efforts, many natives died
10.
Habitat
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A habitat is an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant, or other type of organism. The term typically refers to the zone in which the organism lives and it is the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the physical environment that surrounds a species population. Every organism has certain habitat needs for the conditions in which it will thrive, habitat types include polar, temperate, subtropical and tropical. The terrestrial vegetation type may be forest, steppe, grassland, the word habitat has been in use since about 1755 and derives from the Latin third-person singular present indicative of habitāre, to inhabit, from habēre, to have or to hold. Habitat can be defined as the environment of an organism. It is similar in meaning to a biotope, an area of environmental conditions associated with a particular community of plants. Generally speaking, animal communities are reliant on specific types of plant communities, some plants and animals are generalists, and 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 and its larvae feed on a wide range of Brassicas and various other plant species, and it thrives in any open location with diverse plant associations. 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. Lightning strikes and toppled trees in tropical forests allow species richness to be maintained as pioneering species move in to fill the gaps created. Similarly coastal habitats can become dominated by kelp until the seabed is disturbed by a storm, another cause of disturbance is when an area may be overwhelmed by an invasive introduced species which is not kept under control by natural enemies in its new habitat. Terrestrial habitat types include forests, grasslands, wetlands and deserts, within these broad biomes are more specific habitats with varying climate types, temperature regimes, soils, altitudes and vegetation types. Many of these habitats grade into each other and each one has its own communities of plants. 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, freshwater habitats include rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, marshes and bogs. Although some organisms are found across most of these habitats, the majority have more specific requirements, similarly, aquatic plants can be floating, semi-submerged, submerged or grow in permanently or temporarily saturated soils besides bodies of water. Marine habitats include brackish water, estuaries, bays, the sea, the intertidal zone. Further variations include rock pools, sand banks, mudflats, brackish lagoons, sandy and pebbly beaches, the benthic zone or seabed provides a home for both static organisms, anchored to the substrate, and for a large range of organisms crawling on or burrowing into the surface. A desert is not the kind of habitat that favours the presence of amphibians, with their requirement for water to keep their skins moist, nevertheless, some frogs live in deserts, creating moist habitats underground and hibernating while conditions are adverse
