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Atractus Zgap
''Atractus zgap'' is a species of snake in the family Colubridae. The species can be found in Ecuador. Taxonomy The species was described as ''Atractus zgap'' and assigned to the genus ''Atractus'', following the morphological and phylogenetic criteria established by Jay Savage (1960). The specific epithet ''zgap'' is a noun in apposition and honors the Zoological Society for the Conservation of Species and Populations (ZGAP), which supports conservation efforts for poorly known and highly endangered species. ZGAP funded the fieldwork that led to the discovery of this species. Description ''Atractus zgap'' is a small snake with smooth dorsal scales arranged in 17 rows. It has two postocular scales, a loreal scale about twice as long as high, and a 1+2 temporal arrangement. The species has seven supralabial scales (third and fourth contacting the eye), seven infralabial scales (first three contacting the chin shields), and seven maxillary teeth. It also has two to three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snake
Snakes are elongated limbless reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (). Cladistically squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales much like other members of the group. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors and relatives, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads ( cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most only have one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have independently evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs at least twenty-five times via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, althoug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anal Scale
In snakes, the anal scale or anal plate is the scale just in front of and covering the cloacal opening. This scale can be either single ("anal entire") or paired ("anal divided"). When paired, the division is oblique.Mallow D, Ludwig D, Nilson G (2003). ''True Vipers: Natural History and Toxicology of Old World Vipers''. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company. 359 pp. . Wright AH, Wright AA (1957). ''Handbook of Snakes of the United States and Canada''. Ithaca and London: Comstock Publishing Associates. (7th printing, 1985). 1,105 pp. (in two volumes). . The anal scale is preceded by the ventral scales and followed by the subcaudal scales. See also *Snake scales Snakes, like other reptiles, have skin covered in scales.Boulenger, George A. 1890 The Fauna of British India. p. 1 Snakes are entirely covered with scales or scutes of various shapes and sizes, known as snakeskin as a whole. A scale protects ... References {{Reflist Snake scales ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deforestation
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal and destruction of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present. This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, with half of that loss occurring in the last century. Between 15 million to 18 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Bangladesh, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute. Estimates vary widely as to the extent of deforestation in the tropics. In 2019, nearly a third of the overall tree cover loss, or 3.8 million hectares, occurred within humid tropical primary forests. These are areas of mature rainforest that are especially important for biodiversity and carbon storage. The direct cause of most deforestation is agriculture by far. More than ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Land Use
Land use is an umbrella term to describe what happens on a parcel of land. It concerns the benefits derived from using the land, and also the land management actions that humans carry out there. The following categories are used for land use: forest land, cropland ( agricultural land), grassland, wetlands, settlements and other lands. The way humans use land, and how land use is changing, has many impacts on the environment. Effects of land use choices and changes by humans include, for example, urban sprawl, soil erosion, soil degradation, land degradation and desertification. Land use and land management practices have a major impact on natural resources including water, soil, nutrients, plants and animals. ''Land use change'' is "the change from one land-use category to another". Land-use change, together with use of fossil fuels, are the major anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide, a dominant greenhouse gas. Human activity is the most significant cause of land c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forest Cover
Forest cover is the amount of trees that covers a particular area of land. It may be measured as relative (in percent) or absolute (in square kilometres/ square miles). Nearly a third of the world's land surface is covered with forest, with closed-canopy forest accounting for 4 - 5 billion hectares of land. Forests provide many ecosystem services that humans and animals cannot survive without, but anthropogenic actions and climate change are threatening global forest cover in potentially irreversible ways. Global patterns Forest cover by the numbers According to the FAO's Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020, the world has a total forest area of 4.06 billion hectares (10.0 billion acres), which is 31% of the total land area. More than one-third of the world's forest cover is primary forest: naturally regenerated forests with native species and no visible indication of human activity. More than half (54%) of the world's forests are found in only five countries (Brazil, C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IUCN Red List
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological species. A series of Regional Red Lists, which assess the risk of extinction to species within a political management unit, are also produced by countries and organizations. The goals of the Red List are to provide scientifically based information on the status of species and subspecies at a global level, to draw attention to the magnitude and importance of threatened biodiversity, to influence national and international policy and decision-making, and to provide information to guide actions to conserve biological diversity. Major species assessors include BirdLife International, the Institute of Zoology (the research division of the Zoological Society of London), the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, and many Specialist Groups w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endangered Species (IUCN Status)
Endangered species, as classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), are species which have been categorized as very likely to become extinct in their known native ranges in the near future. On the IUCN Red List, endangered is the second-most severe conservation status for wild populations in the IUCN's schema after critically endangered. In 2012, the IUCN Red List featured 3,079 animal and 2,655 plant species as endangered worldwide. The figures for 1998 were 1,102 and 1,197 respectively. IUCN Red List The IUCN Red List is a list of species which have been assessed according to a system of assigning a global conservation status. According to the latest system used by the IUCN, a species can be "Data Deficient" (DD) species – species for which more data and assessment is required before their situation may be determined – as well species comprehensively assessed by the IUCN's species assessment process. A species can be " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fossorial
A fossorial animal () is one that is adapted to digging and which lives primarily (but not solely) underground. Examples of fossorial vertebrates are Mole (animal), moles, badgers, naked mole-rats, meerkats, armadillos, wombats, and mole salamanders. Among invertebrates, many molluscs (e.g., clams), insects (e.g., beetles, wasps, bees), and arachnids (e.g. spiders) are fossorial. Prehistoric evidence The physical adaptation of fossoriality is widely accepted as being widespread among many Prehistory, prehistoric Phylum, phyla and Taxon, taxa, such as bacteria and early eukaryotes. Furthermore, fossoriality has evolved independently multiple times, even within a single Family (biology), family. Fossorial animals appeared simultaneously with the colonization of land by arthropods in the late Ordovician period (over 440 million years ago). Other notable early burrowers include ''Eocaecilia'' and possibly ''Dinilysia''. The oldest example of burrowing in synapsids, the lineag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plantations
Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tobacco, coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar cane, opium, sisal, oil seeds, oil palms, fruits, rubber trees and forest trees. Protectionist policies and natural comparative advantage have sometimes contributed to determining where plantations are located. In modern use, the term usually refers only to large-scale estates. Before about 1860, it was the usual term for a farm of any size in the southern parts of British North America, with, as Noah Webster noted, "farm" becoming the usual term from about Maryland northward. The enslavement of people was the norm in Maryland and states southward. The plantations there were forced-labor farms. The term "plantation" was used in most British colonies but very rarely in the United Kingdom itself in this sense. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agricultural
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in the cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. In the 20th century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output. , small farms produce about one-third of the world's food, but large farms are prevalent. The largest 1% of farms in the world are greater than and operate more than 70% of the world's farmland. Nearly 40% of agricultural land is found on farms larger than . However, five of every six farms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Montane Forest
Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures lapse rate, fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is a crucial factor in shaping plant community, biodiversity, metabolic processes and ecosystem dynamics for montane ecosystems. Dense montane forests are common at moderate elevations, due to moderate temperatures and high rainfall. At higher elevations, the climate is harsher, with lower temperatures and higher winds, preventing the growth of trees and causing the plant community to transition to montane grasslands and shrublands or alpine tundra. Due to the unique climate conditions of montane ecosystems, they contain increased numbers of endemic species. Montane ecosystems also exhibit variation in ecosystem services, which include carbon storage and water supply. Life zones As elevation increases, the alpine climate, climate becomes co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andes
The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long and wide (widest between 18th parallel south, 18°S and 20th parallel south, 20°S latitude) and has an average height of about . The Andes extend from south to north through seven South American countries: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. Along their length, the Andes are split into several ranges, separated by intermediate depression (geology), depressions. The Andes are the location of several high plateaus—some of which host major cities such as Quito, Bogotá, Cali, Arequipa, Medellín, Bucaramanga, Sucre, Mérida, Mérida, Mérida, El Alto, and La Paz. The Altiplano, Altiplano Plateau is the world's second highest after the Tibetan Plateau. These ranges are in turn grouped into three majo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
