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Ferminia
The Zapata wren (''Ferminia cerverai'') is a medium-sized grayish-brown bird that lives in dense shrubs of the Zapata Swamp, Cuba. It is the only member of the monotypical genus ''Ferminia'', which is endemic to Cuba and endangered. This species was first described in 1926 by Thomas Barbour and named after its co-discoverer, Fermín Zanón Cervera. Description Measuring about in length, it is brown overall, though striped with black and with grayish underparts. Its tail is long. The bird's song is similar to that of the house wren, in that it is high-pitched and loud, described as a "musical warble preceded by guttural note, given in series of three or four phrases." Habitat and conservation The Zapata wren is confined and endemic to the Zapata Peninsula of southern Cuba. The Zapata wren's habitat is typically freshwater marsh and lowland savanna with scattered bushes and low trees. It feeds on insects, spiders, small snails, lizard Lizards are a widespread gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fermín Zanón Cervera
Fermín Zanón Cervera (1875–1944) was a Spanish zoologist, born in Godelleta, Valencia. He fought in Cuba in the Spanish–American War and stayed on after as a member of the Civil Guard prior to becoming a professional naturalist. He worked in the Cuban Ministry of Agriculture and Agronomy where he was conservator of the entomological collection. American herpetologist Thomas Barbour had been accompanied by Cervera on his visits to Cuba, and on hearing of the strange birds to be found in the Zapata Swamp, he sent the Spaniard on a series of trips into the region. There he discovered three bird species new to science that he sent to Barbour for formal description. The binomial names given by Barbour to two of the new species commemorate their finder. * Zapata wren (''Ferminia cerverai'') * Zapata sparrow (''Torreornis inexpectata'') * Zapata rail (''Cyanolimnas cerverai'') The wren, rail and one subspecies of the sparrow are endemic to the swamp. Cervera also found m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Barbour
Thomas Barbour (August 19, 1884 – January 8, 1946) was an American herpetologist. From 1927 until 1946, he was director of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) founded in 1859 by Louis Agassiz at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Life and career Barbour, the eldest of four brothers, was born in 1884 to Colonel William Barbour, and his wife, Julia Adelaide Sprague. Colonel Barbour was founder and president of The Linen Thread Company, Inc., a successful thread manufacturing enterprise having much business in the United States, Ireland, and Scotland. Although born on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where the family was spending the summer, Barbour grew up in Monmouth, New Jersey, where one of his younger brothers, William Warren Barbour, entered the political arena, eventually serving as U.S. Senator from New Jersey from 1931 to 1937 and again from 1938 to 1943. At age fifteen, Thomas Barbour was taken to visit Harvard University, which, entranced by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spider
Spiders (order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all orders of organisms. Spiders are found worldwide on every continent except for Antarctica, and have become established in nearly every land habitat. , 50,356 spider species in 132 families have been recorded by taxonomists. However, there has been debate among scientists about how families should be classified, with over 20 different classifications proposed since 1900. Anatomically, spiders (as with all arachnids) differ from other arthropods in that the usual body segments are fused into two tagmata, the cephalothorax or prosoma, and the opisthosoma, or abdomen, and joined by a small, cylindrical pedicel, however, as there is currently neither paleontological nor embryological evidence that spiders ever had a sep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemic Birds Of Cuba
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa and is therefore said to be ''endemic'' to that particular part of the world. An endemic species can be also be referred to as an ''endemism'' or in scientific literature as an ''endemite''. For example '' Cytisus aeolicus'' is an endemite of the Italian flora. '' Adzharia renschi'' was once believed to be an endemite of the Caucasus, but it was later discovered to be a non-indigenous species from South America belonging to a different genus. The extreme opposite of an endemic species is one with a cosmopolitan distribution, having a global or widespread range. A rare alternative term for a species that is endemic is "precinctive", which applies to s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish–American War
, partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence , image = Collage infobox for Spanish-American War.jpg , image_size = 300px , caption = (clockwise from top left) , date = April 21 – August 13, 1898() , place = , casus = , result = American victory * Treaty of Paris of 1898 *Founding of the First Philippine Republic and beginning of the Philippine–American War * Spain sells to Germany the last colonies in the Pacific in 1899 and end of the Spanish Empire in America and Asia. , territory = Spain relinquishes sovereignty over Cuba; cedes Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippine Islands to the United States. $20 million paid to Spain by the United States for infrastructure owned by Spain. , combatant1 = United States * Philippine Revolutionary Army , combatant2 = Spain * Cuba * Philippine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herpetology
Herpetology (from Greek ἑρπετόν ''herpetón'', meaning " reptile" or "creeping animal") is the branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians (including frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, and caecilians (gymnophiona)) and reptiles (including snakes, lizards, amphisbaenids, turtles, terrapins, tortoises, crocodilians, and the tuataras). Birds, which are cladistically included within Reptilia, are traditionally excluded here; the scientific study of birds is the subject of ornithology. Thus, the definition of herpetology can be more precisely stated as the study of ectothermic (cold-blooded) tetrapods. Under this definition "herps" (or sometimes "herptiles" or "herpetofauna") exclude fish, but it is not uncommon for herpetological and ichthyological scientific societies to collaborate. Examples include publishing joint journals and holding conferences in order to foster the exchange of ideas between the fields, as the American Society of Ichthyologists a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Predation
Predation is a biological interaction In ecology, a biological interaction is the effect that a pair of organisms living together in a community have on each other. They can be either of the same species (intraspecific interactions), or of different species ( interspecific interactio ... where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the host) and parasitoidism (which always does, eventually). It is distinct from scavenging on dead prey, though many predators also scavenge; it overlaps with herbivory, as seed predators and destructive frugivores are predators. Predators may actively search for or pursue prey or wait for it, often concealed. When prey is detected, the predator assesses whether to attack it. This may involve ambush predation, ambush or pursuit predation, sometimes after stalking the prey. If the attack ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wetland
A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The primary factor that distinguishes wetlands from terrestrial land forms or Body of water, water bodies is the characteristic vegetation of aquatic plants, adapted to the unique anoxic hydric soils. Wetlands are considered among the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems, serving as home to a wide range of plant and animal species. Methods for assessing wetland functions, wetland ecological health, and general wetland condition have been developed for many regions of the world. These methods have contributed to wetland conservation partly by raising public awareness of the functions some wetlands provide. Wetlands occur naturally on every continent. The water in wetlands is either freshwater, brackish or saltwater. The main wetland typ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dry Season
The dry season is a yearly period of low rainfall, especially in the tropics. The weather in the tropics is dominated by the tropical rain belt, which moves from the northern to the southern tropics and back over the course of the year. The temperate counterpart to the tropical dry season is summer or winter. Rain belt The tropical rain belt lies in the southern hemisphere roughly from October to March; during that time the northern tropics have a dry season with sparser precipitation, and days are typically sunny throughout. From April to September, the rain belt lies in the northern hemisphere, and the southern tropics have their dry season. Under the Köppen climate classification, for tropical climates, a dry season month is defined as a month when average precipitation is below . The rain belt reaches roughly as far north as the Tropic of Cancer and as far south as the Tropic of Capricorn. Near these latitudes, there is one wet season and one dry season annually. At ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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