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Tachymarptis
''Tachymarptis'' is a genus of bird in the swift family, Apodidae. It contains the Alpine swift (''Tachymarptis melba'') of Eurasia and Africa and the mottled swift (''Tachymarptis aequatorialis'') of Africa. They are large swifts with relatively broad wings, a large head, a medium-length forked tail and white in the underparts.Chantler, Phil & Gerald Driessens (2000) ''Swifts: A Guide to the Swifts and Treeswifts of the World'', 2nd ed., Pica Press, East Sussex. Taxonomy The genus ''Tachymarptis'' was introduced in 1922 by the South African zoologist Austin Roberts with ''Hirundo melba'' Linnaeus, 1758, the alpine swift, as the type species. The name ''Tachymarptis'' comes from Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ... ''takhus'' ("fast") and ''marptis'' ("seize ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alpine Swift
The alpine swift (''Tachymarptis melba'', formerly ''Apus melba'') is a species of Swift (bird), swift found in Africa, southern Europe, and Asia. They breed in mountains from southern Europe to the Himalayas. Like common swifts, they are bird migration, migratory; the southern European population winters further south in southern Africa. They have very short legs which are used for clinging to vertical surfaces. Like most swifts, they never settle voluntarily on the ground, spending most of their lives in the air living on the insects they catch in their beaks. Taxonomy The alpine swift was Species description, formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, tenth edition of his ''Systema Naturae''. He placed it with the swifts in the genus ''Hirundo'' and coined the binomial name ''Hirundo melba''. Linnaeus specified the type locality (biology), type locality as Gibraltar. Linnaeus based his account on "The greatest mar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mottled Swift
The mottled swift (''Tachymarptis aequatorialis'') is a species of bird in the swift family, Apodidae. It is one of two species in the genus ''Tachymarptis'' together with the alpine swift (''T. melba'').Chantler, Phil & Gerald Driessens (2000) ''Swifts: A Guide to the Swifts and Treeswifts of the World'', 2nd ed., Pica Press, East Sussex. It occurs widely in eastern Africa and locally in western Africa. It is found in Angola, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots .... Jali Makawa noted that the Alomwe peopl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Austin Roberts (zoologist)
Austin Roberts (3 January 1883 – 5 May 1948) was a South African zoologist. He is best known for his ''Birds of South Africa'', first published in 1940. He also studied the mammalian fauna of the region: his work ''The mammals of South Africa'' was published posthumously in 1951. The 7th edition of ''Roberts' Birds of Southern Africa'' which appeared in 2005, is the standard work on the region's birds. Biography Roberts, son of Alfred Roberts (church minister) and Marianne Fannin (naturalist and flower artist), was born in Pretoria and grew up in Potchefstroom, South Africa. He gained much of his early knowledge of zoology from Thomas Ayres (1828–1913), one of South Africa's first amateur ornithologists. Ayres taught Roberts to skin birds and small mammals as well as the importance of keeping accurate records on every specimen. He also encouraged Roberts to study birds systematically. Roberts worked as a clerk in the Potchefstroom branch of Standard Bank from 1901 to 1903 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genus
Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus. :E.g. ''Panthera leo'' (lion) and ''Panthera onca'' (jaguar) are two species within the genus ''Panthera''. ''Panthera'' is a genus within the family Felidae. The composition of a genus is determined by taxonomy (biology), taxonomists. The standards for genus classification are not strictly codified, so different authorities often produce different classifications for genera. There are some general practices used, however, including the idea that a newly defined genus should fulfill these three criteria to be descriptively useful: # monophyly – all descendants of an ancestral taxon are grouped together (i.e. Phylogeneti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swift (bird)
The Apodidae, or swifts, form a family 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 along 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 hum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin; his name is rendered in Latin as and, after his 1761 ennoblement, as . Linnaeus was the son of a curate and was born in Råshult, in the countryside of Småland, southern Sweden. He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published the first edition of his ' in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 1760s, he co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Type Species
In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological Type (biology), type wiktionary:en:specimen, specimen (or specimens). Article 67.1 A similar concept is used for suprageneric groups and called a type genus. In botanical nomenclature, these terms have no formal standing under the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, code of nomenclature, but are sometimes borrowed from zoological nomenclature. In botany, the type of a genus name is a specimen (or, rarely, an illustration) which is also the type of a species name. The species name with that type can also be referred to as the type of the genus name. Names of genus and family ranks, the various subdivisions of those ranks, and some higher-rank names based on genus names, have suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Language
Greek (, ; , ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic languages, Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece, Cyprus, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, Caucasus, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the list of languages by first written accounts, longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer, ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon. Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apus (genus)
The bird genus ''Apus'' comprise some of the Old World members of the family Apodidae, commonly known as Swift (bird), swifts. They are among the fastest birds in the world. They resemble swallows, to which they are not related, but have shorter tails and sickle-shaped wings. Swifts spend most of their life aloft, have very short legs and use them mostly to cling to surfaces. Taxonomy The genus ''Apus'' was erected by the Italian naturalist Giovanni Antonio Scopoli in 1777 based on tautonymy and the common swift which had been given the binomial name ''Hirundo apus'' by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758. The name ''Apus'' is Latin for a swift, thought by the ancients to be a type of swallow with no feet (from Ancient Greek α, ''a'', "without", and πούς, ''pous'', "foot"). Before the 1950s, there was some controversy over which group of organism should have the genus name ''Apus''. In 1801, Louis Augustin Guillaume Bosc, Bosc gave the genus name ''Apus'' to the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feather Louse
A bird louse is any chewing louse (small, biting insects) of order Phthiraptera which parasitizes warm-blooded animals, especially birds. Bird lice may feed on feathers, skin, or blood. They have no wings, and their biting mouth parts distinguish them from true lice, which suck blood."Bird louse" on Encyclopædia Britannica. Almost all domestic birds are hosts for at least one species of bird louse. Chickens and other poultry are attacked by many kinds of bird lice. Bird lice usually do not cause much harm to a bird unless it is unusually infested as in the case of birds with damaged bills which cannot preen themselves properly. A blood-consuming louse that infests Galápagos Hawks imore numerous on hawks without territories possibly because those individuals spend more time looking for food and less time preening than hawks with territories. In such cases, their irritation may cause the bird to damage itself by scratching. In extreme cases, the infestation may even interfere w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
