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Anguis Cephallonica
''Anguis cephallonica'', the Peloponnese slow worm, is a species of legless lizard in the family Anguidae endemic to Greece. It is found in the Peloponnese and islands of Cephalonia, Ithaca, and Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea, at elevations of up to 1,340 m. Its natural habitats are temperate forests, temperate shrubland, Mediterranean-type shrubby vegetation, temperate grassland, arable land, pastureland, plantations, and rural gardens. The species can be distinguished from all other slow worms by the greater number of scale rows around the body and the distinctive color pattern on its side. Peloponnese slow worms give birth to live litters of 3–26 young. They are listed as being a species of least concern on the IUCN Red List. Taxonomy The Peloponnese slow worm is putatively thought to be sister to the Italian slow worm based on weak mitochondrial DNA evidence. These two species may have arisen from a common ancestor population that diverged after the Messinian salinity crisis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Werner
Franz Josef Maria Werner (15 August 1867 in Vienna – 28 February 1939 in Vienna) was an Austrian zoologist and explorer. Specializing as a herpetologist and entomologist, Werner described numerous species and other taxa of frogs, snakes, insects, and other organisms. His father introduced him at age six to reptiles and amphibians. A brilliant student, he corresponded often with George Albert Boulenger (1858–1937) and Oskar Boettger (1844–1910) who encouraged his studies with these animals. Werner obtained his doctorate in Vienna in 1890 and then after spending a year in Leipzig, began to teach at the Vienna Institute of Zoology. In 1919, he became tenured as a professor, maintaining this title until his retirement in 1933. Although working close to the Vienna Natural History Museum, he could not use their herpetological collections, after the death of its director, Franz Steindachner (1834–1919), who did not like Werner, and had barred him from accessing the collection ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arable Land
Arable land (from the , "able to be ploughed") is any land capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops.''Oxford English Dictionary'', "arable, ''adj''. and ''n.''" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2013. Alternatively, for the purposes of agricultural statistics, the term often has a more precise definition: A more concise definition appearing in the Eurostat glossary similarly refers to actual rather than potential uses: "land worked (ploughed or tilled) regularly, generally under a system of crop rotation". In Britain, arable land has traditionally been contrasted with pasturable land such as heaths, which could be used for sheep-rearing but not as farmland. Arable land is vulnerable to land degradation and some types of un-arable land can be enriched to create useful land. Climate change and biodiversity loss are driving pressure on arable land. By country According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in 2013, the world's arable land amo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taxa Named By Franz Werner
In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; : taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and given a particular ranking, especially if and when it is accepted or becomes established. It is very common, however, for taxonomists to remain at odds over what belongs to a taxon and the criteria used for inclusion, especially in the context of rank-based (" Linnaean") nomenclature (much less so under phylogenetic nomenclature). If a taxon is given a formal scientific name, its use is then governed by one of the nomenclature codes specifying which scientific name is correct for a particular grouping. Initial attempts at classifying and ordering organisms (plants and animals) were presumably set forth in prehistoric times by hunter-gatherers, as suggested by the fairly sophisticated folk taxonomies. Much later, Aristotle, and later still ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemic Fauna Of Greece
Endemism is the state of a species being found only 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 also be referred to as an ''endemism'' or, in scientific literature, as an ''endemite''. Similarly, many species found in the Western ghats of India are examples of endemism. Endemism is an important concept in conservation biology for measuring biodiversity in a particular place and evaluating the risk of extinction for species. Endemism is also of interest in evolutionary biology, because it provides clues about how changes in the environment cause species to undergo range shifts (potentially expanding their range into a larger area or becomin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lizards Of Europe
Lizard is the common name used for all squamate reptiles other than snakes (and to a lesser extent amphisbaenians), encompassing over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The grouping is paraphyletic as some lizards are more closely related to snakes than they are to other lizards. Lizards range in size from chameleons and geckos a few centimeters long to the 3-meter-long Komodo dragon. Most lizards are quadrupedal, running with a strong side-to-side motion. Some lineages (known as "legless lizards") have secondarily lost their legs, and have long snake-like bodies. Some lizards, such as the forest-dwelling '' Draco'', are able to glide. They are often territorial, the males fighting off other males and signalling, often with bright colours, to attract mates and to intimidate rivals. Lizards are mainly carnivorous, often being sit-and-wait predators; many smaller species eat insects, while the Komodo eats mamm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reptiles Described In 1894
Reptiles, as commonly defined, are a group of tetrapods with an ectothermic metabolism and amniotic development. Living traditional reptiles comprise four orders: Testudines, Crocodilia, Squamata, and Rhynchocephalia. About 12,000 living species of reptiles are listed in the Reptile Database. The study of the traditional reptile orders, customarily in combination with the study of modern amphibians, is called herpetology. Reptiles have been subject to several conflicting taxonomic definitions. In Linnaean taxonomy, reptiles are gathered together under the class Reptilia ( ), which corresponds to common usage. Modern cladistic taxonomy regards that group as paraphyletic, since genetic and paleontological evidence has determined that birds (class Aves), as members of Dinosauria, are more closely related to living crocodilians than to other reptiles, and are thus nested among reptiles from an evolutionary perspective. Many cladistic systems therefore redefine Reptilia as a clade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anguis
Slow wormsThe "slow-" in slowworm is distinct from the English adjective ''slow'' ("not fast"); the word comes from Old English ''slāwyrm'', where ''slā-'' means "slowworm" and ''wyrm'' means "serpent, reptile". () (also called blindworms and hazelworms) are a small genus (''Anguis'') of snake-like legless lizards in the family Anguidae. The genus contains five extant living species, including the Anguis fragilis, common slow worm (''A. fragilis''), the Anguis colchica, eastern slow worm (''A. colchica''), the Anguis graeca, Greek slow worm (''A. graeca''), the Peloponnese slow worm (''A. cephalonnica''), and the Anguis veronensis, Italian slow worm (''A. veronensis''). There are also known fossil species. Description Slow worms are typically grey-brown, with the females having a coppery sheen and two lateral black stripes, and the males displaying Electric blue (color), electric blue spots, particularly in the breeding season. They viviparous, give birth to live young, which ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Messinian Salinity Crisis
In the Messinian salinity crisis (also referred to as the Messinian event, and in its latest stage as the Lago Mare event) the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of partial or nearly complete desiccation (drying-up) throughout the latter part of the Messinian age of the Miocene epoch, from 5.96 to 5.33 Year#SI prefix multipliers, Ma (million years ago). It ended with the Zanclean flood, when the Atlantic reclaimed the basin. Sediment samples from below the deep seafloor of the Mediterranean Sea, which include evaporite minerals, soils, and fossil plants, show that the precursor of the Strait of Gibraltar closed about 5.96 million years ago, sealing the Mediterranean off from the Atlantic. This resulted in a period of partial desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea, the first of several such periods during the late Miocene. After the strait closed for the last time around 5.6 Ma, the region's generally dry climate at the time dried the Mediterranean basin out nearly completely within ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA and mDNA) is the DNA located in the mitochondrion, mitochondria organelles in a eukaryotic cell that converts chemical energy from food into adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA is a small portion of the DNA contained in a eukaryotic cell; most of the DNA is in the cell nucleus, and, in plants and algae, the DNA also is found in plastids, such as chloroplasts. Mitochondrial DNA is responsible for coding of 13 essential subunits of the complex oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) system which has a role in cellular energy conversion. Human mitochondrial DNA was the first significant part of the human genome to be sequenced. This sequencing revealed that human mtDNA has 16,569 base pairs and encodes 13 proteins. As in other vertebrates, the human mitochondrial genetic code differs slightly from nuclear DNA. Since animal mtDNA evolves faster than nuclear genetic markers, it represents a mainstay of phylogenetics and evolutionary biology. It als ... [...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] |
Least-concern Species
A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. They do not qualify as threatened, near threatened, or (before 2001) conservation dependent. Species cannot be assigned the "Least Concern" category unless they have had their population status evaluated. That is, adequate information is needed to make a direct, or indirect, assessment of its risk of extinction based on its distribution or population status. Evaluation Since 2001 the category has had the abbreviation "LC", following the IUCN 2001 Categories & Criteria (version 3.1). Before 2001 "least concern" was a subcategory of the " Lower Risk" category and assigned the code "LR/lc" or lc. Around 20% of least concern taxa (3261 of 15,636) in the IUCN database still use the code "LR/lc", which indicates they have not been re- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plantation
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 i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
