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Fiji Whistler
The white-throated Fiji whistler (''Pachycephala vitiensis'') is a species of bird in the family Pachycephalidae, Endemism, endemic to islands in southern Fiji. It was formerly considered to be conspecific with the yellow-throated Fiji whistler (''Pachycephala graeffii''). Before the split the combined species were known as the "Fiji whistler". Taxonomy and systematics It was variably considered a subspecies of a widespread golden whistler (''Australian golden whistler, P. pectoralis'').Boles, W. E. (2007). Golden Whistler (Pachycephala pectoralis). pp. 421–423 in: del Hoyo, J.; Elliot, A. & Christie, D. eds (2007). ''Handbook of the Birds of the World''. Volume 12: ''Picathartes to Tits and Chickadees.'' Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. Three of the subspecies of the former white-throated whistler (''P. v. kandavensis, lauana, and vitiensis'') were lumped with the Fiji whistler in 2014 by the IOC. The Temotu whistler was formerly considered conspecific with the Fiji whistler. Three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Robert Gray
George Robert Gray (8 July 1808 – 6 May 1872) was an English zoology, zoologist and author, and head of the Ornithology, ornithological section of the British Museum, now the Natural History Museum, London, Natural History Museum, London for forty-one years. He was the younger brother of the zoologist John Edward Gray and the son of the botanist Samuel Frederick Gray. George Gray's most important publication was his ''Genera of Birds'' (1844–49), illustrated by David William Mitchell and Joseph Wolf, which included 46,000 references. Biography He was bornon 8 July 1808 in Little Chelsea, London, to Samuel Frederick Gray, naturalist and pharmacologist, and Elizabeth (née Forfeit), his wife. He was educated at Merchant Taylor's School. Gray started at the British Museum as Assistant Keeper of the Zoology Branch in 1831. He began by cataloguing insects, and published an ''Entomology of Australia'' (1833) and contributed the entomogical section to an English edition of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beqa
Beqa (, also known as Mbengga in English) is an island in Fiji, an outlier to the main island of Viti Levu, to the south. The island has a land area of and reaches a maximum elevation of . Beqa has 9 villages divided between 2 ''tikinas'' (districts): Sawau and Raviravi. To the west is the island of Yanuca. The villages of Dakuibeqa (the chiefly village of the Sawau people), Dakuni, Soliyaga, Naceva and Naiseuseu are part of the ''tikina'' (district) of Sawau. The villages of Nawaisomo, Raviravi, Lalati and Rukua are part of the ''tikina'' (district) of Raviravi. Tradition Of the 9 villages on the island, Dakuibeqa, Dakuni, Soliyaga, Naceva, and Rukua are noted for the tradition of fire-walking. The phenomenon was examined in 1902 when it was already a tourist attraction, with a "Probable Explanation of the Mystery" arrived at. Energy The ''Fiji Times'' reported on 25 February 2006 that over 3000 inhabitants of six villages and five resorts were exploring ways to find ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemic Birds Of Fiji
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] |
Pachycephala
''Pachycephala'' is a genus of birds native to Oceania and Southeast Asia. They are commonly known as typical whistlers. Older guidebooks may refer to them as thickheads, a literal translation of the generic name, which is derived from the Ancient Greek terms ''pachys'' "thick" + ''kephale'' "head". This lineage originated in Australo-Papua and later colonized the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos to the west and the Pacific archipelagos to the east. Taxonomy The genus ''Pachycephala'' was introduced in 1825 by the Irish zoologist Nicholas Vigors with the Australian golden whistler as the type species. The name is derived from the Ancient Greek ''pakhus'' meaning "large" or "thick" and ''kephalē'' meaning "head". The genus contains 53 species: * Olive whistler, ''Pachycephala olivacea'' * Red-lored whistler, ''Pachycephala rufogularis'' * Gilbert's whistler, ''Pachycephala inornata'' * Mangrove whistler, ''Pachycephala cinerea'' * Green-backed whistler, ''Pachycephal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gau Island
Gau (, also known as Ngau in English) is an island belonging to Fiji's Lomaiviti archipelago. Located at 18.00° S and 179.30 °E, it covers an area of , with a total shoreline that measures long, making it the fifth largest island in the Fijian archipelago. Its maximum elevation is . To the north-west is Batiki, and to the north-east is Nairai. Geography There are 16 villages on the island: Yadua, Vadra Vadra, Lovu, Levuka-i-Gau, Nukuloa, Nawaikama, Somosomo, Sawaieke (the chiefly village), Navukailagi, Qarani, Vione, Lekanai, Vanuaso, Nacavanadi, Malawai and Lamiti. Most of the island's residents live near the coast, and few live in the interior. Travel between villages is mostly by sea or on the coast road.Watling, Dick and A. N. Gilison. "Endangered Species in Low Elevation Cloud Forest on Gau Island, Fiji". in Lawrence S. Hamilton and James O. Juvik, eds. ''Tropical Montane Cloud Forests:Proceedings of an International Symposium at San Juan, Puerto Rico''. East-West Center ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lau Islands
The Lau Islands (also called the Lau Group, the Eastern Group, the Eastern Archipelago) of Fiji are situated in the southern Pacific Ocean, just east of the Koro Sea. Of this chain of about sixty islands and islets, about thirty are inhabited. The Lau Group covers a land area of 188 square miles (487 square km), and had a population of 10,683 at the most recent census in 2007. While most of the northern Lau Group are high islands of volcanic origin, those of the south are mostly carbonate low islands. Administratively the islands belong to Lau Province. History The United Kingdom, British explorer James Cook reached Vatoa in 1774. By the time of the discovery of the Ono Group in 1820, the Lau archipelago was the most mapped area of Fiji. Political unity came late to the Lau Islands. Historically, they comprised three territories: the Northern Lau Islands, the Southern Lau Islands, and the Moala Islands. Around 1855, the renegade Tongan prince Enele Ma'afu with the help ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr ( ; ; 5 July 1904 – 3 February 2005) was a German-American evolutionary biologist. He was also a renowned Taxonomy (biology), taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, Philosophy of biology, philosopher of biology, and History of science, historian of science. His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the Modern synthesis (20th century), modern evolutionary synthesis of Gregor Mendel, Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Charles Darwin, Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the Species, biological species concept. Although Charles Darwin and others posited that multiple species could evolve from a single common ancestor, the mechanism by which this occurred was not understood, creating the ''species problem''. Ernst Mayr approached the problem with a new definition for species. In his book ''Systematics and the Origin of Species'' (1942) he wrote that a species is not just a group of Morphology (biology), morphologically sim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polynesia
Polynesia ( , ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in common, including Polynesian languages, linguistic relations, Polynesian culture, cultural practices, and Tradition, traditional beliefs. In centuries past, they had a strong shared tradition of sailing and Polynesian navigation, using stars to navigate at night. The term was first used in 1756 by the French writer Charles de Brosses, who originally applied it to all the list of islands in the Pacific Ocean, islands of the Pacific. In 1831, Jules Dumont d'Urville proposed a narrower definition during a lecture at the Société de Géographie of Paris. By tradition, the islands located in the South Seas, southern Pacific have also often been called the South Sea Islands, and their inhabitants have been called South Sea Islanders. The Hawai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kadavu Island
Kadavu (pronounced ), with an area of , is the fourth largest island in Fiji, and the largest island in the ''Kadavu Group'', a volcano, volcanic archipelago consisting of Kadavu, Ono Island (Fiji), Ono, Galoa Island, Galoa and a number of smaller islands in the Great Astrolabe Reef. Its main administrative centre is Vunisea, which has an airport, a high school, a hospital, and a government station, on the Namalata Isthmus where the island is almost cut in two. Suva, Fiji's capital, lies to the north of Kadavu. The population of the island province was 10,167 at the most recent census in 2007. Kadavu Island belongs to Kadavu Province. Geography The island is long, with a width varying from to . The island is almost sliced in two at the Vunisei Isthmus (Naceva) and the narrow Namalata Isthmus, which separates Namalata Bay on the northern coast from Galoa Harbour on the southern coast. Within Galoa Harbour lie Galoa Island and the tiny islet of Tawadromu. Kadavu is charact ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viti Levu
Viti Levu (pronounced ; ) is the largest island in Fiji. It is the site of the country's capital and largest city, Suva, and home to a large majority of Fiji's population. Geology Fiji lies in a plate tectonics, tectonically complex area between the Australian plate and the Pacific plate. The Fiji Platform lies in a zone bordered by active extension fault lines, around which most of the shallow earthquakes in the area have been centred. These fault lines are: the Fiji Fracture Zone (FFZ) to the north; the Spreading ridge, 176° Extension Zone (176°E EZ) to the west; and the Hunter fracture zone (HFZ) and Lau-Colville Ridge, Lau Ridge to the east. The oldest rocks on the island are those formed during the Eocene and Early Miocene epochs that belong to the Wainimala Group (geology), group. The lower portion of the group is made up of volcanic flows and volcaniclastics, which grade from basalt to trachyte and rhyolite. Geographically, this group is found south of Nadi, including ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Pierson Ramsay
Edward Pierson Ramsay (3 December 1842 – 16 December 1916) was an Australian zoologist who specialised in ornithology. Early life Ramsay was born in Dobroyd Estate, Long Cove, Sydney, and educated at St Mark's Collegiate School, The King's School, Parramatta. He studied medicine from 1863 to 1865 at the University of Sydney but did not graduate. Career Although he never had had any formal scientific training in zoology, Ramsay had a keen interest in natural history and published many papers. In 1863 he was treasurer of the Entomological Society of New South Wales, he contributed a paper on the "Oology of Australia" to the Philosophical Society in July 1865, and when this society was merged into the Royal Society of New South Wales, he was made a life member in recognition of the work he had done for the Philosophical Society. In 1868 Ramsay joined with his brothers in a sugar-growing plantation in Queensland which, however, was not successful. Ramsay was one of the foundati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight Bird skeleton, skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the common ostrich. There are over 11,000 living species and they are split into 44 Order (biology), orders. More than half are passerine or "perching" birds. Birds have Bird wing, wings whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the Flightless bird, loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemism, endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
