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Splendid Fairywren
The splendid fairywren (''Malurus splendens'') is a passerine bird in the Australasian wren family, Maluridae. It is also known simply as the splendid wren or more colloquially in Western Australia as the blue wren. The splendid fairywren is found across much of the Australian continent from central-western New South Wales and southwestern Queensland over to coastal Western Australia. It inhabits predominantly arid and semi-arid regions. Exhibiting a high degree of sexual dimorphism, the male in breeding plumage is a small, long-tailed bird of predominantly bright blue and black colouration. Non-breeding males, females and juveniles are predominantly grey-brown in colour; this gave the early impression that males were polygamous as all dull-coloured birds were taken for females. It comprises several similar all-blue and black subspecies that were originally considered separate species. Like other fairywrens, the splendid fairywren is notable for several peculiar behavioural char ...
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New South Wales
New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South Australia to the west. Its coast borders the Coral Sea, Coral and Tasman Seas to the east. The Australian Capital Territory and Jervis Bay Territory are Enclave and exclave, enclaves within the state. New South Wales' state capital is Sydney, which is also Australia's most populous city. , the population of New South Wales was over 8.3 million, making it Australia's most populous state. Almost two-thirds of the state's population, 5.3 million, live in the Greater Sydney area. The Colony of New South Wales was founded as a British penal colony in 1788. It originally comprised more than half of the Australian mainland with its Western Australia border, western boundary set at 129th meridian east in 1825. The colony then also includ ...
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John Gould
John Gould (; 14 September 1804 – 3 February 1881) was an English ornithologist who published monographs on birds, illustrated by plates produced by his wife, Elizabeth Gould (illustrator), Elizabeth Gould, and several other artists, including Edward Lear, Henry Constantine Richter, Joseph Wolf and William Matthew Hart. Because of his 1840s seven-volume series ''The Birds of Australia (Gould), The Birds of Australia'' and its updates he has been considered the father of bird study in Australia, and the Gould League in Australia is named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin's finches" played a role in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Gould's work is referenced in Charles Darwin's book, ''On the Origin of Species''. Early life John Gould was born in Lyme Regis, the first son of a gardener. Both father and son probably had little education. After working on Dowager Lady Poulett's glass house, his father obtained ...
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Gregory Mathews
Gregory Macalister Mathews CBE FRSE FZS FLS (10 September 1876 – 27 March 1949) was an Australian-born amateur ornithologist who spent most of his later life in England. Life He was born in Biamble in New South Wales the son of Robert H. Mathews. He was educated at The King's School, Parramatta. Mathews made his fortune in mining shares and moved to England in 1902. In 1910, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were William Eagle Clarke, Ramsay Heatley Traquair, John Alexander Harvie-Brown and William Evans. Ornithology Mathews was a controversial figure in Australian ornithology. He was responsible for bringing trinomial nomenclature into local taxonomy, however he was regarded as an extreme splitter. He recognised large numbers of subspecies on scant evidence and few notes. The extinct Lord Howe Pigeon was described by Mathews in 1915, using a painting as a guide. At the time, he named it ''Raperia godmanae'' after Alice Mary God ...
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Synonymy (biology)
In taxonomy, the scientific classification of living organisms, a synonym is an alternative scientific name for the accepted scientific name of a taxon. The botanical and zoological codes of nomenclature treat the concept of synonymy differently. * In botanical nomenclature, a synonym is a scientific name that applies to a taxon that now goes by a different scientific name. For example, Linnaeus was the first to give a scientific name (under the currently used system of scientific nomenclature) to the Norway spruce, which he called '' Pinus abies''. This name is no longer in use, so it is now a synonym of the current scientific name, ''Picea abies''. * In zoology, moving a species from one genus to another results in a different binomen, but the name is considered an alternative combination rather than a synonym. The concept of synonymy in zoology is reserved for two names at the same rank that refers to a taxon at that rank – for example, the name ''Papilio prorsa'' Linnaeus, 17 ...
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Splendid Fairywren Female Cunnamulla
Splendid may refer to: * HMS ''Splendid'', four ships of the British Royal Navy *MS ''Splendid'', a ferry in service with the Italian company Grandi Navi Veloci *Splendid Geyser, Yellowstone National Park, United States *Splendid (musical duo), Australian indie pop duo *Splendid, a character in the Flash cartoon series ''Happy Tree Friends'' Locations *Le Splendid Le Splendid is a café-théâtre company founded in Paris by a collection of writers and actors in the 1970s: Christian Clavier, Michel Blanc, Gérard Jugnot, Thierry Lhermitte (four childhood friends who knew one another from the Lycée Pasteur ...
, a Parisian café-théâtre company founded in the 1970s {{disambiguation, ship ...
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Meliphagoidea
__NOTOC__ Meliphagoidea is a superfamily of passerine birds. They contain a vast diversity of small to mid-sized songbirds widespread in the Austropacific region. The Australian Continent has the largest richness in genera and species. Systematics This group was proposed based on the phenetic DNA-DNA hybridization studies of Charles Sibley ''et al.''. A more modern definition of a monophyletic Meliphagoidea based on cladistic analysis was made by ornithologists at the American Museum of Natural History.Barker, F. Keith; Cibois, Alice; Schikler, Peter A.; Feinstein, Julie & Cracraft, Joel (2004): Phylogeny and diversification of the largest avian radiation. ''PNAS'' 101 (30): 11040–11045. PDF fulltext Families *Family Maluridae: fairy-wrens, emu-wrens and grasswrens *Family Dasyornithidae: bristlebirds. Formerly in Acanthizidae. *Family Acanthizidae: scrubwrens, thornbills and gerygones *Family Pardalotidae: pardalotes (but see below) *Family Meliphagidae: honeyeaters Th ...
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Honeyeater
The honeyeaters are a large and diverse family, Meliphagidae, of small to medium-sized birds. The family includes the Australian chats, myzomelas, friarbirds, wattlebirds, miners and melidectes. They are most common in Australia and New Guinea, and found also in New Zealand, the Pacific islands as far east as Samoa and Tonga, and the islands to the north and west of New Guinea known as Wallacea. Bali, on the other side of the Wallace Line, has a single species. In total, there are 186 species in 55 genera, roughly half of them native to Australia, many of the remainder occupying New Guinea. With their closest relatives, the Maluridae (Australian fairy-wrens), Pardalotidae (pardalotes), and Acanthizidae (thornbills, Australian warblers, scrubwrens, etc.), they comprise the superfamily Meliphagoidea and originated early in the evolutionary history of the oscine passerine radiation. Although honeyeaters look and behave very much like other nectar-feeding passerines aroun ...
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Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union
The Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU), now part of BirdLife Australia, was Australia's largest non-government, non-profit, bird conservation organisation. It was founded in 1901 to promote the study and conservation of the native bird species of Australia and adjacent regions, making it Australia's oldest national birding association. In 1996, the organisation adopted the trading name of Birds Australia for most public purposes, while retaining its original name for legal purposes and as the publisher of its journal, the ''Emu''. In 2012, the RAOU merged with Bird Observation & Conservation Australia to form BirdLife Australia. The RAOU was the instigator of the Atlas of Australian Birds project. It also published (in association with Oxford University Press) the encyclopaedic '' Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds''. Its quarterly colour membership magazine was ''Wingspan''. The RAOU is the Australian Partner of BirdLife International, and had ...
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Sylviidae
Sylviidae is a family of passerine birds that includes the typical warblers ''Sylvia'', and closely related genus '' Curruca'', formerly included in ''Sylvia''. They are found in Eurasia and Africa, with the greatest diversity in the Mediterranean region. Taxonomy and systematics The scientific name Sylviidae was introduced by the English zoologist William Elford Leach (as Sylviadæ) in a guide to the contents of the British Museum published in 1820. The family became part of an assemblage known as the Old World warblers and was a wastebin taxon with over 400 species of bird in over 70 genera. Advances in classification, particularly helped with molecular data, have led to the splitting out of several new families from within this group. There is now evidence that the Sylviidae warblers are more closely related to the Old World babblers than other birds also called warblers A molecular phylogenetic study using mitochondrial DNA sequence data published in 2011 found that the sp ...
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Richard Bowdler Sharpe
Richard Bowdler Sharpe (22 November 1847 – 25 December 1909) was an English people, English zoologist and ornithology, ornithologist who worked as curator of the bird collection at the British Museum of natural history. In the course of his career he published several monographs on bird groups and produced a multi-volume catalogue of the specimens in the collection of the museum. He described many new species of bird and also has had species named in his honour by other ornithologists including Sharpe's longclaw (''Macronyx sharpei'') and Sharpe's starling (''Pholia sharpii''). Biography Richard was born in London, the first son of Thomas Bowdler Sharpe. His grandfather, Reverend Lancelot Sharpe was Rector of All Hallows Staining. His father was a publisher on Skinner Street and was best known for being the publisher of ''Sharpe's London Magazine'', an illustrated periodical (weekly but monthly from 1847). His care from the age of six was under an aunt, Magdalen Wallace, widow ...
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