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Butterfly Gardening
Butterfly gardening is a way to create, improve, and maintain habitat for lepidopterans including butterflies, Skipper (butterfly), skippers, and moths. Butterflies have four distinct life stages—egg, larva, chrysalis, and adult. In order to support and sustain butterfly populations, an ideal butterfly garden contains habitat for each life stage. Butterfly larvae, with some exceptions such as the carnivorous Feniseca, harvester (''Feniseca tarquinius''), consume plant matter and can be generalists or specialists. While butterflies like the Vanessa cardui, painted lady (''Vanessa cardui'') are known to consume over 200 plants as caterpillars, other species like the Monarch butterfly#Larval host plants, monarch (''Danaus plexippus''), and the Regal fritillary, regal fritillary (''Speyeria idalia'') only consume plants in one genus, milkweed and Viola (plant), violets, respectively. As adults, butterflies feed mainly on nectar, but they have also evolved to consume rotting fruit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Danaus
In Greek mythology, Danaus (, ; ''Danaós'') was the king of Libya. His myth is a foundation legend of Argos, one of the foremost Mycenaean cities of the Peloponnesus. In Homer's ''Iliad'', " Danaans" ("tribe of Danaus") and " Argives" commonly designate the Greek forces opposed to the Trojans. Family Parents and siblings Danaus, was the son of King Belus of Egypt and the naiad Achiroe, daughter of the river god Nilus, or of Sida, eponym of Sidon. He was the twin brother of Aegyptus, king of Egypt while Euripides adds two others, Cepheus, King of Ethiopia and Phineus, betrothed of Andromeda. Danaides Danaus had fifty daughters, the Danaides, twelve of whom were born to the naiad Polyxo; six to Pieria; two to Elephantis; four to Queen Europa; ten to the hamadryad nymphs Atlanteia and Phoebe; seven to an Aethiopian woman; three to Memphis; two to Herse and lastly four to Crino. According to Hippostratus, Danaus had all these progenies begotten by Europ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blogger (service)
Blogger is an American online content management system founded in 1999 that enables its users to write blogs with time-stamped entries. Pyra Labs developed it before being acquired by Google in 2003. Google hosts the blogs, which can be accessed through a subdomain of blogspot.com. Blogs can also be accessed from a user-owned custom domain (such as www.example.com) by using DNS facilities to direct a domain to Google's servers. A user can have up to 100 blogs or websites per account. Blogger enabled users to publish blogs and websites to their own web hosting server via FTP until May 1, 2010. All such blogs and websites had to be redirected to a blogspot.com subdomain or point their own domain to Google's servers via DNS. History Pyra Labs launched Blogger on August 23, 1999. It is credited with popularizing the format as one of the first dedicated blog-publishing tools. Pyra Labs was purchased by Google in February 2003 for an undisclosed amount. Premium features, whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Urban Area
An urban area is a human settlement with a high population density and an infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas originate through urbanization, and researchers categorize them as cities, towns, conurbations or suburbs. In urbanism, the term "urban area" contrasts to rural areas such as villages and hamlet (place), hamlets; in urban sociology or urban anthropology, it often contrasts with natural environment. The development of earlier predecessors of modern urban areas during the urban revolution of the 4th millennium BCE led to the formation of human civilization and ultimately to modern urban planning, which along with other human activities such as exploitation of natural resources has led to a human impact on the environment. Recent historical growth In 1950, 764 million people (or about 30 percent of the world's 2.5 billion people) lived in urban areas. In 2009, the number of people living in urban areas (3.42 billion) surpassed the number living in rural ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Woody Plant Encroachment
Woody plant encroachment (also called woody encroachment, bush encroachment, shrub encroachment, shrubification, woody plant proliferation, or bush thickening) is a natural phenomenon characterised by the area expansion and density increase of woody plants, bushes and shrubs, at the expense of the herbaceous layer, grasses and forbs. It refers to the expansion of native plants and not the spread of alien invasive species. Woody encroachment is observed across different ecosystems and with different characteristics and intensities globally. It predominantly occurs in grasslands, savannas and woodlands and can cause regime shifts from open grasslands and savannas to closed woodlands. Causes include land-use intensification, such as overgrazing, as well as the suppression of wildfires and the reduction in numbers of wild herbivores. Elevated atmospheric CO2 and global warming are found to be accelerating factors. To the contrary, land abandonment can equally lead to woody encroac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Habitat Fragmentation
Habitat fragmentation describes the emergence of discontinuities (fragmentation) in an organism's preferred environment (habitat), causing population fragmentation and ecosystem decay. Causes of habitat fragmentation include geological processes that slowly alter the layout of the physical environment (suspected of being one of the major causes of speciation), and human activity such as land conversion, which can alter the environment much faster and causes the extinction of many species. More specifically, habitat fragmentation is a process by which large and contiguous habitats get divided into smaller, isolated patches of habitats. Definition The term habitat fragmentation includes five discrete phenomena: * Reduction in the total area of the habitat * Decrease of the interior: edge ratio * Isolation of one habitat fragment from other areas of habitat * Breaking up of one patch of habitat into several smaller patches * Decrease in the average size of each patch of habit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monarch Butterfly Waystation Sign
A monarch () is a head of stateWebster's II New College Dictionary. "Monarch". Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 2001. p. 707. for life or until abdication, and therefore the head of state of a monarchy. A monarch may exercise the highest authority and power in the state, or others may wield that power on behalf of the monarch. Usually, a monarch either personally inherits the lawful right to exercise the state's sovereign rights (often referred to as ''the throne'' or ''the crown'') or is selected by an established process from a family or cohort eligible to provide the nation's monarch. Alternatively, an individual may proclaim oneself monarch, which may be backed and legitimated through acclamation, right of conquest or a combination of means. If a young child is crowned the monarch, then a regent is often appointed to govern until the monarch reaches the requisite adult age to rule. Monarchs' actual powers vary from one monarchy to another and in different eras; on one extreme, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pollinator
A pollinator is an animal that moves pollen from the male anther of a flower to the female carpel, stigma of a flower. This helps to bring about fertilization of the ovules in the flower by the male gametes from the pollen grains. Insects are the major pollinators of most plants, and insect pollinators include all families of bees and most families of Aculeata, aculeate wasps; ants; many families of flies; many lepidopterans (both butterflies and moths); and many families of beetles. Vertebrates, mainly bats and birds, but also some non-bat mammals (monkeys, lemurs, Phalangeriformes, possums, rodents) and some lizards pollinate certain plants. Among the pollinating birds are hummingbirds, honeyeaters and sunbirds with long beaks; they pollinate a number of deep-throated flowers. Humans may also carry out artificial pollination. A pollinator is different from a pollenizer, a plant that is a source of pollen for the pollination process. Background Plants fall into pollination s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Overwintering
Overwintering is the process by which some organisms pass through or wait out the winter season, or pass through that period of the year when "winter" conditions (cold or sub-zero temperatures, ice, snow, limited food supplies) make normal activity or even survival difficult or near impossible. In some cases "winter" is characterized not necessarily by cold but by dry conditions; passing through such periods could likewise be called overwintering. Hibernation and migration are the two major ways in which overwintering is accomplished. Animals may also go into a state of reduced physiological activity known as torpor. Overwintering occurs in several classes of lifeform. Insects In entomology, overwintering is how an insect passes the winter season. Many insects overwinter as adults, pupae, or eggs. This can be done inside buildings, under tree bark, or beneath fallen leaves or other plant matter on the ground, among other places. All such overwintering sites shield the insect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viola (plant)
''Viola'', commonly known as the violets, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Violaceae. It is the largest genus in the family, containing over 680 species. Most species are found in the temperateness, temperate Northern Hemisphere; however, some are also found in widely divergent areas such as Hawaii, Australasia, and the Andes. Some ''Viola'' species are perennial plants, some are annual plants, and a few are small shrubs. Many species, varieties and cultivars are grown in gardens for their ornamental flowers. In horticulture, the term pansy is normally used for those multi-colored large-flowered cultivars which are raised annually or biennially from seed and used extensively in bedding (horticulture), bedding. Description ''Viola'' species can be Annual plant, annual or Perennial plant, perennial, and can take the form of Herbaceous plant, herbs, shrubs or very rarely treelets. In acaulescent taxa the foliage and flowers appear to rise from the ground. The remain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milkweed
''Asclepias'' is a genus of herbaceous, perennial, flowering plants known as milkweeds, named for their latex, a milky substance containing cardiac glycosides termed cardenolides, exuded where cells are damaged. Most species are toxic to humans and many other species, primarily due to the presence of cardenolides. However, as with many such plants, some species feed upon milkweed leaves or the nectar from their flowers. A noteworthy feeder on milkweeds is the monarch butterfly, which uses and requires certain milkweeds as host plants for its larvae. The ''Asclepias'' genus contains over 200 species distributed broadly across Africa, North America, and South America. It previously belonged to the family Asclepiadaceae, which is now classified as the subfamily Asclepiadoideae of the dogbane family, Apocynaceae. The genus was formally described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753, who named it after Asclepius, the Greek god of healing. Flowers Members of the genus produce some of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Regal Fritillary
The regal fritillary (''Speyeria idalia'') is a striking Nymphalidae, nymphalid butterfly found among some of the remaining Tallgrass prairie, tallgrass and mixed-grass prairies in the east-central United States. This prairie-specialist butterfly has a characteristic deep orange color and unmistakable dark hindwings with two bands of spots (#idbrock, Brock 2003). On the female, both bands of spots are white. However, on the male, the outer band of spots is orange in color. Females also tend to be slightly larger than males. The ventral surface of the hindwings is olive brown to black in color with bold silvery white spots (#idselby, Selby 2007). The wingspan of ''S. idalia'' usually measures (#idselby, Selby 2007). Flight is in the summertime from approximately June to September and adults tend to be swift in flight, coasting close to the ground (#idbrock, Brock 2003). It is listed as a species of special concern and believed Local extinction, extirpated in the US state of Connect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monarch Butterfly
The monarch butterfly or simply monarch (''Danaus plexippus'') is a milkweed butterfly (subfamily Danainae) in the family Nymphalidae. Other common names, depending on region, include milkweed, common tiger, wanderer, and black-veined brown. It is among the most familiar of List of butterflies of North America, North American butterflies and an iconic pollinator, although it is not an especially effective pollinator of milkweeds. Its wings feature an easily recognizable black, orange, and white pattern, with a wingspan of . A Müllerian mimic, the viceroy butterfly, is similar in color and pattern, but is markedly smaller and has an extra black stripe across each hindwing. The eastern North American monarch population is notable for its annual southward late-summer/autumn instinctive Monarch butterfly migration, migration from the northern and central United States and southern Canada to Florida and Mexico. During the fall migration, monarchs cover thousands of miles, with a co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
