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Golden-headed Cisticola
The golden-headed cisticola (''Cisticola exilis''), also known as the bright-capped cisticola, is a species of warbler in the family Cisticolidae, found in Australia and thirteen Asian countries. Growing to long, it is usually brown and cream in colour, but has a different appearance during the mating season, with a gold-coloured body and a much shorter tail. It is an omnivore and frequently makes a variety of vocalizations. Known as the "finest tailor of all birds", it constructs nests out of plants and spider threads. It mates in the rainy season. It has a very large range and population, which is thought to be increasing. Taxonomy The golden-headed cisticola was species description, described by the naturalists Nicholas Aylward Vigors, Nicholas Vigors and Thomas Horsfield in 1827 and given the binomial name ''Malurus exilis''. The title page is dated 1826. The Binomial nomenclature, specific epithet ''exilis'' is the Latin word for "small", "slender" or "thin". It is now pla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicholas Aylward Vigors
Nicholas Aylward Vigors (1785 – 26 October 1840) was an Ireland, Irish zoologist and politician. He popularized the classification of birds on the basis of the quinarian system. Early life Vigors was born at Old Leighlin, County Carlow, in 1785. He was the first son of Capt. Nicholas Aylward Vigors, who served in the 29th (Worcestershire) Regiment of Foot, 29th (Worcestershire) Regiment, and his first wife, Catherine Vigors, daughter of Solomon Richards of Solsborough. He matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, in November 1803, and was admitted at Lincoln's Inn in November 1806. Without completing his studies, he served in the army during the Peninsular War from 1809 to 1811 and was wounded in the Battle of Barrosa, Battle of Barossa on 5 March 1811. Though he had not yet completed his studies, he still published "An inquiry into the nature and extent of poetick licence" in London in 1810. He then returned to Oxford to continue his studies and achieved his Bachelor of Arts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subspecies
In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species have subspecies, but for those that do there must be at least two. Subspecies is abbreviated as subsp. or ssp. and the singular and plural forms are the same ("the subspecies is" or "the subspecies are"). In zoology, under the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the subspecies is the only taxonomic rank below that of species that can receive a name. In botany and mycology, under the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, other infraspecific name, infraspecific ranks, such as variety (botany), variety, may be named. In bacteriology and virology, under standard International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes, bacterial nomenclature and virus clas ... [...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] |
Torres Strait
The Torres Strait (), also known as Zenadh Kes ( Kalaw Lagaw Ya#Phonology 2, [ˈzen̪ad̪ kes]), is a strait between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea. It is wide at its narrowest extent. To the south is Cape York Peninsula, the northernmost extremity of the Australian mainland. To the north is the Western Province (Papua New Guinea), Western Province of Papua New Guinea. It is named after the Spanish navigator Luís Vaz de Torres, who sailed through the strait in 1606. History Pre-colonisation The islands of the Torres Strait have been inhabited by humans for at least 2,500 years and possibly much longer. The various Torres Strait Islanders, Torres Strait Islander communities have a unique culture and long-standing history with the islands and nearby coastlines. Their maritime-based trade and interactions with the Papuans to the north and the Australian Aborigines, Australian Aboriginal communities have maintained a steady cultural diffusion among the th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maluku Islands
The Maluku Islands ( ; , ) or the Moluccas ( ; ) are an archipelago in the eastern part of Indonesia. Tectonics, Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located in West Melanesia. Lying within Wallacea (mostly east of the biogeography, biogeographical Max Carl Wilhelm Weber, Weber Line), the Moluccas have been considered a geographical and cultural intersection of Asia and Oceania. The islands were known as the Spice Islands because of the nutmeg, Nutmeg#Mace, mace, and cloves that were exclusively found there, the presence of which sparked European colonial interests in the 16th century. The Maluku Islands formed a single Provinces of Indonesia, province from Indonesian independence until 1999, when they were split into two provinces. A new province, North Maluku, incorporates the area between Morotai and Sula Islands Regency, Sula, with the arc of islands from Buru and Seram Island, Seram to Wetar rem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sulawesi
Sulawesi ( ), also known as Celebes ( ), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the List of islands by area, world's 11th-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago. Within Indonesia, only Sumatra, Borneo, and New Guinea, Papua are larger in territory, and only Java and Sumatra are more populous. The landmass of Sulawesi includes four peninsulas: the northern Minahasa Peninsula, the East Peninsula, Sulawesi, East Peninsula, the South Peninsula, Sulawesi, South Peninsula, and the Southeast Peninsula, Sulawesi, Southeast Peninsula. Three gulfs separate these peninsulas: the Gulf of Tomini between the northern Minahasa and East peninsulas, the Tolo Gulf between the East and Southeast peninsulas, and the Bone Gulf between the South and Southeast peninsulas. The Strait of Makassar runs along the western side of the island and separates the island from Borneo. Etymology The n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection; his 1858 paper on the subject was published that year On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection, alongside extracts from Charles Darwin's earlier writings on the topic. It spurred Darwin to set aside the Natural Selection (manuscript), "big species book" he was drafting and to quickly write an Abstract (summary), abstract of it, which was published in 1859 as ''On the Origin of Species''. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, starting in the Amazon River basin. He then did fieldwork in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line, which separates the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts: a western portion in which the ani ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sulu Archipelago
The Sulu Archipelago ( Tausug: Kapū'-pūan sin Sūg Sulat Sūg: , ) is a chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean, in the southwestern Philippines. The archipelago forms the northern limit of the Celebes Sea and southern limit of the Sulu Sea. The Sulu Archipelago islands are within the Mindanao island group, consisting of the Philippines provinces of Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi; hence the archipelago is sometimes referred to as Basulta, derived from the first syllables of the three provinces. The archipelago is not, as is often supposed, the remains of a land bridge between Borneo and the Philippines. Rather, it is the exposed edge of small submarine ridges produced by tectonic tilting of the sea bottom. Basilan, Jolo, Tawi-Tawi and other islands in the group are extinct volcanic cones rising from the southernmost ridge. Tawi-Tawi, the southernmost island of the group, has a serpentine basement-complex core with a limestone covering. This island chain is an important ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Cabanis
Jean Louis Cabanis (8 March 1816 – 20 February 1906) was a German ornithologist. He worked at the bird collections of the Natural History Museum in Berlin becoming its first curator of birds in 1850. He founded the ''Journal für Ornithologie'' in 1853''.'' Biography Cabanis was born in Berlin to an old Huguenot family who had moved from France. His father Benoit-Jean (1774–1838) and mother Maria Luise (1783–1849) both came from families that were in the textile industry. Little is known of his early life. He studied at the University of Berlin from 1835 to 1839, and then travelled to North America, working as a museum assistant in Carolina. He returned in 1841 with a large natural history collection. He was assistant at the Natural History Museum, Berlin, Natural History Museum of Berlin (which was at the time the Berlin University Museum) and in 1850 he became the curator of birds, taking over from Martin Lichtenstein. Charles Lucien Bonaparte had offered him a positio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Swinhoe
Robert Swinhoe FRS (1 September 1836 – 28 October 1877) was an English diplomat and naturalist who worked as a Consul in Qing-era Taiwan (then known to Westerners as Formosa). He catalogued many Southeast Asian birds, and several, such as Swinhoe's pheasant, are named after him. Biography Swinhoe was born in colonial-era Kolkata (then known as Calcutta) where his father, who came from a Northumberland family, was a lawyer. There is no clear record of the date of his arrival in England, but it is known he attended the University of London, and in 1854, joined the China consular corps. He was stationed to the remote port of Amoy, some 300 miles to the northeast of Hong Kong, in 1855. While at this port, he not only mastered the Chinese language (both official Mandarin and the local Amoy dialect), but also initiated a detailed and authoritative understanding of the ornithology of eastern China. In March 1856, Swinhoe made an "adventurous" visit to the camphor districts of no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
