The Northern giraffe, which lives in pockets from Niger to Ethiopia, has suffered catastrophic losses from civil wars, poaching and the destruction of its wild habitat.
In recent years, Christophe Dufresnes, a herpetologist at Nanjing Forestry University in China, has used this concept to classify different species of frogs in Europe.
Dr. Grabowski’s team has discovered an even more dramatic diversity hiding among European crustaceans, a group of aquatic creatures that includes lobsters, shrimp and crabs.
For example, a species of common freshwater shrimp called Gammarus fossarum split 25 million years ago into separate lineages that are still alive today.
But another influential inventory, called the Clements Checklist of Birds of the World, carves off the barn owls that live on an Indian Ocean island chain as their own species, Tyto deroepstorffi.
The method — which Dr. Wells calls a “rough and ready” triage in our age of extinctions — may make it possible for his team to describe more than 100 new species of plants each year.
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An eerie glow has been emanating from Wales' forests and rockpools for the country's annual dark skies week.
His photos of temperate rain forest in Wales reveal shapes, structures and colours that rival a coral reef.
The 34-year-old is on a one-man mission to shine UV light on what he calls a "magic world" in which plants and animals fluoresce to communicate.
Mr Atthowe visited woodlands in Wye Valley and in Pembrokeshire Coast National Park giving tours for Wales Dark Skies Week.
"The ancient woodlands are full of moss and lichen which light up under UV and lots of creatures too, like wood lice and centipedes all doing interesting things."
Ruth Waycott from the Wye Valley National Landscape helped organise one of the biofluorescence walks, at Whitestone, a Natural Resources Wales-owned forest near Chepstow in Monmouthshire.
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In Mexico, a country full of symbolism and magical realism, hummingbirds — long associated with good luck when they cross your path and flutter around you — are captured and then “prepared” to reach the heart of the loved one. The shocking practice has become popular in recent years. It consists of carrying the small bird, dead and dry, inside your shirt pocket. This, we are assured, will let us find a partner for life. But so far, the only objectively measurable thing it has achieved is to put 39 of the 57 species that inhabit Mexican territory at risk of extinction, according to data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
So, if it works, you're now married for life but will have no good luck because you killed the hummingbird. That's a stupid choice.
Some powerful and influential witch needs to turn this around. They could denounce it as an error in reading the sacred texts, it's really mosquitoes that you have to kill and put their bodies in your pocket. That way you get love and fewer vector-borne diseases
Same as all the crap that gets sold today. Some scammer, recognizing the inherent gullibility or natural cognitive biases of people invents a product or service or story, claims expertise and success, and gains some combination of wealth, power, and fame.
For example Gwyneth Paltrow makes bank by selling all kinds of crap on her Goop website.
Humans are easy to fool because our brains don't work the way we think they do and other humans exploit that for their own gain. Some, like Penn and Teller, do it honestly for entertainment, others, like Sylvia Browne, do it dishonestly by claiming powers they don't have.
Good article
If you're into ecosystem restoration is easy to discount the importance of the megafauna on a landscape, and how they shape the desired community, as you're more often concerned plant and soil metrics. Wildlife can tend to be a check-box to measure said performance, rather than viewed as ecosystems engineers.
England is launching a biodiversity credit scheme this week that attempts to force all new road and housebuilding projects to benefit nature, rather than damage it.
Sophus zu Ermgassen, an ecological economist from the University of Oxford, said England’s scheme is “world-leading in its scope” in that it addresses all new construction, and covers all natural habitats.
“Demand for biodiversity credits, or offsets, is really limited unless there is some sort of fundamental driver,” zu Ermgassen said, adding that having a mandatory market for all developers helps these things scale up and draw in more investment and activity than they would otherwise.
Zu Ermgassen was part of a study that found that more than a quarter of BNG units are at risk of leading to no tangible increases in biodiversity because there is no monitoring system in place.
Much of the off-site habitat restoration demanded by the scheme – including the creation and protection of wetlands, wildflower meadows or woodlands – is expected to happen on farmland.
Ben Taylor, the manager of Iford Estate farm near Lewes in East Sussex, said betting on this emerging market is “crystal ball stuff”, with many farmers hesitant to take the financial risk.
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This question is well-explained in the article, however, the article lacks some https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_feet_and_legs#/media/File:Bird_leg_and_pelvic_girdle_skeleton_EN.gif which would have attributed to a better comprehension.
Biodiversity
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