Oriental honey-buzzard (Pernis ptilorhynchus)

Crested honey buzzard or oriental honey-buzzard (Pernis ptilorhynchus) is a species of animal in the Accipitridae, birds of prey with brown color, long neck and small head, long tail, short crested head, sex distinguishable and flight with flat wings.

P. ptilorhynchus has black eyes with bright yellow rings. The beak is dark gray or black. The plumage is predominantly brown or whitish brown or gray. The inner wings are brown with white or black stripes and the tips are covered with dark feathers.

The sexes can be distinguished in that the male has a gray-blue head and a black tail with a white band. The female is brown, darker and slightly larger in size.

Crested honey buzzards are migrants with summers to Siberia and winters to tropical Southeast Asia. The 700km non-stop flight over the water is made possible by the wind. They breed in the forest. The style of flight features roller coasters and characteristic flapping of wings at peak heights.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Aves
Order: Accipitriformes
Family: Accipitridae
Genus: Pernis
Species: Pernis ptilorhynchus
Subspecies: Pernis ptilorhynchus ssp. orientalis, Pernis ptilorhynchus ssp. palawanensis, Pernis ptilorhynchus ssp. philippensis, Pernis ptilorhynchus ssp. ptilorhynchus, Pernis ptilorhynchus ssp. ruficollis, Pernis ptilorhynchus ssp. torquatus

Thomas Sutikna lives with Homo floresiensis

BLOG - On October 28, 2004, a paper was published in Nature describing the dwarf hominin we know today as Homo floresiensis that has shocked the world. The report changed the geographical landscape of early humans that previously stated that the Pleistocene Asia was only represented by two species, Homo erectus and Homo sapiens . The report titled "A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia" written by Peter Brown and Mike J. Morwood from the University of New England with Thomas Sutikna, Raden Pandji Soejono, Jatmiko, E. Wahyu Saptomo and Rokus Awe Due from the National Archaeology Research Institute (ARKENAS), Indonesia, presents more diversity in the genus Homo. “Immediately, my fever vanished. I couldn’t sleep well that night. I couldn’t wait for sunrise. In the early morning we went to the site, and when we arrived in the cave, I didn’t say a thing because both my mind and heart couldn’t handle this incredible moment. I just went down

Elephant bell gourd (Trichosanthes tricuspidata)

Elephant bell gourd ( Trichosanthes tricuspidata ) is a plant species in the Cucurbitaceae, stems grow elongated to propagate or climb, many branches, cylindrical in shape and green in color. T. cochinchinensis has stem tips or branches that twist to attach themselves to a support or other plant. It grows to climb to cover a support, usually on another plant, up to several meters and creeps along the ground to reach another support. Arrow-shaped leaves, split base, sharp apex and two wings at an acute angle, have many veins ending at a sharp edge, green and have a long petiole. Single flower is white. The fruit is round to oval, ends with a tail, young green and turns red with maturity, thin skin, thick flesh and reddish yellow, has a short stalk and hangs. The seeds are in the middle of the fruit. Seeds are white, oval and flat. Black coated seeds. Elephant bell gourd grows wild in primary and secondary forests, agricultural land, roadsides, watersheds, especially on slopes, damp a

Yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) use thermal infrared to navigate hosts

NEWS - Aedes aegypti transmits the viruses that cause dengue, yellow fever, Zika and other diseases every year, while Anopheles gambiae transmits the parasite that causes malaria. Their capacity to transmit disease has made mosquitoes the deadliest animals. Moreover, climate change and global travel have expanded the range of A. aegypti beyond tropical geography. The mosquitoes are now present in subtropical climates that were previously unheard of just a few years ago. Male mosquitoes are harmless, but females need blood for egg development. There is no single cue that these insects rely on to feed; they integrate information from many different senses across a wide range of distances. " A. aegypti very adept at finding human hosts. This work provides a new insight into how they achieve this. Once we got all the right parameters, the results were clear and undeniable," says Nicolas DeBeaubien of the University of California at Santa Barbara UCSB. The researchers added

Nactus simakal, gecko evolved in geomorphological habitat of Dauan Island

NEWS - Researchers report a new species of Nactus simakal that lives in a boulder-strewn habitat with deep crevices on Dauan Island in the northern Torres Strait. The Torres Strait Islands lie between Cape York Peninsula, north-eastern Australia, and the southern coast of Papua New Guinea and are rare in gecko biodiversity. The vertebrate fauna of the islands is a mix of Australian and New Guinean species with only two endemic species described to date. Conrad Hoskin of James Cook University in Townsville and colleagues describe the new species as highly distinctive based on ND2 mtDNA genetics and morphologically on its slender, elongated striped pattern. N. simakal is broadly similar to Nactus galgajuga (Ingram, 1978) which is restricted to a boulder-strewn habitat about 750 km to the south in mainland north-eastern Queensland, but is easily distinguished morphologically and genetically from saxicolines. N. simakal is the second vertebrate species to be described and considered

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