| Liguus fasciatus | |
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| Liguus fasciatus | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | |
| Phylum: | |
| Class: | |
| (unranked): | clade Heterobranchia clade Euthyneura ContentsSigmurethra |
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| Genus: | |
| Species: | L. fasciatus |
| Binomial name | |
| Liguus fasciatus (Müller, 1774) | |
Liguus fasciatus, the Liguus Tree Snails, also known as "living jewels", is a species of air-breathing land snail, a tree snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusk in the family Orthalicidae.
In Florida this species includes the following 52 varieties or color forms, while in Cuba it is present in more than 70 varieties. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Shells of Liguus fasciatus can reach a size of 42–68 millimetres (1.7–2.7 in). [6] [1] These polished shining shells, ranging from white to almost black, have whorls banded with many colors (chestnut, orange, yellow pink or green). [1]
These tree snails feed on fungus and algae scraped from the bark of the host plants (mainly wild tamarind ( Lysiloma latisiliquum ), pigeon plum ( Coccoloba diversifolia ) and Myrsine species). They can be found mainly from May through September, but they are active throughout the year. [1]
This species is the most widespread of all the Liguus. It occurs in the Caribbean Area (South Florida. Florida Keys, North coast of Cuba, Isle of Pines). [1] [7]
These tree snails can be found in southern Florida on hammocks, tropical forest and shrubs habitats that are slightly higher in elevation than the surrounding area. [1]
Monroe County is a county in the state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 82,874. Its county seat is Key West. Monroe County includes the islands of the Florida Keys and comprises the Key West-Key Largo Micropolitan Statistical Area. Over 99.9% of the county's population lives on the Florida Keys. The mainland, which is part of the Everglades, comprises 87% of the county's land area and is virtually uninhabited with only 17 people recorded in the 2020 census.
The Everglades is a natural region of flooded grasslands in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida, comprising the southern half of a large drainage basin within the Neotropical realm. The system begins near Orlando with the Kissimmee River, which discharges into the vast but shallow Lake Okeechobee. Water leaving the lake in the wet season forms a slow-moving river 60 miles (97 km) wide and over 100 miles (160 km) long, flowing southward across a limestone shelf to Florida Bay at the southern end of the state. The Everglades experiences a wide range of weather patterns, from frequent flooding in the wet season to drought in the dry season. Throughout the 20th century, the Everglades suffered significant loss of habitat and environmental degradation.
Everglades National Park is an American national park that protects the southern twenty percent of the original Everglades in Florida. The park is the largest tropical wilderness in the United States and the largest wilderness of any kind east of the Mississippi River. An average of one million people visit the park each year. Everglades is the third-largest national park in the contiguous United States after Death Valley and Yellowstone. UNESCO declared the Everglades & Dry Tortugas Biosphere Reserve in 1976 and listed the park as a World Heritage Site in 1979, and the Ramsar Convention included the park on its list of Wetlands of International Importance in 1987. Everglades is one of only three locations in the world to appear on all three lists.
Picayune Strand State Forest is one of 37 state forests in Florida managed by the Florida Forest Service. The 78,000-acre forest consists primarily of cypress swamps, wet pine flatwoods and wet prairies. It also features a grid of closed roads over part of it, left over from previous land development schemes.
Big Cypress National Preserve is a United States National Preserve located in South Florida, about 45 miles west of Miami on the Atlantic coastal plain. The 720,000-acre (2,900 km2) Big Cypress, along with Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas, became the first national preserves in the United States National Park System when they were established on October 11, 1974. In 2008, Florida film producer Elam Stoltzfus featured the preserve in a PBS documentary.
Hammock is a term used in the southeastern United States for stands of trees, usually hardwood, that form an ecological island in a contrasting ecosystem. Hammocks grow on elevated areas, often just a few inches high, surrounded by wetlands that are too wet to support them. The term hammock is also applied to stands of hardwood trees growing on slopes between wetlands and drier uplands supporting a mixed or coniferous forest. Types of hammocks found in the United States include tropical hardwood hammocks, temperate hardwood hammocks, and maritime or coastal hammocks. Hammocks are also often classified as hydric, mesic or xeric. The types are not exclusive, but often grade into each other.
The Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge is part of the United States National Wildlife Refuge System, located in southwestern Florida, twenty miles east of Naples, in the upper segment of the Fakahatchee Strand of the Big Cypress Swamp. It is north of I-75 and west of SR 29.
The environment of Florida in the United States yields an array of land and marine life in a mild subtropical climate. This environment has drawn millions of people to settle in the once rural state over the last hundred years. Florida's population increases by about 1,000 residents each day. Land development and water use have transformed the state, primarily through drainage and infill of the wetlands that once covered most of the peninsula.
Tree snail is a common name that is applied to various kinds of tropical air-breathing land snails, pulmonate gastropod mollusks that have shells, and that live in trees, in other words, are exclusively arboreal in habitat.
Liguus is a genus of large tropical air-breathing land snails, more specifically arboreal or tree snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the family Orthalicidae.
Before drainage, the Everglades, a region of tropical wetlands in southern Florida, were an interwoven mesh of marshes and prairies covering 4,000 square miles (10,000 km2). The Everglades is both a vast watershed that has historically extended from Lake Okeechobee 100 miles (160 km) south to Florida Bay, and many interconnected ecosystems within a geographic boundary. It is such a unique meeting of water, land, and climate that the use of either singular or plural to refer to the Everglades is appropriate. When Marjory Stoneman Douglas wrote her definitive description of the region in 1947, she used the metaphor "River of Grass" to explain the blending of water and plant life.
Orthalicus reses, the Stock Island tree snail, is a species of large tropical air-breathing tree snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusk in the family Orthalicidae. It was first described in 1830 by the American naturalist Thomas Say. The holotype, a specimen probably collected in Key West, was subsequently lost. Over a hundred years later, in 1946, the American biologist Henry Augustus Pilsbry redescribed the species using a specimen from Stock Island, Florida. Orthalicus reses has two subspecies, O. reses reses and O. reses nosodryas. The validity of these two taxa is still being discussed, but some experts argue that considering them as independent units may be important for management purposes.
Pine–cypress forest is a type of mixed conifer woodland in which at least one species of pine and one species of cypress are present. Such forests are noted in several parts of the world, but are particularly well studied in Japan, and the United States.
Tropical hardwood hammocks are closed canopy forests, dominated by a diverse assemblage of evergreen and semi-deciduous tree and shrub species, mostly of West Indian origin. Tropical hardwood hammocks are found in South Florida or the Everglades, with large concentrations on the Miami Rock Ridge, in the Florida Keys, along the northern shores of Florida Bay, and in the Pinecrest region of the Big Cypress Swamp.
The South Florida rocklands ecoregion, in the tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests biome, occurs in southern Florida and the Florida Keys in the United States, where they would naturally cover an area of 2,100 km2 (810 sq mi). These forests form on limestone outcrops with very thin soil; the higher elevation separating them from other habitats such as coastal marshes and marl prairies. On mainland Florida, rocklands exist primarily on the Miami Rock Ridge, which extends from the Miami River south to Everglades National Park. South Florida rocklands are further divided into pine rocklands and rockland hammocks.
Alecton discoidalis is a species of firefly in the beetle family Lampyridae, commonly known as the Cuban endemic firefly. The larvae of this species are predators on both pulmonate and operculate land snails. Alecton discoidalis is the type species of the genus Alecton.
A cypress dome is a type of freshwater forested wetland, or a swamp, found in the southeastern part of the United States. They are dominated by the Taxodium spp., either the bald cypress, or pond cypress. The name comes from the dome-like shape of treetops, formed by smaller trees growing on the edge where the water is shallow while taller trees grow at the center in deeper water. They usually appear as circular, but if the center is too deep, they form a “doughnut” shape when viewed from above. Cypress domes are characteristically small compared to other swamps, however they can occur at a range of sizes, dependent on the depth.
Chomp is a young adult novel by Carl Hiaasen first published in 2012, and set in Hiaasen's native Florida. It is his fourth young adult novel. His previous three, also about Florida wildlife, are Hoot, Flush and Scat.
Sideroxylon reclinatum subsp. austrofloridense, known as the Everglades bully, is a species of rare plant native to southern Florida. It was described in 1990.
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