iranian art is one of the richest artistic heritages in the world comprising different fields such as architecture, paintings, weaving, pottery, calligraphy, metalworking, petrography, etc. this art had inseparable link with nature; especially with plants and animals in different eras; and it has been interwoven with poetry and literature so that its glory, beauty and expression have increased ...

Several recent estimates of global biodiversity have concluded that the total number of species on Earth lies near the lower end of the wide range touted in previous decades. However, none of these recent estimates formally explore the real "elephant in the room", namely, what proportion of species are taxonomically invisible to conventional assessments, and thus, as undiagnosed cryptic species...

The effectiveness of static versus dynamic learning material was tested using fish biodiversity as learning domain. Eighteen fish species were presented either as videos or selected freeze-frames to students. Thereafter, students exercised identifying these species in their natural habitats during snorkeling. Students’ knowledge of biodiversity was measured from test videos before (posttest 1) ...

The Tennessee River Basin is considered one of the most important regions for freshwater biodiversity anywhere on the globe. The Tennessee River Basin currently includes populations of at least half of the described contemporary diversity of extant North American freshwater fishes, crayfish, mussel, and gastropod species. However, comparatively little is known about the biodiversity of this bas...

Under the support of the National Digital Archive Program (NDAP), basic species information about most Taiwanese fishes, including their morphology, ecology, distribution, specimens with photos, and literatures have been compiled into the “Fish Database of Taiwan” (http://fishdb.sinica.edu.tw). We expect that the all Taiwanese fish species databank (RSD), with 2800+ species, and the digital “Fi...

Structural complexity on coral reefs has been shown to positively influence several measures of biodiversity, and is thus an important ecological variable. The dominant field method used by reef scientists to measure structural complexity is the chain-and-tape method, which produces a measure of rugosity calculated as the ratio of contour–following vs. straight distance between two points on th...

Species check-lists are helpful to establish Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and protect local richness, endemicity, rarity, and biodiversity in general. However, such exhaustive taxonomic lists (i.e., true surrogate of biodiversity) require extensive and expensive censuses, and the use of estimator surrogates (e.g., habitats) is an appealing alternative. In truth, surrogate effectiveness appears...