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Welcome to Wikispecies The free species directory that anyone can edit. It covers Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Bacteria, Archaea, Protista and all other forms of life. So far we have 461,263 articles Wikispecies is free, because life is in the public domain!

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Gephyrocapsa oceanica	Pholiota squarrosa	Tyrannus melancholicus	Neobisium sylvaticum	Anemone pulsatilla

Explore Wikispecies HELP Section – Detailed information on creating pages. Taxonomy – Information on the Linnaean classification of species. Village Pump – Discuss the project. Done and To Do – See references to very detailed areas and defined future targets Wikispecies FAQ – Check replies to common concerns. Image Guidelines – Our recommendation on where to upload illustrations Wikispecies PR – Help us by spreading the word of Wikispecies Collaboration with ZooKeys A collaboration between Wikispecies and ZooKeys has been announced. PhytoKeys also joined the collaboration in November 2010. Images of species from ZooKeys and PhytoKeys will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and used in Wikispecies. Distinguished author Franz Steindachner (1834–1919) An Austrian zoologist, ichthyologist, and herpetologist. Steindachner published over 200 papers on fishes and over 50 papers on reptiles and amphibians, and described hundreds of new species of fish and dozens of new amphibians and reptiles. At least seven species of reptile have been named after him. Being interested in natural history, Steindachner took up the study of fossil fishes. In 1860 he was appointed to the position of director of the fish collection at the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, a position which had remained vacant since the death of Johann Jakob Heckel in 1857. Steindachner's reputation as an ichthyologist grew, and in 1868 he was invited by Swiss-born American zoologist Louis Agassiz to accept a position at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. Steindachner took part in the USCSS Hassler Expedition of 1871–1872; a journey that circumnavigated South America from Boston to San Francisco. In 1874 he returned to Vienna, and in 1887 was appointed director of the zoological department of the Naturhistorisches Museum. He was promoted to director of the museum in 1898. He traveled extensively during his career, his research trips taking him throughout the Iberian Peninsula, the Red Sea, the Canary Islands, Senegal, Latin America, and more. From 1875, he was member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences. In 1892 he became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. See also: Distinguished authors of previous months.

Species of the month Great Horsetail Equisetum telmateia Some facts about this horsetail: Height: 40–150 cm (rarely 2 m). Stem diameter: 1 cm. Habitat: moist woodlands with a seasonal temperate climate. Distribution: Europe (E. t. subsp. telmateia), and western North America (E. t. subsp. braunii). Conservation status: Least Concern First described: by Ehrhart in 1783. The horsetails (class Equisetopsida) are an ancient group of spore-bearing vascular land plants. First evolving during the Devonian period, they developed in the Carboniferous period into some of the largest plants of the time, some becoming trees of 30 metres or more tall with stout trunks. With the evolution of seed plants, their dominance waned substantially, and now only a little over 20 species, all in the one genus Equisetum, still survive. Despite this, the genus has a nearly world-wide distribution, absent only from Australasia and Antarctica. Equisetum telmateia is one of the larger species, but like all the genus, is a herbaceous perennial plant. It produces its spores in a cone on separate stems in early spring (photo), with the foliage stems (above) growing in late spring and persisting through summer until autumn. In winter, only the underground rhizome survives. See also: Species of previous months

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