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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 317,046 articles Wikispecies is free, because life is in the public domain!

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Viscum album on Populus nigra	Trichogaster lalius	Cucurbita maxima	Asplenium nidus	Coreopsis grandiflora

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 José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage   (1823-1907). A Portuguese zoologist and politician. He was the curator of Zoology at the Museum of Natural History in Lisbon. His work at the Museum consisted in acquiring, describing and coordinating collections, many of which arrived from the Portuguese colonies in Africa, such as Angola, Mozambique, etc. He published more than 200 taxonomic papers on mammals, birds, and fishes. In the 1880s he became the Minister of the Navy and later the Minister for Foreign Affairs for Portugal. The zoology collection at the Lisbon Museum is called the Bocage Museum in his honor. He was responsible for identifying many new species, which he named according to the naturalist who found them.

Species of the week Cape Sundew Drosera capensis digesting an insect Drosera capensis Some facts on this plant: Height: Around 150 mm. Flower number per plant: 15 to 30. Range: The Cape in South Africa. Habitat: Found in marshes, along streams, permanent seeps or damp areas. Flower apearance: Flowers individually open in the morning and close by mid afternoon, lasting just one day each. Leaf size: Up to 3.5 cm. long (not including the petiole) and 0.5 cm. wide. Conservation status: Not threatened. First described: By the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus in 1753. You probably think of flowers as innocuous and sweet, yet Drosera capensis is a dangerous predator. For insects that is. These flying, crawling creatures are attracted to the leaves which secrete a sweetly scented fluid from their tentacles. This fluid has a sticky quality and the insect is trapped and retained. The sensitive tentacles detect the caught prey and produce more dew to secure the victim in the trap. Neighbouring tentacles then mobilize and slowly lean over and engulf the hapless prey. The plant then proceeds to digest the insect and to extract its nutrients, especially the nitrogen. This plant is sophisticated enough to distinguish between a meal and other stimuli such as droplets of water, which the leaf and tentacles ignore. The Cape sundew belongs to the Droseraceae or "the sundew family" which contains about 126 species. The name Drosera derives from Greek word, drosos, meaning dew.

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