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At around 1200 square kilometres the Wet Tropics Rainforest is a part of Australia's largest contiguous area of rainforest. Contains 30% of frog, marsupial and reptile species in Australia, and 65% of Australia's bat and butterfly species. 20% of bird species in the country can be found in this area including the threatened cassowary. Added to ...
The generic name Lophosaurus stands for "crested lizard", from the Greek lophos for "crest", and saurus for "lizard". [4] The specific name, boydii, is a reference to English-born John Archibald Boyd (1846–1926), who lived in Fiji from 1865 to 1882 and then on a sugar plantation at Ingham, Queensland, and collected specimens for the Australian Museum.
The red kangaroo is the largest extant macropod and is one of Australia's heraldic animals, appearing with the emu on the coat of arms of Australia. [1]The fauna of Australia consists of a large variety of animals; some 46% of birds, 69% of mammals, 94% of amphibians, and 93% of reptiles that inhabit the continent are endemic to it.
Amphibians of Australia are limited to members of the order Anura, commonly known as frogs. All Australian frogs are in the suborder Neobatrachia, also known as the modern frogs, which make up the largest proportion of extant frog species. About 230 of the 5,280 species of frog are native to Australia with 93% of them endemic.
Australia has over 860 species, a large number in comparison to other continents; for example, North America's total is about 280. [1] The most species-rich group is Squamata, the snakes and lizards. They are especially diverse in the arid areas of Australia, where other fauna are scarcer.
Young cassowary in the Daintree Rainforest. Animal biodiversity is high, also. 672 species of terrestrial vertebrates have been recorded in the ecoregion, 370 species of birds, 70 species of reptile, and 78 species of freshwater fish (of Australia's total of 180 fish species). 11% of the vertebrates are endemic to the region, and 22% of the ...
The forest kingfisher is native to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Australia, where it is found on or near the Australian coastline from Port Stephens in New South Wales northwards to Cape York and westwards across the Top End. It is a summer visitor in the southern parts of its range in New South Wales and southern ...
Many of Australia's ecoregions, and the species within those regions, are threatened by human activities and introduced plant and animal species. The federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 is a legal framework for the protection of threatened species.