Among the Vietnamese flora, Orchidaceae constitutes one of the families having the highest number of species within the flowering plants. In our opinion, the Vietnamese Orchidaceae encompasses around 140 genus and over 800 species. Being a second largest family of ...

Extinction is known to be one of the rules of nature. So why have people had to pay much concern in the disappearance of many species nowadays? The answer for this question is the interrelation between extinction and speciation. Speciation is a slow process gaining mutations of one species ...

As a part of PARC project at Ba Be National park and Na Hang Natures Reserve in the northeaster Vietnam, in April and May 2001 scientists from Birdlife international conducted a series of biodiversity surveys of the remaining forest blocks that lie outside of the two ...

Another new species of laughingthrush has recently been described from the central highlands. This brings to three the number of new bird species recently described from the central highlands. The description of this latest discovery appears in the March issue of the British Omithologists Club.

The incidence of mimicry among butterflies has been the subject of considerable study and controversy in the past. It is l certainly one of the most striking and interesting features of tropical butterflies that so many apparently very similar forms in fact belong to quite different species or families . The concept of mimicry is based on the assumption that certain species are unpleasant, unpalatable or inedible to predators such as birds and other vertebrate enemies of butterflies, and that these species are coloured with conspicuous patterns of 'warning' colours which are recognized and avoided by ...

Variation is a fundamental characteristic of all animals. It is frequently overlooked that members of a species are not all  stereotyped replicas of their parents. They are not like mass-produced objects stamped out on a machine; they are living creatures, each individual being the embodiment and expression of a unique combination of genetic material. Seen in this light, variation between individuals becomes less unexpected and it is certainly true that butterflies exhibit this trait more clearly than most other animals. Indeed, the range of variation in the patterns on the wings of some butterflies is so great that it may be very difficult ...