Nature Hub

  By Lisa Algee Edited by -Vinuri Randhula Silva, This article is part of a four-part series on  biodiversity  consisting of the following articles: Biodiversity  (this article) Deforestation Palm Oil Conservation Each has been taken from the  Mongabay  main site and adapted to meet  3rd grade educational standards.  Ideally, they are to be read in the above order. Also note that we provide remedial-reading versions for each of the four articles. These versions are designed to meet 3rd grade science standards, but 2nd grade reading standards. What Is Biodiversity? Why Is It Important? Take a walk outside your home or open your window. Sit and listen. How many different animal sounds do you hear? If you live in a city you may hear cats, dogs, squirrels, bees, flies, mosquitoes and several different birds. If you live in the countryside you will probably hear more. List your sounds here: Now listen to the sounds of a rainforest. Click play. Audio Player 00:14 01:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys

         From - Mongabay for Kids,        Edited by - Vinuri Randhula Silva, Scientists have found that dugongs and green sea turtles help plants called seagrasses grow in the Great Barrier reef. Why is this important? Keep reading to learn more. This is the world-famous Great Barrier Reef: Image by Rhett A. Butler Image by Rhett A. Butler The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world. It is located off the northeast coast of Australia: Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, CC BY 3.0  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons This is a dugong. It is a marine mammal: A dugong (Dugong dugong) feeding on seagrass in Egypt. Image by  Julien Willem  via Creative Commons ( CC BY-SA 2.0 ) This is a green sea turtle. It is a reptile: A green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) feeding on seagrass in an intertidal meadow at Lizard Island, Queensland. Image courtesy of TropWATER, James Cook University Both dugongs and green sea turtles live in the Gre

From - Mongabay for  kids, Edited by Vinuri Randhula Silva , Artist’s impression of Nombe Rockshelter megafauna, showing the Nombe kangaroo on the right. Illustration courtesy Peter Schouten. The animals that live in the world today also have extinct relatives that lived thousands or millions of years ago. We know about these extinct species because we find their fossils. A team of paleontologists from Flinders University in Australia has used a fossil to identify a previously unknown type of primitive giant kangaroo. This giant kangaroo lived in the rain forests of New Guinea. This is an artist’s impression of the new kangaroo: Can you find this kangaroo in the forest scene below? About 5 – 8 million years ago, the island of New Guinea was connected to mainland Australia by a land bridge. At that time, sea levels were lower than they are now.  Today, the islands of New Guinea and Australia are separated by a body of water called the Torres Strait. There are no longer large kangaroo sp

 From Mongabay for Kids Edited by -Vinuri Randhula Silva, A Malayan flying fox, which despite it’s name is actually a bat. Image by Andrea Janda via  Flickr  ( CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 ). Ecosystem services  are things nature provides for humans that help us survive and stay healthy. For example, plants produce oxygen that helps us breathe. Plants also provide food and shelter for us. Bats provide ecosystem services to people too. Bats help pollinate plants that provide us with food. In the province of North Sumatra in Indonesia, bats help pollinate important crops like durian (a kind of fruit) and sugar palm. Bats play an important role in the pollination of durian, a crop that is vital for many local farmers’ livelihoods. Image by Cameron Yee via  Flickr  ( CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 ). Researcher Hamid Arrum Harahap studied what farmers in North Sumatra thought of the bats that live on their farms. Some of the species of bats living there include the large flying fox (one of the largest bat species), t

 From - Mongabay for Kids, Edited by- Vinuri Randhula Silva,                                          Unknown Costarica frog This is a story about a small nature reserve in northern Costa Rica that has been full of surprises. In the early 2000s Donald Varela-Soto and Melvin Rodriguez bought a property located between two volcanoes (called Miravalles and Tenorio). They had a plan. They wanted to rewild the land, much of which had been turned into cattle pasture. They wanted to restore the land to its natural forest state. Map of the Tenorio-Miravalles Biological Corridor, a matrix composed of cattle pastures, agricultural land, and small towns between the Tenorio Volcano National Park and the Miravalles Volcano National Park. Credit: Sofia Pastor-Parajeles As the years passed, Varela-Soto and Rodriguez transformed their property into the 220-hectare (544-acre) Tapir Valley Nature Reserve. The reserve is marked on the map above, just north of the Tenorio Volcano National Park. They remov