Cynthia Moss

Cynthia Moss (born 1940 in Ossining, New York) is an American conservationist, wildlife researcher and writer, who specializes in African elephant family structure, life cycle, and behavior. She is director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Kenya, where she has studied the same population of elephants for over 40 years, and is Program Director and Trustee for the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE).

Life and work

Moss graduated at Smith College in Massachusetts in 1962, majoring in philosophy. She worked as a reporter for Newsweek, specializing in theater and dramatic arts.

While visiting Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania 1967, she met leading elephant researcher Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton. The following year she quit her job at Newsweek and moved to Africa to become a research assistant for Douglas-Hamilton. In 1972 she started the Amboseli Elephant Research Project at Amboseli National Park in Kenya.

Moss is most famous for her study of Echo, an elephant matriarch who has been the subject of several books and documentaries.

Moss

Mosses are small flowerless plants that typically grow in dense green clumps or mats, often in damp or shady locations. The individual plants are usually composed of simple, one-cell thick leaves, attached to a stem that may be branched or unbranched and has only a limited role in conducting water and nutrients. Although some species have vascular tissue this is generally poorly developed and structurally different from similar tissue found in other plants. They do not have seeds and after fertilisation develop sporophytes (unbranched stalks topped with single capsules containing spores). They are typically 0.2–10 cm (0.1–3.9 in) tall, though some species are much larger, like Dawsonia, the tallest moss in the world, which can grow to 50 cm (20 in) in height.

Mosses are commonly confused with lichens, hornworts, and liverworts. Lichens may superficially look like mosses, and have common names that include the word "moss" (e.g., "reindeer moss" or "iceland moss"), but are not related to mosses. Mosses, hornworts, and liverworts are collectively called "bryophytes". Bryophytes share the property of having the haploid gametophyte generation as the dominant phase of the life cycle. This contrasts with the pattern in all "vascular" plants (seed plants and pteridophytes), where the diploid sporophyte generation is dominant.

Mossé

Mossé is a French family name:

Mossø

Mossø is Denmark's third largest freshwater lake and Jutland's largest, as measured by surface area. The lake is located just east of the city of Skanderborg in east Jutland, but is part of both Skanderborg Municipality and Horsens Municipality. Mossø lies in the middle of the area and landscape known as Søhøjlandet (English: The Lake-highland).

There is a small lake named Mossø in the forest of Rold Skov in Himmerland.

Nature

Both ospreys and white-tailed eagle is regularly observed at Mossø and the later have recently established here as a breeding bird, which is rare in Denmark.

Mossø is part of the 4,470 ha Natura 2000 protection area, designated as number 52. The lake is also designated as an international bird protection area, with number F35.

References

Sources