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The maximum number of organisms that can be supported by an ecosystem.

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A place where organisms usually live.

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Part of environment that keeps a population size at a level below its full potential.

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The path of energy from producers to consumers.

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Large regions characterized by climate and the community of species grouped together.

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All populations of organisms that live in the same area.

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Group of same species that live in the same place at the same time.

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Organisms that are closely related and produce offsprings.

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A community of organisms and their nonliving environment.

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The study of how organisms interact with one another.

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Things that are non-living.

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Things that are living.

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A consumer that only eats plants.

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These creatures pose difficulties for Germans.

Credit: S.Cooper Digital | Shutterstock

Squirrels are nimble, bushy-tailed rodents found all over the world. They belong to the Sciuridae family, which includes prairie dogs, chipmunks and marmots.

There are more than 200 species of squirrels, according to the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS), and they are categorized into three types: tree squirrels, ground squirrels and flying squirrels. These three categories are further broken down into many squirrel types, such as Albino, Mountain Tree, Antelope, Spotted, Grey, American Red, Douglas, Fox, Pygmy, Northern Flying, Southern, Arizona Gray, Idaho, Arctic Ground, Albert's, Franklin, Richardson, Rock, White and Black squirrel.

Since there are so many types of squirrels, they range greatly in size. The smallest squirrel is the African pygmy squirrel. It grows to 2.8 to 5 inches (7 to 13 centimeters) in length and weighs just 0.35 ounces (10 grams). The Indian giant squirrel is the world's largest known squirrel. It grows to 36 inches (1 meter) long and weighs up to 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms).

American red squirrels feed on the seeds of evergreen trees.

Credit: Barb Thomas

Grey squirrels, commonly found in North America, are medium-size squirrels. They grow to 15 to 20 inches (38.1 to 50.8 cm) in length, with their tails adding an extra 6 to 9.5 inches (15.24 to 24.13 cm) to their length. They typically weigh about 1 to 1.5 pounds (0.45 to 0.68 kg).

A group of squirrels are called a scurry or dray. They are very territorial and will fight to the death to defend their area. Mother squirrels are the most vicious when defending their babies.

Some squirrels are crepuscular. This means that they are only active at dawn and dusk.

Squirrels live on every continent except in Australia and Antarctica, according to the BBC.

Tree squirrels typically live in wooded areas, since they prefer to live in trees. Ground squirrels live up to their names. They dig burrows, a system of tunnels underground, to live in. Some squirrels also hibernate in burrows during the winter to keep warm.

Albino squirrels are quite popular in some parts of the United States. Olney, Ill., is one of the towns that calls itself "Home of the White Squirrels," along with Marionville, Mo., and Brevard, N.C. The township of Kenton, Tenn., proudly boasts a population of 200 of the furry, pale rodents.

Credit: Andrea Browning

Flying squirrels make their homes in tree holes or nests that are built into the crooks of branches. To get from tree to tree or from a tree to the ground, flying squirrels spread the muscle membrane between their legs and body and glide on the air. They can glide up to 160 feet (48 m), making it look like they can fly.

On average, squirrels eat about one pound of food per week. Many people think that squirrels only eat nuts, but this isn't true. Squirrels are omnivores, which means they like to eat plants and meat. Squirrels mainly eat fungi, seeds, nuts and fruits, but they will also munch on eggs, small insects, caterpillars, small animals and even young snakes.

To prepare for cold months, squirrels will bury their food. In the winter months they have a store of food they can eat when supplies are scarce.

A female carries her young for a gestation period of 29 to 65 days, depending on the size of the species; smaller squirrels have shorter gestation periods, according to the University of Michigan's Animal Diversity Web. Mothers give birth to two to eight offspring at one time. Babies are called kits or kittens and are born blind. They depend on their mothers for around two or three months.

A boost of stress during pregnancy helps red squirrels ensure that their pups will grow fast.

Credit: Photo by Ryan W. Taylor

After seven to eight weeks, the young are weaned. When the kits leave the nest, they don't travel farther than 2 miles from home, according to the Massachusetts Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Some species of squirrel have new litters every few months or as little as twice per year.

The taxonomy of squirrels, according to the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS), is:

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Rodentia

Suborder: Sciuromorpha

Family: Sciuridae

Subfamilies: Callosciurinae (Southern Asian tree squirrels), Ratufinae (giant tree squirrels), Sciurillinae (South American pygmy squirrels), Sciurinae (includes flying squirrels), Xerinae (includes ground squirrels)

Genera & species: 21 genera & more than 200 species, including Lariscus hosei (Four-striped ground squirrel), Exilisciurus whiteheadi (Tufted pygmy squirrel), Ratufa bicolor (Black giant squirrel), Glaucomys sabrinusi (Northern flying squirrel) and Tamiasciurus hudsonicus (Red squirrel)

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List, these species are endangered: San Joaquin antelope ground squirrel, woolly flying squirrel, Sipora flying squirrel, Mentawi flying squirrel, Siberut flying squirrel, smoky flying squirrel, Vincent's bush squirrel, Baja California rock squirrel, Idaho ground squirrel, Perote ground squirrel, fraternal squirrel and Mearns' squirrel. The Namdapha flying squirrel is critically endangered.

Squirrels have four teeth in the front of their mouth that constantly grow throughout their lives. This ensures that their teeth don't wear down to nubs from gnawing on nuts and other objects.

These rodents have remarkable little bodies. For example, a squirrel has padded feet that cushions jumps from up to 20 feet (6 meters) long. Their eyes are high on their head and placed on each side of the head so they can see a large amount of their surroundings without having to turn their head. They are also fantastic runners. Squirrels can run 20 mph (32 kph).

The gray squirrel ( Sciurus carolinensis) isn't just gray. It comes in a variety of colors, such as white, gray, brown and black. These little squirrels are great at planting trees. They bury their acorns, but forget where they put them. The forgotten acorns become oak trees.

Correction: This article was updated on May 4, 2016, to reflect the correct length of the gestation period.

Other resources:

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Squirrels are nimble, bushy-tailed rodents found all over the world. They belong to the Sciuridae family, which includes prairie dogs, chipmunks and marmots. There are more than 200 species of squirrels, according to the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS), and they are categorized into three types: tree squirrels, ground squirrels and flying squirrels.

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A consumer that eats both plants and meat.

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In two decades of e-commerce in the US, we have produced only two standalone e-commerce companies of meaningful enterprise value: Amazon and eBay. One went public in 1997, the other in 1998. We haven't had an IPO of an e-commerce company that has gotten to a two billion of market cap in fifteen years, let alone double digit billions.

Yet Marc Andreessen is predicting the death of traditional retail as e-commerce "eats the world."

What gives?

The problem with e-commerce is that the joy of the consumer experience, extraordinary top-line growth, and market share theft are not yet met by strong business fundamentals for standalone e-commerce players.

If you're selling other people's brands, you are competing not via a local group of competitors but with everyone. In this type of market, you might imagine having one large national winner. You might imagine that winner is ruthless about scale and cost, and is run by a visionary leader who with an extreme long-term focus. Such a company might not make real money for a long time - but when it does - it will be incredibly powerful.

Such a company might also be smart about acquiring competitors who, when they reach scale, become a threat. Such a company might leverage an exceptional loyalty program to further share of wallet with customers, taking advantage of operating leverage in distribution. Such a company can be expected to move from vertical to vertical, leveraging that growing share of wallet, to become the nation's biggest store.

Such a company exists.

It is called Amazon. Its loyalty program is called Amazon Prime where you pay to spend more with Amazon. It has moved over two decades from books to hard goods to soft lines. It has diversified into a technology business, Amazon Web Services, to further the moat around its core e-commerce asset. I'm not a stock picker, but I'm long Amazon, very long, and believe that it's inevitable that as e-commerce steals share from traditional retail, Amazon will pass Wal-Mart as our nation's biggest retailer.

Only two start-ups have properly challenged Amazon over the past decade: Zappos and Diapers. Amazon, shrewdly, acquired them both. Both companies faced long roads to generating profits in the ferocious low-cost game of competing with Amazon, and both decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Having spent time with Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin, the leadership duo who built Zappos, and Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara, the founders of Diapers, I can tell you: these are intense competitors who recognized the best outcome was to join forces with the industry leader.

So if Amazon is the low cost winner of selling brands online, if they are acquiring their best competitors, and if their everyday low prices are available to the entire country via a mechanical turk algorithm which is guaranteed to beat you, how do you compete?

eBay competes by being the leading peer-to-peer selling site, which is a different business than Amazon's, and by having made a very, very smart (and lucky?) acquisition called PayPal.

For everyone else, the answer is you don't compete with Amazon in the low-cost selling of third-party brands, because you can't. The downward pressure on your gross margin combined with operating at a fraction of Amazon's scale means you won't get past being niche.

Said differently, if your business is standalone e-commerce selling third-party brands, good luck. You can't generate enough operating profit to scale beyond getting noticed, counter-attacked, and at best acquired. You are forced into stay right where you are.

I couldn't sleep last night in advance of an early flight out of Stockholm, so I did something I often do when I can't: I watched videos of grizzly bear attacks on YouTube. I love how fierce grizzlies are, and how fearless they can be. When a grizzly sinks its teeth into you it shakes you, mercilessly, until you're subdued. See this video, not for the faint of heart.When it knows your dying, it stops and conserves energy while you die so it can relax before feeding.

I don't love Amazon the way I love grizzly bears and other apex predators, but I sure do respect them. There is much to admire about the company: the tenacity to go for it all, Grove-like paranoia about competition, the discipline to thoughtfully time when they push the frontier, and sheer ferociousness as competitors. They put firms out of business, old-school style. Outside of not showing a little more leadership on the inevitable erosion of their sales tax advantage, I admire them.

Bezos endured ridicule in the early innings from Wall Street. Now he is at the helm of what could become the world's biggest retailer. Amazon is the kind of company that could have a century-long run. While I often hear people complaining about Amazon, I think it is instructive that it is rarely consumers who are doing the complaining.

With the grizzly bear in the room, what should everyone else do: give up?

Hell no, this is America. We're capitalists and we're fighters, and today's David is tomorrow's Goliath.

Who is it going to be?

I observe four strategies in the marketplace to deal with Amazon's incumbency: proprietary pricing, proprietary selection, proprietary experience, and proprietary merchandise.
Proprietary Pricing
Proprietary pricing is what created the flash sale industry. By temporally offering exclusive access to a better price, an e-commerce player can grow extremely quickly. Price is a powerful motivator, and temporary price breaks are the single best way to drive conversion online. Just look at Cyber Monday.

When I got to New York in 2007 as founding CEO of Bonobos, many people asked me if I'd heard of Gilt Groupe. I said no. Next thing I knew they had five hundred employees. Their rise is well documented as they're one of the largest e-commerce 2.0 players in the US.

One of the shrewdest people in the flash sale space is Adam Bernhard from HauteLook, who grew his business thoughtfully and sold it to Nordstrom. Thrillist acquired JackThreads and I remember sitting with Ben Lerer just after they closed the deal and marveling at his ingenuity: he is among the first to marry content and commerce. RueLaLa has already transacted twice and is now in the hands of the extremely capable Michael Rubin, the GSI founder whose company Fanatics is an e-commerce juggernaut.

It will be fascinating to see what happens with remaining standalone flash sale players like Gilt, Fab, Zulily, One King's Lane, and Ideeli. My guess is many of them attach to full-price e-commerce businesses, either of their own creation or through M&A. Others still may diversify into proprietary merchandise or perhaps even move offline to get out of the difficult game of standalone off-price e-commerce.
Proprietary Selection
Proprietary selection is a strategy about being narrow and deep for a particular audience. It's a cousin of proprietary merchandise because it is all about assortment, though the merchandise in this case is largely third-party brands. While the merchandise is not exclusive, it can feel exclusive for three reasons: the depth of the assortment, the difficulty in finding the products elsewhere either online or offline, and the power of their communities. Though the brands may be available elsewhere, they are not featured anywhere else in such a coherently beautiful and communally addictive way.

Two of my favorite companies in this category are ModCloth and Nastygal. Susan Koger and Sophia Amoruso could not be more different, but they have one thing in common: they are both extraordinary merchant-founders who know their customers as well as anyone.While these proprietary selection communities are presently multi-brand with third-party brands, they feel so much like brands themselves that my bet is they evolve strong proprietary merchandise house labels over time such that the line blurs.
Proprietary Experience
E-commerce also creates new models that didn't make sense before. Take a subscription shoe-commerce sites like JustFab and ShoeDazzle, the fantastic beauty discovery platform Birchbox, and the luxurious dress experience Rent the Runway, or celebrity-influenced commerce like BeachMint.

There is some overlap here with other categories. Birchbox offers narrow and deep selection of other brands, and so it could go in the previous bucket. ShoeDazzle sells their own label - so it could fall into the next bucket. While these companies are rapidly evolving, they all were founded with a premise of repeat delight via e-commerce at their core.
Proprietary Merchandise
Proprietary merchandise is when a company builds its own brand with e-commerce as its core channel. By offering goods which are not available anywhere else, customers have to buy them directly from the brand. In this way, you own your own margin and you don't have to compete with other sites selling your brand.

This is the core of the strategy of players like Bonobos in menswear and Warby Parker in eyewear. As I've spent the last six years of my life pursuing this strategy, I have a lot to say about it. Suffice it to say that I'm extremely long this business model, it is my life's work, and that the only "issue" with it is it takes time to build a brand. At the end of the day, you're not building an e-commerce company, you're building a brand that has e-commerce as its core distribution channel. The difference is subtle but momentous.

So with all of these insurgency strategies, where are the IPOs?

They may be coming. But if they're coming, they're going to take longer to percolate. In the e-commerce 2.0 model, there is a significant difference from the Amazon - Zappos - Diapers era of e-commerce: you can't scale simply by adding more and more SKUs. You can't grow at 5x year-on-year, at least not for very long. Said differently, you can't run from a grizzly. It's too fast. You can't beat it at it's own game.

This next generation of e-commerce companies is as much about what you exclude as what you include. It is a paradox that excluding some things takes more time than including everything.

If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.

The new models are fundamentally - whether the merchandise is proprietary or not - about merchandising.

That difference, with merchandising at the core (e-commerce 2.0) vs. scale at the core (e-commerce 1.0), produces bad incentives if you try to grow too fast. Throw in excess capital and what you'll get is what you'll usually get when there is extra cash and nothing productive to do with it: heavy drug use.

The entire e-commerce P&L is architected to make it almost impossible for you to generate EBITDA.

Between gross revenue and net revenue, you typically have a meaningful returns line item. Then to get to your gross margin, you either are selling other brands which is a tough and thinner margin business or you are building your own vertical brand, where the margin can be terrific at scale but is offset in the early innings by increased team and marketing costs to generate that brand.

Either way, after subtracting cost of goods sold, now you're at gross margin dollars. Right? Wrong. At a traditional retailer, you'd be at gross margin. At a standalone e-commerce company, you're only at what we call product margin, because you have to net out your (often meaningful) free shipping incentive to your customers to get to gross margin. Increasingly this is free shipping one or both ways.

Your gross margin isn't really your contribution margin. You've got a host of variable to semi-variable SG&A expenses that are fundamental to doing e-commerce that are typically accounted for in SG&A. The cost of photography, merchant processing fees, customer service (being good at this is price of entry in e-commerce these days), and the non-freight cost of fulfillment, either through your own warehouse or a third-party logistics provider. Now it's time to subtract your marketing spend to get to your true contribution margin.

Gross revenue - Returns = Net revenue - COGS = Product margin - Free shipping one or both ways = Gross margin - Customer service - Merchant processing fees - Photography - Non-shipping cost of fulfillment - E-commerce operations = Sort of contribution margin - Marketing & promotions = True contribution margin.

Okay now you're at true contribution margin. To make money this contribution margin has to more than cover the cost of your payroll. And your team is expensive, because you have three teams: a brand team, a service team, and a technology team. You're building not just a merchandising engine, but a distribution channel as well.

If you want to really make money doing this, the ticker you need is AMZN. Even at a huge scale, people will accuse you of not being that profitable.

Zappos is often given as an example of why e-commerce is awesome. Zappos was awesome for consumers. From what I've heard, and I can't confirm this, at the time of the sale Zappos was generating about $10 million of EBITDA on $1 billion of gross revenue. Assume net revenues were in the $650 million range (~35% return rate), and you have 2% EBITDA margins.

The sale of Zappos to Amazon happened because it had to: it wasn't a company that was generating enough EBITDA margin to be a viable public company. It didn't have to happen right then or to Amazon as the buyer, but barring a radical change to the financial reality of that business, it had to happen.

The amazing thing about Zappos, and I admire the experience a great deal, is it proved that consumers will transact soft goods online. In so doing it set the gold standard for the return policies, shipping incentives, and customer service quality required to sell apparel and footwear over the web. When we launched Bonobos in 2007, Zappos was an inspiration for why we thought we could build a brand with e-commerce at its core.

If Zappos can sell other brands online, why can't we build our own brand online?

The irony is that all these other businesses ended up emulating a company consumers loved but which remained financially non-viable for a public offering. The world of finance never got a proper look at Zappos because it couldn't get out. Nevertheless a lot of multi-channel players and new standalone entrants tanked profitability in their own e-commerce channels because they had to follow suit to this gold standard. Meanwhile Zappos got a great exit to Amazon because of how long-term Amazon thinks, even though it was a customer service asset they were acquiring, not a financial asset.

Like Diapers who followed in their footsteps, Zappos pursued a business model whose legacy reverberates for people trying to build standalone e-commerce P&Ls. Yet neither of those two P&Ls now standalone.

Instead, Zappos and Diapers stand, like two grizzly bear cubs, shoulder to shoulder with the most fearsome mother grizzly on the planet.

This is why at Bonobos we call becoming an EBITDA-positive e-commerce company the search for the Sphinx. We know they are rumored to exist, but they are rarely seen in real life. I'm fond of saying this:

E-commerce is great. Only three problems: no IPOs, no M&A, no EBITDA.

We're on the record as saying that we've raised the last capital we need to get to profitability.

The irony is a big part of how we're getting there is by exiting standalone e-commerce.

In 2003 I went backcountry camping in Alaska. Bears are everywhere up there, and you feel more alive because of it. We took out some sea kayaks one day, and we had a guide who was in his early 20s. A med student as I recall.

I asked him if he'd seen any grizzlies. He laughed and said all the time, and then told me a story.

One day I parked my kayak on a rocky beach to take a leak. The next thing I heard was what sounded like a child screaming. Out of the bush pops a grizzly bear cub, less than a year old. It sees me and starts screaming out of sheer terror at presumably its first sight of a human.

At that point I knew I'd probably die. I cut off my stream mid-stream, sprinted toward the kayak, and rather than take the time to get in, simply dove on it and started paddling like a surfer.

Sure enough I look back to see a mama grizzly in a full charge coming after me, a sheer blur of acceleration and a surreal moment of zen terror where I thought my life was ending. I turned back ahead, braced myself to get slammed off the kayak, and paddled furiously.

The impact never came. When I looked back a second time, she was standing at the water's edge, not swimming, and just snarling and bellowing at me.

Had she been swimming I don't think I would have ever met him.

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E-Commerce is a Bear - Andy Dunn - Medium

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In two decades of e-commerce in the US, we have produced only two standalone e-commerce companies of meaningful enterprise value: Amazon and eBay. One went public in 1997, the other in 1998. We haven't had an IPO of an e-commerce company that has gotten to a two billion of market cap in fifteen years, let alone double digit billions.

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A consumer that only eats meat.

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What is the most important quality of leadership? What comes to mind right away? Is it honesty, integrity, determination or something else? To me it's courage. I would argue that without courage none of these other qualities could take root and flourish. Courage is the foundation or earth upon which all great leadership is built. Of course we can't have a conversation about courage without discussing fear. Fear is alive and well in the corporate world - fear of being fired, fear of overstepping the line, fear of the not getting the promotion, fear of not making an impact and the list goes on. We live in a world where fear is on the rise and courage is in short supply.

I want to start by sharing a personal story so you understand my relationship with courage and fear. Do you remember how in school there were three social groups? There was the 'in' crowd, the 'out' crowd and the 'so weird even out people wouldn't talk to them' crowd. Which one were you in? Unfortunately I was in the third one. I was teased and bullied so much, that every day I was terrified to even go to school. You see I evolved into the lion I am today because I had no other choice. Every scar they gave me made me stronger. I had to become fierce and unflinching just to survive. This article and so much of the work that I do everyday is for that scared little girl and the scared child in all of us. Now you know...this was my 'Oprah confession' moment (I miss her show so much!). I hope you don't think any less of me.

Courage is born out of adversity. The more you walk through fire, the stronger you get. It's going to take the COURAGE of a lion to overcome your obstacles, overtake your competition and ultimately win at whatever you set your mind to. Because without fear you become UNSTOPPABLE.~ Narges Nirumvala

Let's now look at the landscape of leadership and in broad strokes, see how courage helps us become better leaders and make our organizations stronger:
Courage to fight for what you believe in.
So many great leaders in history have been fueled by this kind of courage from Sir Winston Churchill to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. You must be willing to fight for what's right even against insurmountable odds. So often in today's corporate world it isn't a grand historical or political battle. It might be fighting for someone on your team or a project you believe in passionately. You might be fighting quietly behind closed doors and may even go unrecognized, but you do it anyway because it's the right thing to do.

Courageous leaders are willing to confront injustice and fight for what's right. They don't switch their principles on and off depending on the situation. ~ Narges Nirumvala
Courage to compromise.
This one is a little more difficult. As a leader of courage there are times when you must be willing to compromise - not your principles, but your expectations. Do you see the difference? Sometimes you win by helping everyone get something that they want.

The courageous leader finds the MIDDLE ROAD and if it doesn't exist he makes one. You don't always have to get your own way to win. ~ Narges Nirumvala
Courage to stand out in a crowd.
Courageous leaders have a strong executive presence. They don't blend in and become invisible. People feel their presence when they walk into a room before they've said a single word. Have ever watched a lion walk? Ever watched a sheep walk? The difference is night and day. You want to be the lion.
Courage to remain silent.
Sometimes courage is keeping your mouth shut when every ounce of your being is screaming to be heard. It's the hardest thing in the world to do, trust me I know, but it's a skill you must master. The ability to just "shut up and survive another day" is priceless in leadership.
Courage to be honest and speak your mind in a boardroom full of "yes" men and women.
Our boardrooms are still full of compliant, amiable 'do anything to please the boss' leaders. People who shy away from almost every confrontation and never want to 'rock the boat'. They think that it's 'just not worth the trouble'.

As a courage leader being able to rock the boat is in your job description. You must be willing to speak the truth, especially when the stakes are high. It takes real courage to be HONEST and tell people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. ~ Narges Nirumvala
Courage to make unpopular decisions.
We've seen a whole movement recently towards being 'liked' and 'likeable' thanks to social media and our obsession with acceptance and gaining self worth from the outside rather than from within.

Courageous leaders have the confidence to make unpopular and difficult decisions that will not gain them acceptance or popularity, but will gain them RESPECT. ~ Narges Nirumvala
Courage to break the rules and make new ones.
Sometimes you must be willing to break the rules, especially the ones that don't work, so you can make new ones. This takes courage because you're probably going to be in the situation where you ask for forgiveness not permission. Just remember to break the rules but still remain within ethic bounds of society. It's a risk, but it may be a risk worth taking if it means you take your organization or department to the next level. Only you can make that decision.
Courage to recognize and nurture talent greater than your own.
This is the stuff that HR dreams are made of. Many leaders pay lip service to this type of courage, but very few actually do it justice. The most successful leaders are the ones who recognize and promote talent that is equal or greater than their own.

Courageous leaders are not afraid of being eclipsed by people more talented than themselves, because they want what's best for the organization. They see leadership as a SERVICE to others not as a testament to their own ego. ~ Narges Nirumvala

I want leave you with one of my favourite quotes about courage and fear. One of the greatest gifts my Mother gave me was a love of books. As a child I loved reading and listening to the works of Shakespeare (and I still do). Here's a quote that has stayed with me everyday of my life. Through all the tough times I thought of these words and they gave me strength:

"Cowards die many times before their deaths, The valiant never taste of death but once." ~ Julius Caesar (II, ii, 32-37)

One more important point - you'll see that in addition to courage you need good judgement so you know when to speak up and when to shut up or when to fight and when to compromise. The best source of good judgement and common sense that I know is real world experience. Don't get me wrong a good education definitely helps, but nothing can replace years of failure and success as a teacher. So work and hustle until your fear diminishes, your judgement improves and you become the unstoppable, fearless leader I know you are capable of being. Are there other types of courage in the business landscape? Where does YOUR courage come from? Do you agree or disagree that courage is the most important quality of leadership? Tell me in the comments below!

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© 2015 Narges Nirumvala. If you enjoyed reading this post, please follow, like, comment and share. I publish new articles on LinkedIn every week.

Narges Nirumvala is the CEO of ExecutiveSpeak Coaching International and a world-renowned leadership communication expert. Dubbed 'The Secret Weapon'

by one journalist, she is an international keynote speaker, award winning entrepreneur, executive speech coach, presentation skills trainer and acclaimed author. A trusted advisor to CEOs, her clients include executives and leadership teams from Fortune 500 and FT 500 companies. Recently Narges was selected one of the Top 100 Leadership Experts to follow on Twitter.

Buy her book: "Capture the Spotlight". Connect with her on Twitter: @NargesNirumvala Facebook: /ExecutiveSpeak YouTube: /NargesNirumvala. Instagram: /NargesNirumvala or email her at: narges@executivespeak.com

Article was originally posted on: http://executivespeak.com/

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Courage: Learn to Lead Like a Lion Not a Sheep

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What is the most important quality of leadership? What comes to mind right away? Is it honesty, integrity, determination or something else? To me it's courage. I would argue that without courage none of these other qualities could take root and flourish.

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A food web is the feeding relationships among  organisms in an ecosystem.

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An organism that gets energy by breaking down the remains of dead organisms.

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Another question frequently asked about growing crops amongst tall trees in a polyculture is: 'But what can you get to grow in all that shade?'

Sunlight must be our biggest consideration when designing an edible ecosystem and it certainly seems like a scarce commodity sometimes here in Devon. Firstly we must position the trees carefully to allow plenty enough light to penetrate through to the smaller shrubs and vegetables below. But of course there will still be places that'll see very little or no sun.

Luckily no sun doesn't have to mean no crops, and one perfect example of a shade loving crop is delicious mushrooms.

Not only do mushrooms offer us an easy crop in an otherwise difficult position, they can also turn our otherwise useless prunings into food and compost.

Full of essential vitamins and minerals and containing 10-30% protein when dried, mushrooms are super foods which can crop prolifically. This gives them great potential as a food to nourish the world's millions without the need for animals - and mushrooms may also crop when all else fails and are perfectly ecological to produce.

Gourmet species like Shiitake, Oyster Mushrooms, Lion's Mane and Chicken of the Woods can all be grown on logs. If you've never tried these kind of mushrooms before - they're quite a treat! Much meatier and more flavoursome than most shrooms, they are also easy to grow.

Many kinds of trees can be used, but oak and chestnut are often favourites, providing a high yield and durable wood that can keep cropping for 10 years.

The typical method is to inoculate freshly cut logs with specially prepared spawn during the winter. Logs are then left in a damp and shady place and usually fruit all by themselves 6-18 months after inoculation, in the spring or autumn.

Shiitakes are the most popularly grown log mushroom and one reason for this is that they can be forced into fruiting not just once but three times a year by a process called 'shocking'. Logs are soaked in water and banged on the ground to simulate a falling branch. The fungi, then thinking that it is time to procreate, unwittingly provides us with loads of tasty fruit, yum!

This method of cultivating shiitakes is thought to have begun around one thousand years ago in parts of China, and now seems to be just beginning to catch on over here!

If you'd like to grow your own mushrooms, a great website with lots of information and spawn for sale is Ann Miller: http://www.annforfungi.co.uk/

I will be preparing lots of shiitake logs from oak branches this winter and will happily supply you with freshly inoculated logs. The logs will be around 3ft long x 10-15cm wide and should start providing you with mushrooms by 2014.

Each log takes time and materials to prepare so I'm asking for £12 per inoculated log or £3 per freshly cut oak log for you to inoculate yourself. I'm afraid they'll have to be picked up locally in Devon though as they're too heavy to send!

Please email me for more details... charlielechat@yahoo.co.uk

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Another question frequently asked about growing crops amongst tall trees in a polyculture is: 'But what can you get to grow in all that shade?' Sunlight must be our biggest consideration when designing an edible ecosystem and it certainly seems like a scarce commodity sometimes here in Devon.

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A organism that uses the sun to make it's own energy.

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Plants are tremendously important to life on earth. They are the foundation of food chains in almost every ecosystem. Plants also play a major role in the environment by influencing climate and producing life-giving oxygen. Plant project studies allow us to learn about plant biology and potential usage for plants in other fields such as medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology. The following plant project ideas provide suggestions for topics that can be explored through experimentation.

Plant Project Ideas

Do magnetic fields affect plant growth?

Do different colors of light affect the direction of plant growth?

Do sounds (music, noise, etc.) affect plant growth?

Do different colors of light affect the rate of photosynthesis?

What are the effects of acid rain on plant growth?

Do household detergents affect plant growth?

Can plants conduct electricity? ( Fruit Batteries Project - Sample)

Does cigarette smoke affect plant growth?

Does soil temperature affect root growth?

Does caffeine affect plant growth?

Does water salinity affect plant growth?

Does artificial gravity affect seed germination?

Does freezing affect seed germination?

Does burned soil affect seed germination?

Does seed size affect plant height?

Does fruit size affect the number of seeds in the fruit?

Do vitamins or fertilizers promote plant growth better?

Do fertilizers extend plant life during drought?

Does leaf size affect plant transpiration rates?

Plant Information

For additional information about plants, see:

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22 Ideas for Science Experiments Using Plants

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Plants are tremendously important to life on earth. They are the foundation of food chains in almost every ecosystem. Plants also play a major role in the environment by influencing climate and producing life-giving oxygen. Plant project studies allow us to learn about plant biology and potential usage for plants in other fields such as medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology.

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An organism that eats other organisms.