biology

Purple-winged roller

Purple-winged roller is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Purple-winged roller rather than just read about it. In short: The purple-winged roller (Coracias temminckii) is a species of bird in the family Coraciidae. It is endemic to the Sulawesi subregion in Indonesia and can be found on the islands of Sulawesi, Bangka, Lembeh, Manterawu, Muna and Butung.

Key takeaways

Purple-winged roller belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Purple-winged roller to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Purple-winged roller from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The purple-winged roller (Coracias temminckii) is a species of bird in the family Coraciidae. It is endemic to the Sulawesi subregion in Indonesia and can be found on the islands of Sulawesi, Bangka, Lembeh, Manterawu, Muna and Butung. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests.

Taxonomy and systematics The purple-winged roller was formally described in 1819 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot under the binomial name Garrulus temminckii. The specific epithet was chosen to honour the Dutch ornithologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck. The type locality is the island of Sulawesi. The purple-winged roller is now one of nine species placed in the genus Coracias that was introduced by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2018 found that the purple-winged roller was most closely related to the Indochinese roller (Coracias affinis). The phylogenetic relationships among the Coracias species are shown below, from the molecular study by Johansson et al. (2018)

Alternate names for the purple-winged roller include the Celebes roller, Sulawesi roller, and Temminck's roller.

Description The purple-winged roller is 30–34 cm (12–13 in) in length, similar in size to the Eurasian jay. The cap and upper-tail coverts are bright azure blue, the back is dark-olive, with the rest of the plumage mainly dark blue. The large bill is black. The sexes are alike. Juveniles are similar to the adults but with duller plumage.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Purple-winged roller

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Purple-winged roller claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Purple-winged roller before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Purple-winged roller ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Purple-winged roller

In research: Purple-winged roller appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Purple-winged roller in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Purple-winged roller is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Birds described in 1819, Coracias, Coraciiformes stubs, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Purple-winged roller outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Purple-winged roller in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Purple-winged roller means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Purple-winged roller out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Purple-winged roller in simple terms?

Why does Purple-winged roller matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Purple-winged roller?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Purple-winged roller.