The plural form of ardea, referring to multiple herons or the group collectively in scientific classification.
Latin plural of ardea, formed using the feminine nominative plural ending -ae, standard in Linnaean taxonomy for grouping related organisms.
This is one of the oldest plural forms still in active use in science—when Carl Linnaeus was naming species in the 1700s, he was using the exact same grammatical pattern that Roman naturalists used 2,000 years earlier.
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