A field of flowers may seem innocuous -- but for the birds and bees that depend on it for sustenance, that floral landscape can be a battlefield mined with predators and competitors. The more efficient a pollinator is in ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 12, 2011
0
0
Across the western Cape of South Africa can be found small plants in the Iris family called Babiana. Flitting between them are sunbirds, small colourful birds like the African version of hummingbirds, that drink the nectar ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 6, 2011
0
0
Bumblebees use complex problem solving skills to minimise the energy they use when flying to collect food, according to new research from Queen Mary, University of London.
Plants & Animals
Aug 17, 2011
0
0
The researchers discovered that a rainforest vine, pollinated by bats, has evolved dish-shaped leaves with such conspicuous echoes that nectar-feeding bats can find its flowers twice as fast by echolocation. The study is ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 28, 2011
4
0
A new study reveals how enzymes in the honey bee gut detoxify pesticides commonly used to kill mites in the honey bee hive. This is the first study to tease out the precise molecular mechanisms that allow a pollinating insect ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 20, 2011
0
0
It is a mathematical puzzle which has vexed academics and travelling salesmen alike, but new research from Queen Mary, University of London's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, reveals how bumblebees effectively ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 29, 2011
2
0
(PhysOrg.com) -- Ornithologists first put forth the theory that hummingbirds took in nectar using capillary action (where liquid rises against gravity in a narrow tube) in 1833 and since then no one has questioned it. In ...
(PhysOrg.com) -- Honeybees can learn to avoid nectar containing natural plant toxins but will eat it when there is no alternative, scientists at Newcastle University have found.
Plants & Animals
Dec 21, 2010
0
0
Scientists at the John Innes Centre and the University of East Anglia are pioneering a powerful combination of computer modeling and experimental genetics to work out how the complex shapes of organs found in nature are produced ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 9, 2010
4
0
Flowering plants produce nectar to attract insect pollinators. Some plant species, such as Lima bean, also secrete nectar from so-called extrafloral nectaries to attract ants which in turn fend off herbivores. Scientists ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 27, 2010
1
0
