(PhysOrg.com) -- Orchid bees aren’t so dependent on orchids after all, according to a new study that challenges the prevailing view of how plants and their insect pollinators evolve together.
Plants & Animals
Sep 23, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Charles Darwin and many other scientists have long been puzzled by the evolution of orchids, the largest and most diverse family of flowering plants on Earth. Now genetic sequencing is giving scientists insights ...
New research shows some bees brace themselves against wind and turbulence by extending their sturdy hind legs while flying. But this approach comes at a steep cost, increasing aerodynamic drag and the power required for flight ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 2, 2009
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A survey of orchid bees in the Brazilian Amazon state of Rondônia, carried out in the 1990s, is shedding new light on the impact of deforestation on the scent-collecting pollinators, which some view as bellwethers of biodiversity ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 10, 2024
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Researchers Yuta Sunakawa, Ko Mochizuki, and Atsushi Kawakita of the University of Tokyo have discovered the first orchid species pollinated by gall midges, a tiny fly species. This is the first documented case of an orchid ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 29, 2024
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Missouri Botanical Garden scientists and collaborators discovered and described a new orchid species in Central Madagascar with a record-setting nectar spur and close ties to the famous "Darwin's orchid." This novelty species ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 14, 2024
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In a new study published in New Phytologist, scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, along with partners in Latin America, Asia and Australia, present an updated family tree of orchids, tracing their origins to the ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 22, 2024
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In a study published in Current Biology, researchers from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with their collaborators, reveal a groundbreaking discovery: Morphology ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 30, 2023
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Because the bumblebee that an orchid relies on for pollination does not exist on a remote island, the plant gets pollinated by an island wasp. Kobe University researchers found that this came at the cost of being hybridized ...
Evolution
Oct 17, 2023
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Fungi-eating orchids were found for the first time to offer their flowers to fungi-eating fruit flies in exchange for pollination, which is the first evidence for nursery pollination in orchids. This unique new plant-animal ...
Evolution
Aug 24, 2023
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The Orchidaceae, commonly referred to as the orchid family, is a morphologically diverse and widespread family of monocots in the order Asparagales. Along with the Asteraceae, it is one of the two largest families of flowering plants, with between 21,950 and 26,049 currently accepted species, found in 880 genera. Selecting which of the two families is larger remains elusive because of the difficulties associated with putting hard species numbers on such enormous groups. Regardless, the number of orchid species equals more than twice the number of bird species, and about four times the number of mammal species. It also encompasses about 6–11% of all seed plants. The largest genera are Bulbophyllum (2,000 species), Epidendrum (1,500 species), Dendrobium (1,400 species) and Pleurothallis (1,000 species).
The family also includes Vanilla (the genus of the vanilla plant), Orchis (type genus), and many commonly cultivated plants such as Phalaenopsis and Cattleya. Moreover, since the introduction of tropical species in the 19th century, horticulturists have produced more than 100,000 hybrids and cultivars.
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