pollination

Diverse tropical forests defy metabolic ecology models

...d bromeliads. Tropical trees depend on animals for pollination and seed dispersal and are constantly assaulted by insects, fungi, maelstrom and machete. Furthermore, soils, rainfall, the frequencies of hurricanes and fires, and assemblages of animals and plants in tropical forests all vary widely from one forest...

Study: Competition for sex is a 'jungle out there'

...d an exhaustive global analysis of more than 1,000 pollination studies which included 166 different plant species...great deal of plant diversity, plants suffer lower pollination and reproductive success. For some plant species, this reduction in fruit and seed production could...

Value of services performed by insects tops $57 billion in US

...icular services -wildlife nutrition, pest control, pollination and dung burial - selected because robust data were available for an analysis. "A lot of value is added to the economy by insects, but most people just don't realize it," said Losey. "When considering the allocation of conservation resources, or the...

Wild bees and the flowers they pollinate are disappearing together

...cerns have been raised for years about the loss of pollination services, but until recently most of the evidence ...niversity of Reading) said: "The economic value of pollination worldwide is thought to be between £20 and 50 billion each year." The team examined pollinator an...

Tamed 11,400 years ago, figs were likely first domesticated crop

... parthenocarpic, the fruit develops without insect pollination and is prevented from falling off the tree, allowing it to become soft, sweet, and edible. However, because such figs do not produce seeds, they are a reproductive dead end unless humans interfere by planting shoots from the parthenocarpic trees. "O...

Detecting poisons in nectar is an odour-ous task for honeybees

...ic mystery. The honeybee, which accounts for the pollination of at least 1/3 of the world’s crop plants, may encounter such poisoned nectar in common crop and garden plants such as Rhododendrons and almond trees. Can honeybees learn whether nectar contains toxins, and does this influence their ability as polli...

Warning from Asian bees

... “And almond crops rely entirely on honeybees for pollination and Australia’s young almond industry is booming right now in the tri-State region.” Since varroa mite and other bee diseases hit America and wiped out huge numbers, US beekeepers have also relied on NSWgrown stock to help pollinate their almond t...