Using a mobile stamen to slap away insect visitors maximizes pollination and minimizes costs to flowers, a study shows. For centuries scientists have observed that when a visiting insect's tongue ...
When some insects zero in on a flower for nectar, their ultraviolet vision is guided by a bull's-eye "painted" on the plant by chemical compounds. Now, chemical ecologists at Cornell University have ...
These insects initially resemble exquisite flowers, but upon closer inspection, the illusion quickly disappears. Some species ...
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THE interest arising out of the writings of Darwin, Lubbock, and Hermann Müller relative to the part played by insects in their oft-recurring visits to flowers has of late years attracted much ...
Biologists say there’s more to your favourite flowers than just beauty. Their different colours, petal shapes and scents are ...
How do you get rid of leaf miners, aphids, mealybugs and mites that attack your garden? One way is to plant flowers that support the insects that prey on them. Planting flowers that support beneficial ...
Insects that look like flowers: Nature is often described as a battlefield, but for some predators, it is a masquerade ball. While most creatures use camouflage to vanish into the background, a select ...
In a field of winter wheat, researchers at the University of Reading's Sonning farm in the UK had planted an unusual fumigation system: eight 8-meter octagons surrounding clusters of black mustard ...
Colourful flowers, and the insects and birds that fly among their dazzling displays, are a joy of nature. But how did early relationships between flower colour and animal pollinators emerge? In a ...
A new type of artificial flower doesn’t look realistic. But the flowers aren’t designed for humans–they’re for bees and other pollinators. A daisy-like shape, laser-cut from polyester and colored ...