Author: zooplantman
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Fruity Crocodilians. Predators Enjoy A Sweet Snack, too.
Crocodylians can be considered “occasional frugivores.” And while they don’t seem to have discriminating tastes about the fruit and seeds they eat, crocodylians nonetheless have the ability to transport those plant parts far and wide.
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Ants Taking Our Cocoa Plantings
The ants shepherd and protect the mealybugs so they can ‘milk‘ the sugary nutritious fluids in their waste. The bugs used to drink primarily from local rainforest trees, but when humans started clearing the forest to make way for cocoa, the ants adapted, by driving their livestock into the fresh cocoa pastures. (Click on image or headline for full story)
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Hydrofracking, A Plant From India, And Why Ice Cream Is Threatened
A sudden demand for an obscure substance with an odd name – guar gum – has companies whose products range from vanilla ice cream to black gold checking Indian weather reports and their own bottom lines
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The lonesome pines: a third of conifer species put on endangered list
More than a third of the world’s conifer species are threatened with extinction as a result of urbanisation, logging, disease and feral goats, according to an alarming new report.
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Rafflesias: Giant Foul-Smelling Flower With A Secret
The Rafflesia flower seems like something straight out of Plants vs. Zombies.
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Orchids’ Multifarious Floral Mimicry
We show that the species from these two distantly related families are often more similar in floral colour and shape than expected by chance and propose that a system of multifarious floral mimicry
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Seed Dispersal By Birds Beats The Competition
These results call into question the pre-eminence of escape as the primary advantage of dispersal within populations and document two overlooked mechanisms by which frugivores can benefit fruiting plants.
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Are Veggies In Your Refrigerator Plotting Their Revenge?
“It means that post-harvest vegetables were more ‘alive‘ than we might have imagined,” she says.
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Our Daily Bread: When Our Ancestors Left The Trees And Discovered Grains
Most apes eat leaves and fruits from trees and shrubs. New studies show that human ancestors expanded their menu 3.5 million years ago, adding tropical grasses and sedges to an ape-like diet and setting the stage for our modern diet of grains, grasses, and meat and dairy from grazing animals
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Ant Bodyguards Get Exclusive Contract from Trees
This alliance between ants and acacias is a staple of textbooks, but it‘s even more intimate than anyone suspected. Some acacias don‘t just supply their ants with any old food. They offer the biological equivalent of a cheque