Author: zooplantman
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Gross Seed Dispersal: Plant Makes Mice Vomit
A desert mouse has found a seed. It bites into it, and gets a pungent mouthful of mustard. Reeling from the chemical party in its mouth, its spits out the seed and unwittingly helps the seed‘s producer – a Israeli desert plant called Ochradenus baccatus. By using chemical weapons, it converts rodents into an unwitting vehicles for its seeds.
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Latest Pitcher Plant Trick: Using Rain To Capture Prey
Scientists have tried to unravel the mysteries of these plants since the days of Charles Darwin. The fact that we keep discovering new trapping mechanisms in the 21st century makes me curious what other surprises these amazing plants might still have in store!
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Insects Use Plants To Leave Messages For Each Other
Insects can use plants as ‘green phones‘ for communication with other bugs. A new study now shows that through those same plants insects are also able to leave ‘voicemail‘ messages in the soil.
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Rafflesia "Corpse Flower" Is A Genetic Vampire
Harvard researchers have now discovered that food and water aren‘t the only things the corpse flowers steal – over the course of evolutionary history, Rafflesia has also stolen Tetrastigma's genes
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Flowers Offer Velcro Cells To Aid Foraging Bees
It's is too easy to look at flowers from a human perspective, but when you put yourself into the bee's shoes you find hidden features of flowers can be crucial to foraging success.
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How Manta Rays In The Ocean Depend On Terrestrial Forests
A new study from a Pacific atoll reveals the links between native trees, bird guano, and the giant manta rays that live off the coast. In unraveling this intricate web, the researchers point to the often little-understood interconnectedness between terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
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Vine Sniffs Out Prey To Strangle
Here it is at Penn State University — look for the stringy, wiggly thing on the left — sniffing. Notice as it grows from a seedling, it moves in small, lazy circles, like hands groping in the dark, and then, gradually, it leans toward the stalk of the tomato plant — which it then entwines, gouges, sucks and strangles.
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Look To Seagrass Beds To Store Atmospheric Carbon
Seagrass meadows act as a massive carbon sink, capable of storing as much carbon as forests. There's only one problem: due to poor watershed management and declining water quality near shorelines, seagrasses are disappearing at alarming rates.
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Unusual Partnership: Insectivorous Plant Enlists Assistance Of Insect
Plants are insectivorous in situations where substrate acidity deprives them of nitrogen. To recruit some of the insect prey to help the feeding seems almost animal in its cunning. Only one of the 120 species of the Nepenthes genus has been found so far to use a single plant-ant species within its tissues to help out.
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Flowers That Select Birds For Pollination
The study has shown for the first time how certain Australian native flowers are attracting the birds rather than the bees. Essentially, newly evolved spectral signatures entice birds with the hues of red they are especially good at discriminating