Category: Plants & Animals
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Bats and Birds Aid Tropical Reforestation Programs
With half of the tropical rainforest biome cleared at least once in the last 100 years, forest conservation and restoration using birds and mammals that transport seeds should become a central theme in ecology of this century.
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Bees Shop For Pollen, Learning Which Flowers To Select
Bumblebees are able to connect differences in pollen quality with floral features like petal colour, and so land only on the flowers that offer the best rewards, according to a new study
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The Chemical Behind Catnip’s Effect on Cats
Everyone knows cats go crazy for catnip. It’s an effect that’s been noted in scientific literature as far back as the 18th Century, when scientists observed that cats seemed to be attracted to catnip when the plant was withered or bruised. Since then, research has managed to amass a little more detail on exactly why catnip affects cats in the way it does.
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Recreating Extinct Megafauna For Seed Dispersal
Remove a species from an ecosystem and other species tend to suffer. Take the giant Madagascar tortoise, for example. The two species of giant tortoises on Madagascar went extinct centuries ago, but their loss is still being felt today. According to new research, the extinction of these tortoises robbed one of the island’s iconic baobab tree species of its most important seed dispersers, a situation from which the trees still have not recovered.
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New Really Messy Pollination Strategy Discovered
This unique and highly complex pollination system is completely new to science and provides another example of the intricate relationships that have evolved between flowers and their pollinators
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Birds Design Fruit Color To Their Liking
Asian birds seem to favor red and black fruits, suggesting that fruit color evolution is partially influenced by bird preferences.
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Moose Spit Detoxifies Plants
Now it’s been discovered that moose can switch off a plant’s toxic defences at source. They do it using a mystery chemical in their saliva that interferes with the signalling processes inside the plant. In effect, moose can detoxify their food by licking it.
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Deer Proven Good For Forest Biodiversity (Yet Again)
A decades-long study of national parks in Ireland has found that grazing deer in oak woodlands is actually good for diversity and helps prevent some plants from taking over the valuable ecosystem.
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Safely Eating Toxic Plants With Help From Microbe Friends
Here, we demonstrate that gut microbes are crucial in allowing herbivores to consume toxic plants.
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Flowers Giving Up On Bees. Evolution In Action
Whether the reversion towards self-fertilisation can provide an escape route from ecological bee shortages depends on how rapidly plants can evolve. In the current pollinator crisis, understanding how plants adapt to changes in bee numbers and type is essential.