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Category: Plants & Animals

  • Ants As Agriculturalists

    The ant farmers, like their human counterparts, depend on nitrogen-fixing bacteria to make their gardens grow.

  • The Flower That Makes Predators Into Pollinators

    A species of orchid, which lives on the Chinese island of Hainan, fools its hornet pollinator by issuing a chemical that honeybees use to send an alarm.

  • The Wind Beneath Their Wings

    A tiny species of wasp, just 1.5 millimetres long, can shuttle pollen between isolated fig trees in a desert landscape, flying up to 160km in a single night with the help of the prevailing winds.

  • Ants In Trees: Mutualists Or Developers?

    Tree-dwelling ants generally live in harmony with their arboreal hosts. But new research suggests that when they run out of space in their trees of choice, the ants can get destructive to neighboring trees.

  • The Greatest Spider-Ant-Plant Story

    It is the first-known predominantly vegetarian spider; all of the other known 40,000 spider species are thought to be mainly carnivorous.

  • Alien Ants Re-Design Ecosystem

    Since ants have dominated, the forest floor has become crowded and this indirectly affects understorey birds because it changes their habitat and food sources. 'It's an amazing transformation of the forest in a short time'.

  • If Birds Won’t Disperse The Seeds Then Ants Will

    Thus, birds and ants provide spatially complementary seed dispersal in the cerrado. Furthermore, we found that ants may be as important as birds for seed dispersal in Xylopia, at least for some individual plants and/or years.

  • Plant, Know Thyself

    Animals have the ability to distinguish self from non-self, which has allowed them to evolve immune systems and, in some instances, to act preferentially towards individuals that are genetically identical or related. Self-recognition is less well known for plants, although recent work indicates that physically connected roots recognize self and reduce competitive interactions. Sagebrush uses volatile cues emitted by clipped branches of self or different neighbours to increase resistance to herbivores

  • EXTRA! Extra! Biodiversity Theory Proven?

    It's still a mystery why there are 300 times more herbivorous insects than bird species, but now we are able to implicate traits of both plants and insects that have given rise to so many species.

  • Evil Beauties: Orchids With An Agenda

    Orchids are manipulative, self-centered, wily and sometimes downright sadistic. And yet insects and humans alike are ensnared — perhaps for those very reasons — by their ethereal beauty.