Category: Plants & Animals

“Oahu in particular is the extreme example of the loss and gain of species; all native dispersers have gone extinct and all that is left to disperse these endemic and threatened plants are a suite of introduced dispersers,” (Click on title for full story.)

Public awareness of declining bee populations has increased interest in growing “bee-friendly” plants. Various groups have published bee-friendly plant lists, but these lists often lack experimental data and rarely emphasize flowering trees and shrubs—major components of urban landscapes. This webcast presents research detailing the flowering trees and shrubs that attract diverse bee visitors and provides…

With the aid of the data on flight movements and seed excretion periods, the researchers were able to calculate the potential of an entire colony to disseminate seeds over long distances and to transport them to deforested areas. By this means, they discovered that a colony of 150,000 straw-coloured fruit bats can disseminate more than…

“The public reads shade-coffee and thinks it’s automatically bird friendly. That’s not necessarily the case,” (Click on title for full story.)

The role that tapirs play in seeding degraded forests is another good reason for conserving this last representative of the megafauna of South America,” (Click on title for full story.)

What she saw, though, was a massacre. Dead nematodes’ bodies were strewn everywhere. What’s more, bacteria inside the worms seemed to be eating their hosts inside out. Over the course of several days, she saw the worms’ corpses disappear, literally dissolving before her eyes. (Click on title for full story.)

The model enabled the researchers to predict how long seeds may have remained inside of a T. rex. The study revealed that seeds would likely have persisted for five to seven days before passing through the digestive system. (Click on title for full story.)

According to this recent study, when spotted lanternflies suck juice from the specific tree species that they like, the tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), the bitter juice (the main of the chemicals is called “ailanthone”) from the tree comes into their body. This makes them distasteful: birds do not like them and may vomit after…