Television nature programs and scientific papers tend to celebrate the perfection of evolved traits. But the father of evolution through natural selection, Charles Darwin, warned that evolution would produce quirks and "blunders" ...
Ecology
2 hours ago
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Bees and butterflies help produce our food by pollinating the crops farmers grow. In fact, 35% of the world's food crops, including fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, depend on pollinators.
Ecology
Sep 25, 2025
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Bee experts wouldn't have previously expected to find the likes of Osmia cyaneonitens, Dufourea dilatipes and Stelis heronae in Washington. But this year, researchers added eight new bee species to a list of the state's native ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 24, 2025
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Pollinators receive considerable interest due to their fundamental role in ecosystem functioning and human well-being. Unlike farmlands, studies of urban pollinator-promoting interventions have only started to grow rapidly ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 22, 2025
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For millennia, developing resilient crops relied on pollination by nature or humans—making the process long and often costly. Now, scientists from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB) of the Chinese ...
Biotechnology
Aug 15, 2025
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47
The endangered South African cycad Encephalartos horridus may resemble a relic from the Jurassic age, but the species itself evolved long after dinosaurs disappeared. Still, it carries a biochemical legacy inherited from ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 8, 2025
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47
A new paper in Annals of Botany indicates that pollination can have a dramatic effect on how plants grow and change. The study shows that when plants and pollinators become uncoordinated, even for a brief time, they can change ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 6, 2025
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Increasing urbanization is linked to a decline in crucial pollinator populations, including nocturnal moths, hoverflies, and bees, according to a new study from the University of Sheffield.
Plants & Animals
Aug 5, 2025
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102
When a semi-truck carrying hundreds of honey bee colonies crashed and overturned in Washington state last week, it wasn't just a roadside mess—it was a potentially devastating economic blow to the beekeeping operation behind ...
Agriculture
Jun 4, 2025
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When pollinators visit flowers, they produce a variety of characteristic sounds, from wing flapping during hovering, to landing and takeoff. However, these sounds are extremely small compared to other vibrations and acoustics ...
Plants & Animals
May 21, 2025
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Pollination is the process by which pollen is transferred in plants, thereby enabling fertilisation and sexual reproduction. Pollen grains transport the male gametes (sperm) to where the female gamete(s) are contained within the carpel; in gymnosperms the pollen is directly applied to the ovule itself. The receptive part of the carpel is called a stigma in the flowers of angiosperms. The receptive part of the gymnosperm ovule is called the micropyle. Pollination is a necessary step in the reproduction of flowering plants, resulting in the production of offspring that are genetically diverse.
The study of pollination brings together many disciplines, such as botany, horticulture, entomology, and ecology. The pollination process as an interaction between flower and vector was first addressed in the 18th century by Christian Konrad Sprengel. It is important in horticulture and agriculture, because fruiting is dependent on fertilisation, which is the end result of pollination.
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