Can plants recognize the sound of their pollinators? That’s the question behind this recently presented acoustic research. As bees and other pollinators hover, land, and take-off, their bodies buzz in distinctive ways. Researchers recorded these subtle sounds from a Rhodanthidium sticticum bee and played them back to snapdragons, which rely on that insect. They found that the snapdragons responded with an increase in sugar and nectar volume; the plants even altered their gene expression governing sugar transport and nectar production. The researchers suspect that the plants evolved this strategy to attract their most efficient pollinators and thereby increase their own reproductive success. (Image credit: E. Wilcox; research credit: F. Barbero et al.; via PopSci)
Tag: pollination
Spore-Spreading via Vortex
As it turns out, animals aren’t the only ones to have figured out the usefulness of vortex rings. A team of physicists and biologists have captured peat moss using vortex rings to project their spores to a height where the wind will catch and carry them further afield. #
