Synopsis: Plants:


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#Purple sweet potatoes among new naturals for food and beverage colorsmention purple sweet potatoes black carrots or purple carrots and people think of dining on heirloom or boutique veggies.

But those plants and others have quietly become sources of a new generation of natural food colorings that are replacing traditional synthetic colors

Cochineal insects feed on a certain type of cactus native to South america and Mexico. It takes about 2500 bugs to produce one ounce of cochineal extract used in ice creams yogurts candy beverages and other foods.


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and is crucial for understanding our place in the cosmos through the vast sweep of time--where we've come from where we're currently located


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Using a new satellite-based vegetation monitoring system researchers found that about 12 percent of the biomass has disappeared in this country that's more than twice the size of Texas

Overgrazing accounts for about 80 percent of the vegetation loss in recent years researchers concluded and reduced precipitation

Vegetation cools the landscape and plays an important role for the water and carbon balance including greenhouse gases.

Related research has found that heavy grazing results in much less vegetation cover and root biomass and an increase in animal hoof impacts.


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#New study informs blueberry flavor selectionthe University of Florida's (UF) Blueberry Breeding Program has been developing successful blueberry cultivars for more than 60 years.

The cultivars released from UF are credited with creating a Florida blueberry industry that was valued at $48 million in 2010

and characteristic blueberry flavors could help blueberry breeders select for cultivars that produce a more desirable flavor.

The study compared volatile profiles of five southern highbush blueberry cultivars (Farthing FL01-173 Scintilla Star

These five cultivars are significant in Florida and have been rated subjectively as having varied flavor characteristics noted lead author James Olmstead.

The research team harvested all five cultivars on four separate dates during the harvest season

and fruit from each cultivar were harvested also at four developmental stages on the first harvest date.


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Diseases such as fungi and viruses can attack wheat and lower yields. This research quantifies the impact of weather diseases and new wheat varieties on yields.


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and costs associated with these new perennial energy crops. The current biomass market operates more along the lines of a take-it


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#Bismuth-carrying nanotubes show promise for CT scansscientists at Rice university have trapped bismuth in a nanotube cage to tag stem cells for X-ray tracking.

At some point we realized no one has tracked ever stem cells or any other cells that we can find by CT Wilson said.

In tests using pig bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells Wilson and lead author Eladio Rivera a former postdoctoral researcher at Rice found that the bismuth-filled nanotubes which they call Bi@US-tubes produce CT images far brighter than those from common

but putting it in nanotube capsules allows us to get them inside cells in high concentrations Wilson said.

The capsules are made from a chemical process that cuts and purifies the nanotubes. When the tubes and bismuth chloride are mixed in a solution they combine over time to form Bi@US-tubes.

The nanotube capsules are between 20 and 80 nanometers long and about 1. 4 nanometers in diameter.

Wilson said his team's studies showed stem cells readily absorb Bi@US-tubes without affecting their function The cells adjust over time to the incorporation of these chunks of carbon


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Estimates of the amount of missing data were based on 7539 peer-reviewed studies about animals fungi seed plants bacteria and various microscopic organisms.


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Such information can also valuably guide decisions about where to plant new vines which typically produce their first fruit after five years and their best fruit in about a decade.

or Tannat blends and vineyards in Uruguay have begun to distinguish between old vines--descendants from the original cuttings brought over from Europe

The newer vines tend to produce more powerful wines with higher alcohol levels but less acidity as well as more complex fruit characteristics.


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Crop pests include fungi bacteria viruses insects nematodes viroids and oomycetes. The diversity of crop pests continues to expand

Losses of major crops to fungi and fungi-like microorganisms amount to enough to feed nearly nine percent of today's global population.

In addition the rice blast fungus which is present in over 80 countries and has a dramatic effect both on the agricultural economy


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when foliage predisposed to injury by exposure to acid rain experiences freezing injury and dies. Paul Schaberg a research plant physiologist with the U s. Forest Service's Northern Research Station in Burlington Vt. and partners studied red spruce trees in Vermont New hampshire and Massachusetts.

For red spruce warmer winters mean less damage to foliage which limits growth. Questions for future research also include


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Dr Bryony Jones also from the UCL Department of Genetics Evolution and Environment and lead author of the paper said:


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and other worms of this type acquire resistance to a wide range of anthelmintics#the drugs used to treat worm infections#says Dr James Cotton senior author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.#


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and large bushes indigenous to Greenland--and they only grow in small areas in the south.

and European trees and bushes will be able to grow in Greenland in the future. In fact the analysis points to the fact that a considerable number of species would already be able to grow in Greenland today.

The new opportunities for trees and bushes may oust Arctic animals and plants but could also be beneficial to the Greenlanders.

when trees and bushes naturally spread so slowly. People often plant utility and ornamental plants where they can grow.

and thereby avoid some of the problems we've seen at our latitudes with invasive species such as giant hogweed and rugosa rose.


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Sorghum is in the same family as rice (Oryza sativa) wheat (Triticum aestivumlinn) and maize (Zea mays) and it is expected to play an increasingly important role in feeding the world's growing population.


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It is one of the most essential and widely collected woody plant traits. Yet the traditional method to measure tree growth is awkward and time consuming.

Dendrometer bands are metal straps that wrap around a tree trunk to measure its growth. Bands are fashioned by bending banding material into a collar

and shrink to measure trunk circumference and changes in trunk diameter over time. Construction of traditional bands is tricky.


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and algal blooms altering water quality and harming aquatic life. Increasing alkalinity hardens drinking water makes wastewater disposal more difficult


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As flowering in bamboos is such a rare event spreading by seed takes a very long time


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and reach the pear pulp. The penetration of silver nanoparticles is dangerous to consumers because they have the ability to relocate in the human body after digestion Lin said.


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but were much greater over 2km for colonies in parts of the landscape with fewer flowers.

whether conservation schemes to improve the countryside for bees like planting more flowers on farmland are having a positive effect.


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They analyzed maps created using Landsat satellite data to determine where the burn destroyed vegetation and exposed soil--and where to focus emergency restoration efforts.

The near infrared reflects well from healthy vegetation and the short-wave infrared bands reflect well from exposed ground Albury said.


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of which have large territories may play in forest regeneration through digesting and passing seeds from fruits.

and their capacity for ingesting large numbers of fruits we consider it likely that crocodilians function as significant seed dispersal agents in many freshwater ecosystems.


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Cycads that are living today have large heavy seeds with a fleshy outer coating that suggests they rely on large bodied fruit-eating animals to disperse their seeds.

The ecological distribution pattern of many living cycads today suggests they have limited and ineffectual seed dispersal.

These patterns suggest that few to none of the seeds are being dispersed large distances away from parent plants one of the longstanding tenets of the advantages of seed dispersal.

whether the seed dispersal and seedling distribution pattern of M. miquelii might indicate that it is maladapted to its current dispersers.

But when it comes to plants there is a bit of a subconscious assumption that the purpose of seed dispersal is to simply spread seeds as far and as evenly as possible across the broadest possible area.

The large heavy and poisonous seeds surrounded by a fleshy and nontoxic fruit-like layer seem well adapted to being swallowed occasionally whole en masse by megafauna

which would then pass the many seeds simultaneously at a new location: the genesis of a new grove.

Female cycads produce one to two cones that contain multiple large seeds each covered with a thin outer fleshy sarcotesta.

By tagging ten large seeds from the single cone of 12 plants with a small steel bolt the authors were able to track how many of the seeds were removed from the parent cycad

and how far the seeds were dispersed. They found that within three months virtually all of the seeds had eaten their sarcostesta--primarily by brushtailed opposums

which scrape the flesh off and discard the large seeds. Camera traps at two fruiting females and hair traps baited with seeds confirmed the disperser identity.

However almost all (97%)of the tagged seeds that the authors recovered had been moved less than one meter away;

only a few were moved beyond the vicinity of the parent plant and in all cases they were found less than 5 meters away.

Moreover although most of the seeds ended up under the parent cycad almost no seedlings were found within a 1. 5 m radius of adult cycads suggesting that most seeds within the vicinity of the parent perish.

These patterns suggest that despite their large seed size the primary dispersers of these cycads today are bodied smaller animals;

these animals do not spread the seeds far and wide nor take them to potentially new colonizable habitats.

Yet these plants seem to be doing well by sprouting up near the adults and forming mono-dominant stands.

Since their potential Australian prehistoric megafaunal dispersers became extinct around 45000 years ago why haven't Australian cycads begun to evolve smaller seeds that would be dispersed more readily by flying birds or possums for example over the interim?

so it's plausible that cycad seed dispersal ecology and colony forming behavior may be extremely ancient


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and leaves into better biofuela fungus and E coli bacteria have joined forces to turn tough waste plant material into isobutanol a biofuel that matches gasoline's properties better than ethanol.

The fungus Trichoderma reesei is already very good at breaking down tough plant material into sugars.

and served up corn stalks and leaves. Colleagues at Michigan State university had treated pre the roughage to make it easier to digest.

and a recent doctoral graduate in Lin's lab. The fungi turned the roughage into sugars that fed both microbe species with enough left over to produce isobutanol.

The harmonious coexistence of the fungi and bacteria with stable populations was a key success of the experiment.

Lin's team used game theory to analyze the relationship between the fungi and bacteria. Breaking cellulose down into sugar is hard work

Meanwhile the E coli use the sugars without offering the fungus anything in return which makes it a cheater.

because the fungi produce the sugars near their cell membranes which gives them the first crack at using the sugars.


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#Eating poisonous plants saves life of gemsbok in Namibian desertin drought periods browsing springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis) feed on all plant material they can find

while grazing gemsbok (Oryx gazella gazella) in contrast switch their diet to a high proportion of poisonous plants

During drought periods they fed on a restricted mixture of plants including more than 30%of shrubs and trees.

Surprisingly gemsbok diet also consisted of up to 25%of Damara milk-bush (Euphorbia damarana) an endemic large succulent plant

When food was plentiful gemsbok specialised exclusively on grasses and more ephemeral succulent species. In contrast springboks fed on a higher proportion of shrubs and trees than grasses and succulent plants irrespective of environmental conditions.

As the researchers expected springbok opportunistically adjusted their diet in response to variation in food sources availabilities preferring e g. grass sprouts during the wet season and browsing predominantly on leaves of bushes when grass quality decreased during drought.

The potential effects of the Damara milk-bush on gemsbok health are still unknown. However by extensively using this poisonous plant gemsbok succeed in surviving environmental challenges.

Gemsbok seem to be well adapted to the toxic effects of special plants growing in dry regions


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or various grass residues such as corn stover and sugarcane bagasse do not compete and can be a sustainable source for biofuel.

This enzyme caffeoyl shikimate esterase (CSE) fulfils a central role in lignin biosynthesis. Knocking-out the CSE gene resulted in 36%less lignin per gram of stem material.


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on average vegetation absorbs 11 billion fewer tonnes of carbon dioxide than it would in a climate that does not experience extremes.

Droughts hit vegetation particularly harddroughts heat waves storms and heavy rain have not yet become more frequent


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Bovine strains seemed to occupy deeper parts of the phylogenetic tree--they were closer to the root than the human strains.


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and other vegetation and soils in the Northern hemisphere during the summer and more carbon is being released in the fall

and winter says study lead scientist Heather Graven of SIO. It's not yet understood she says why the increase in seasonal amplitude of carbon dioxide concentration is so large

Other factors may be changes in the amount of carbon in leaves wood or roots; changes in the extent or species composition of ecosystems;

In addition to Graven and Ralph Keeling Science paper co-authors include Stephen Piper Lisa Welp and Jonathan Bent of SIO;


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The study is the first to combine satellite imagery of vegetation cover with public health records of malaria cases over a large region to track changes that occur as a mega-irrigation project progresses.

By following the changes in malaria incidence vegetation and socioeconomic data at the level of sub-districts we identified a transition phase toward sustainable low malaria risk lasting for more than a decade


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Obese boys and girls had poor cardiovascular profiles with lower HDL-cholesterol higher triglycerides higher blood pressure and higher heart rate recovery--indicating a lower level of fitness--compared to normal weight kids.


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#Weeds threaten carbon offset programsresearchers have identified gamba grass and other invasive weeds as a potential threat to landholder involvement in environmental offset programs such as the Carbon Farming Initiative.

Strategic savanna burning is one way to reduce Australia's carbon emissions and create new markets in northern Australia

but the increased fuel load and emissions from weed infestations could make it unfeasible. Dr Vanessa Adams says that late dry season wildfires in Australia's tropical north generate about 3%of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions so strategic burning could be an important abatement activity.

But when native savannas are invaded by weeds such as gamba grass fuel loads are increased dramatically and fires can burn up to five times hotter than a native wildfire Dr Adams said.

--and the costs of managing gamba grass--$40 per hectare--meaning that much more savanna needs to be enrolled for carbon farming to cover the costs of weed eradication.

and that we strategically manage weeds so that they don't become an intractable problem in the future. Story Source:


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As of Aug 8 this year wildfires have burned more than 2. 5 million acres in the United states. Large wildfires are driven mainly by natural factors including the availability of fuel (vegetation) wind and ignition sources from lightning and humans.

Landfire provides maps of the nation's land cover including vegetation type tree canopy cover and height.

Joshua J. Picotte is a remote sensing specialist with USGS in Sioux falls. He updates Landfire data maps annually looking at changes in vegetation from previous wildfires urban development or other disturbances.

and vegetation characterization efforts Vogelmann said. The extensive and free Landsat and MODIS archive also facilitates mapping

because dry vegetation is not a factor in fire ignition or progression. Rain will lead to build up of grasses that dry out in the summer heat


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--the downy woodpecker hairy woodpecker red-bellied woodpecker--as well as the white-breasted nuthatch a common bark-gleaning species that is also a potential predator of EAB.


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and vegetation data researchers can track when and where arid lands begin to green and for the first time anticipate

and his team combined that information with in depth use of environmental satellite data using a series of images of vegetation growth and rainfall taken over days and weeks.

To track the greening of leaves the researchers relied on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index data acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on board NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites.

and weekly vegetation data from satellite images and entering the data into migration models the researchers were amazed at how well they could predict


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and length of its branches--predicts how much carbon and water a tree exchanges with the environment in relation to its overall size independently of the species. This theory can be used to scale the size of plants to their function such as amount of photosynthesis water loss

and shape of branches Bentley said. They grow within proportion. Take a pine tree for example: It has the general shape of a cone

A team of undergraduate and graduate student researchers dissected the trees down to the last twig counting the number of branches the number of branching points or nodes and measuring the length and diameter of each branch.

If you imagine collapsing all of a tree's outermost branches into one cylinder that cylinder would be the size of the trunk Bentley said.

According to Leonardo's rule the total area of branches is conserved as you go from the trunk all the way to the branches at the top.

one branch might branch two times but its sister branch might branch three or four times. After testing the theory empirically we conclude that generally speaking the theory works well


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When they sprinkled 0. 25 percent of daikon radish--an amount that's invisible to the eye

Try teaming frozen broccoli with raw radishes cabbage arugula watercress horseradish spicy mustard or wasabi to give those bioactive compounds a boost she advised.


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picoplankton instead of the larger diatoms typically found in highly productive ecosystems today. Indeed large marine animals--sharks tunas whales seals even seabirds--mostly became abundant


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and seed yields over the tree's lifetime according to a new study. The study which appears today in the Journal of Ecology is the first of its kind to use

In this case the tree Khaya senegalensis commonly known as African mahogany is found in many habitats in Western Africa from forests to savanna woodland

The tree is harvested heavily for its leaves to feed cattle and for its bark which is used medicinally to treat many ailments from stomachaches to reducing malaria fevers.


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In this study instead of comparing leaf and fruit shapes the team looked at gene regulation in mice that had diverged only recently from one another.


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Ladies and gentlemen, get ready to taste Snapdragon and Rubyfrostafter years of development and consumer testing as NY1 and NY2 Cornell University and New york Apple Growers have given the hottest new apples in the Empire state names worthy of their unique assets:

Snapdragon and Rubyfrost. The names were revealed this afternoon by Jeff Crist vice chairman of the NYAG board of directors at the annual Fruit Field days at the New york state Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva where Cornell breeder

Snapdragon is a great name for this apple because consumers found its crispy texture and sweet flavor

Snapdragon formerly NY1 gets its juicy crispness from its Honeycrisp parent and it has a spicy-sweet flavor that was a big hit with taste testers.

I remember my very first bite of Snapdragon. The taste the crispness and the juiciness impressed us Brown said.

because although Snapdragon's harvest window starts relatively early--in late September--its long storage

but intrepid consumers can search out Snapdragon and Rubyfrost at select NYAG farm stands across the state.


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and is particularly abundant in violets. We were surprised how many odors had associated genes with them. If this extends to other odors then we might expect everyone to have their own unique set of smells that they are sensitive to.

In the case of Î-ionone the smell associated with violets Mcrae and colleagues managed to pinpoint the exact mutation (a change in the DNA sequence) in the odorant receptor gene OR5A1 that underlies the sensitivity to smell the compound

So next time you are buying violets for your sweetheart you can see if he or she can smell them


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#Chanel, UCSBS corpse flower, blooms and causes a big stinkchanel UC Santa barbara's corpse flower has finally spread her odiferous wings broadcasting a stench that smells like a cross between rotting flesh and Limburger cheese.

The entire community has been holding its collective breath waiting for UCSB's Amorophallus titanum its proper botanic name to bloom.

--and smelling--a Titan arum. We've been visiting in Santa barbara for a month said David Cooper who lives in Phoenix. We came last week

but couldn't leave until we saw it in bloom. Discovered in 1878 by the Florentine botanist Odoardo Beccarini the Titan arum another common name given the plant by Sir David Attenborough in his BBC nature documentary series heats up as it blooms

in order to disperse its perfume--hence the moniker Chanel. Heat enables the smell to go farther attracting more pollinating insects

An infrared camera from Goleta-based FLIR captured time-sequence thermal photography of Chanel as her spadix the tall core spike that houses both female and male flowers heated up to nearly human body temperature.

The data provided by this series of photographs will help us understand how the Titan arum uses thermal energy to attract pollinators said Taber.

The Titan arum heats up by burning carbohydrates stored in its corm an underground stem that has been modified into storage tissue.

The enormous amount of energy expended during this process limits the time the Titan can bloom which explains why it only blooms for a couple of days

and doesn't bloom annually. Chanel is only the second Titan arum to bloom at UCSB.

Tiny Chanel's mother bloomed once in 2002 before dying. The wait for UCSB's next bloom from this giant Sumatran cousin to the common philodendron may not be as long as the wait for Chanel to bloom.

Chanel is about to become a mother. Staff at the UCSB biology greenhouse had the foresight to contact the U s. Botanic Garden in Washington D c. to secure pollen from its plant (nicknamed Mortimer in social media that bloomed July 21.

While Chanel was in heat last night greenhouse staff applied the pollen donated to the female flowers.

Once pollinated female flowers develop into olive-sized bright orange-red fruits that are carried in cylindrical clusters up to half a meter long.

or two seeds that--with tender care and an abundance of patience--can develop into the corms from

which the Titan arums grows. Five to seven years down the road Chanel's offspring could possibly bloom.

Any seeds that Chanel and Mortimer produce from their cross-continent union will help further conservation efforts for this bizarre majestic and threatened plant Taber said.

There are 300000 different species of flowering plants and the corpse flower is one of the most extreme examples of how evolution can result in extreme flowers

and pollination systems said Scott Hodges professor in the Department of Ecology Evolution and Marine Biology.

This is a tremendous opportunity to show students and the general public about plant diversity and biology in general.

Titan arum signs will direct visitors to Lot 18 where parking costs $5 for two hours.

From there Titan arum signs will guide visitors from Lot 18 to the greenhouse. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of California-Santa barbara. Note:


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When it comes to sequestering carbon from the atmosphere the team shows that Jatropha curcas does it better.

and using data from Jatropha curcas plantations in Egypt India and Madagascar says Wulfmeyer. The new Earth System Dynamics study shows that one hectare of Jatropha curcas could capture up to 25 tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year over a 20 year period.

A plantation taking up only about 3%of the Arabian desert for example could absorb in a couple of decades all the CO2. produced by motor vehicles in Germany over the same period.

Vegetation has played a key role in the global carbon cycle for millions of years in contrast to many technical and very expensive geoengineering techniques explains Becker.


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and crawl around in leaf litter using primitive compound eyes to detect light but not form images.

Ant Lords of Leaf Litteramong the newly discovered and named species from forest-floor leaf litter:

and leaf litter and pour it through sifters which have wire mesh with third-inch-wide openings.


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