This variability means that the success of bacterial fertilizers might depend on developing tailor-made versions for different crop cultivars and environments.
and respond to this new rich food resource said Charles Flower UIC postdoctoral research associate in biology and first author of the study.
and the impact on the ecosystem Flower said. In this study the researchers wanted to see
or perhaps more efficient than other methods to slow the spread of this pest said Flower.
One of the ways a predator can respond to a new abundant food source according to Flower is a functional response:
This was looking at woodpecker foraging at a fine tree-by-tree scale said Flower.
and didn't tell you what the birds were doing there said Flower. With the numerical response they found
or how its population is controlled said Flower. Slowing its course may give researchers time to learn more about how it can be controlled.
Or at least save a nearby forest said Flower. The research suggests that the woodpeckers are likely slowing the spread of emerald ash borer.
Sugar beet is the first representative of a group of flowering plants called Caryophyllales comprising 11500 species
Sugar beet has a lower number of genes encoding transcription factors than any flowering plant with already known genome adds Bernd Weisshaar a principle investigator from Bielefeld University who was involved in the study.
Additionally gene numbers varied between different sugar beet cultivars which contained up to 271 genes not shared with any of the other lines as Juliane Dohm
but collect and carry vegetation--often grasses flowers fir needles and herbaceous forbs such as lupine alumroot and yarrow--to their homes to make haypiles for winter use.
or cut back at the age of two years before they were old enough to flower
The work involved the examination of long-term changes in vascular plant communities within a 1 300 monitoring grid covering 28 forested areas in various parts of Europe.
Although nitrogen deposition remains small in Northern europe even a slight rise in long-term deposition could change the competitive relationship of vascular plants by promoting the dissemination
Whereas fallow forests can have a surprisingly high tree-biodiversity a large proportion of tree species only occur as seedlings and saplings.
#Better protection for mangroves with models for successful seedling establishmentseedlings of mangroves do not have an easy time to get established.
Human intervention in coastal areas and climate change also make life difficult for mangrove seedlings.
Thorsten Balke studied the conditions that enable mangrove seedlings to be successful. On 18 december he will defend his Phd thesis at Radboud University.
how do the seedlings get to the tidal flat and what factors ensure their growth to become a successful mangrove forest?
The dangers of high tide What is the biggest danger for mangrove seedlings? High tide. Due to the currents and waves that accompany high tide sedimentation
and erosion can prevent seedlings from becoming established on the bare tidal flat. During sedimentation material carried by the water sinks to the l bed
and accumulates there essentially burying the seedlings. Erosion is another factor whereby soil particles are removed from the bed by water currents.
Many limiting factors However the seedlings also work against themselves. Due to their own buoyancy it takes some time before they become firmly anchored in the soil
And after the seedlings are anchored in the soil their growth process can still fail because they become buried by sediments
tidal periods in which the conditions are ideal for the establishment and further development of mangrove seedlings.
'The results of Balke's models emphasise that the most important factor for successful restoration is not planting seedlings
but improving the growing conditions for the seedlings. For example in Indonesia mangrove rehabilitation projects are being developed using brushwood groynes to counteract erosion
and enable mangrove seedlings to develop. Balke:''All my publications are open source so that everyone in the world can use this information freely.'
The study published by the journal PLOS One showed that particular cultivars combined with drier sunnier conditions work together to increase the chances that salmonella will spread.
Tomato maturity and cultivar particular strains of salmonella and seasonal differences were the strongest factors affecting proliferation.
when one bee visits one flower. Second is abundance which measures the number of each type of bee observed in a study area.
or the number of flowers that a bee visits while foraging and the amount of time it spends at each flower.
The perfect bee would produce a lot of seeds and visit a lot of flowers even in poor weather--and there would be a lot of them Burrack says.
But as far as we know the perfect bee doesn't exist. The researchers conducted a pilot study using their comprehensive approach to assess the pollination performance of various bee species on economically important highbush blueberry crops in North carolina.
When saponins were given to the fish together with broad beans sunflower meal rape and maize gluten meal they did not cause inflammation
#Himalayan flowers shed light on climate changeflower color in some parts of the world including The himalayas has evolved to attract bees as pollinators research has shown for the first time.
and RMIT University have investigated the evolution of flower colors due to the bee's color vision.
Associate professor Adrian Dyer of Monash and RMIT said previous studies had shown that flower color evolved to attract bees as pollinators in temperate environments
Dr Mani Shrestha from Monash University and his colleague Prakash Bhattrai from the Tribhuvan University Kathmandu collected spectral data from more than 100 flowering plants in Nepal over a range of altitudes from 900
Using computer models to examine flower colors as bees would see them the team addressed how pollinator vision had shaped flower evolution.
Dr Shrestha said flowers from both subtropical (900-2000m) and alpine (3000-4100m) regions showed evidence of having evolved color spectral signatures to enhance discrimination by bee pollinators.
The research could shed light on how flower colors may continue to evolve in particular environments depending upon the availability of the most effective pollinators.
While'bee colors'were prevalent at all elevations flower colors in high altitude zones were more diverse
By understanding how these plants control development of the bulb we can support the breeding of new cultivars that have the right genetic profile to respond to specific growing conditions ensuring each plant produces a bulb for sale on the market.
Commercial production of onions relies on cultivars tailored to the environment they are grow in responding to the right combination of day length
Magnetic pollen replicas offer multimodal adhesionresearchers have created magnetic replicas of sunflower pollen grains using a wet chemical layer-by-layer process that applies highly conformal iron oxide coatings.
The spikes inherited from sunflower pollen provide short range adhesion--over nanoscale distances --while the oxide chemistry provides an adhesion mode that operates over much longer distances--up to one millimeter.
and dandelion--before choosing particles from the sunflower (Helianthus annuus). The sunflower pollen grains are nearly spherical
but covered with spikes that can entangle with the hairs on bees'legs or adhere to surfaces via Van der waals forces at nanometer-scale distances Sandhage explained.
They studied replica pollen adhesion to polyvinyl alcohol polyvinyl acetate polystyrene silicon nickel and neodymium-iron-boron--and compared the adhesion properties to those of the original sunflower pollen grains.
A research team led by conservation biologist Miles Silman will launch two different drones to conduct climate research in the region giving a never-before-seen bird's eye view of one of the most difficult locations in the world to study.
Researchers received funding from the National Science Foundation and Wake Forest's Center for Energy Environment and Sustainabilitydrones Deliver a Bird's eye Viewone of the researchers'robots a copter drone relies on eight small propeller units
or thermal imaging camera to gather data on everything from leaf and flower characteristics to temperature readings and animal behavior.
This indicates that the changing impacts of the grass over time do not alter the seedlings'ability to grow in the ecosystem.
and using a compatible vegetable oil supplement (rape sunflower and camelina). The changes in ruminal lipid metabolism are based on the differences between plant species in terms of digestion kinetics and microbial flora in the rumen.
and Vitamin c levels in the cultivars. The scientists said that the effects of sugar alcohol zinc applications were equal to
According to Kevin M. Crosby from Texas A&m University's Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center open-pollinated cultivars of Habanero peppers are used extensively by US growers
but the cultivars have suffered historically from several deficiencies including low yields late maturity disease and pest susceptibility and lack of uniformity.
Transition to F1 hybrid cultivars such as jalapeã o bell and ancho has led to greatly increased yields earlier maturity and superior fruit quality.
Crosby said that'Carotex-312'should appeal to consumers of Habanero-type peppers because of the new cultivar's large attractive orange-colored fruit.
However Crosby noted the most outstanding attribute of this new cultivar is its ability to produce high yields particularly early in the season.
or from the open-pollinated control cultivar Habanero. More important Crosby said we found that average early yield (first harvest yield) was 19%of total yield (total of six harvests) for'Carotex-312
'but only 4. 7%of total yield for'Tigerpaw-NR'and 4. 2%of total yield for the open-pollinated control cultivar'Habanero'.
'Observations of a number of'Carotex-312'plantings in Texas and the results of prior research with the parental lines used to develop'Carotex-312'also suggested that the new cultivar has several potentially useful disease-resistance attributes.
Tropical Race 4 (TR4) is starting to have a huge effect on the Cavendish cultivar in Southeast asia
#First look at diverse life below rare tallgrass prairiesamerica's once-abundant tallgrass prairies--which have disappeared all but--were home to dozens of species of grasses that could grow to the height of a man hundreds of species of flowers
Ordinary households conservation organizations and natural resource agencies can all plant milkweed and flowering plants to offset ongoing losses in the species'breeding habitat.
Despite recent concerns that important crops in high-yielding regions have reached their production maximum the rise in yield potential of new cultivars does not yet level off.
A. rudis begins foraging too late to disperse the seeds of the early flowering plants. Phenology is the study of seasonal life cycle events such as bird
Successful species interactions require that the species involved share the same cue said Warren. The cold-adapted A. picea ant species shares temperature cues with Anemone americana a common early spring wildflower that drops
and investigated the placement of the plant's offspring (seedlings). They also took a very careful look at the ant species by monitoring tuna-bait stations at each grid for 90 minutes every week from March to June 2010 and monthly from March to June 2011.
and distribution of the bee species Braunsapis puangensis in the Suva area of Fiji and examine its association with the invasive creeping daisy Sphagneticola trilobata.
The paper suggests that the invasive creeping daisy could in fact have a positive influence on a wild bee pollinator species
The situations described above give the impression that the presence of some exotic flowering plants may be of benefit by encouraging higher numbers of pollinating species to occur at a site.
Outside of agro-ecological systems many studies have indicated that even flowering plants considered as invasive may have positive effects on insects especially on nectar
when dinosaurs didfor the first time ever scientists have documented a widespread extinction of bees that occurred 65 million years ago concurrent with the massive event that wiped out land dinosaurs and many flowering plants.
Previous studies have suggested a widespread extinction among flowering plants at the K-T boundary and it's long been assumed that the bees who depended upon those plants would have met the same fate.
and grazing animals affect the characteristics of natural plant populations these researchers studied bird's eye primrose populations in alvar grasslands on the Baltic island of Ãand.
a short morph that produces its flowers close to the ground and a tall morph that displays its flowers well above the ground.
The tall morph is better at attracting pollinators but on the other hand it is damaged more frequently by grazing animals and seed predators.
and the introduction of new cultivars has increased strawberry yields in the region by 140%during the past 50 years.
and crown diameter and has beautiful soft sword-shaped leaves with white edges and cream flowers with bright orange filaments all highly distinctive features.
#Flower research shows gardens can be a feast for the eyes #and the beesare our favourite garden flowers attractive to hungry visitors such as bees and butterflies to feed on?
Researchers at the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI) at the University of Sussex have completed one of the first scientific studies to put the business of recommending pollinator-friendly garden flowers on a firmer scientific footing.
The study s findings are published today (17 october 2013) in the journalfunctional Ecology. Gardens are more important than ever as a source of food for a wide variety of insects who feed on the nectar
and pollen found in many flowers: pollinators such as bees and butterflies are in decline globally with one of the main causes being the loss of flowers especially in the countryside.
As popular support for wildlife continues to grow gardeners are increasingly looking for ways to help bees
and other insects by providing attractive flowers in their gardens for insects to feed on. To do this they often rely on#oepollinator-friendly#plant lists.
The study funded by the Body shop Foundation involved repeatedly counting flower-visiting insects over two summers as they foraged on 32 popular summer-flowering garden plant varieties in a specially planted experimental garden on the University s
as it is known to be attractive to bees and also four dahlias. All the plants studied had to be popular garden plants be widely
and had to flower mainly or exclusively in July/August. 2one key result found by researchers Professor Francis Ratnieks
and his Phd student Mihail Gaburzov was that garden flowers attractive to the human eye vary enormously (approx 100-fold) in their attractiveness to insects meaning that the best plants for bees
But our study clearly shows that planting pollinator-friendly flowers is a no-cost win-win solution to help the bees.
and dahlias are from Mexico.##oehelping bees in your garden is a no-brainer. Flowers that attract bees are
just as easy to grow and just as pretty and cost no more. Plant the right flowers and the bees will come.#
#Mihail Garbuzov says:##oewe basically counted bees and other insects visiting flowers in bloom to determine the most attractive.
Anyone can do this in their own garden or park or even when shopping for plants in a garden centre.#
#1#Quantifying variation among garden plants in attractiveness to bees and other flower-visiting insects Functional Ecology (October 2013.
which the researchers decoded the honey bee communication dances had shown that summer is the most challenging season for bees to find flowers
because the distances flown to flowers were longer than in spring or autumn. Story Source:
The fleshy part of the fruit we eat is actually a modification of the shoot tip from which the flowers developed.
This intervention led to the appearance of red stigmas in the flowers and the production of anthocyanins in immature fruits.
and the synthesis of protective compounds are also important in the stigmas of the flower says Thilo Fischer.
#Fear of predators drives honey bees away from good food sourcesmost of us think of honey bees as having a bucolic pastoral existence--flying from flower to flower to collect the nectar they then turn into honey.
and wait to ambush them on flowers. Such fear drives bees to avoid food sources closely associated with predators
Although North america isn't known as a hotspot for crop plant diversity the inventory uncovered nearly 4600 CWR in the United states including close relatives of globally important food crops such as sunflower bean sweet potato and strawberry.
#New fossils push the origin of flowering plants back by 100 million years to the early Triassicdrilling cores from Switzerland have revealed the oldest known fossils of the direct ancestors of flowering plants.
These beautifully preserved 240-million-year-old pollen grains are evidence that flowering plants evolved 100 million years earlier than previously thought according to a new study in the open-access journal Frontiers in Plant science.
Flowering plants evolved from extinct plants related to conifers ginkgos cycads and seed ferns. The oldest known fossils from flowering plants are pollen grains.
These are small robust and numerous and therefore fossilize more easily than leaves and flowers.
An uninterrupted sequence of fossilized pollen from flowers begins in the Early Cretaceous approximately 140 million years ago
and it is assumed generally that flowering plants first evolved around that time. But the present study documents flowering plant-like pollen that is 100 million years older implying that flowering plants may have originated in the Early Triassic (between 252 to 247 million years ago) or even earlier.
Many studies have tried to estimate the age of flowering plants from molecular data but so far no consensus has been reached.
Depending on dataset and method these estimates range from the Triassic to the Cretaceous. Molecular estimates typically need to be anchored in fossil evidence
but extremely old fossils were not available for flowering plants. That is why the present finding of flower-like pollen from the Triassic is significant says Prof.
Peter Hochuli University of Zurich. Peter Hochuli and Susanne Feist-Burkhardt from Paleontological Institute and Museum University of ZÃ rich studied two drilling cores from Weiach and Leuggern northern Switzerland and found
pollen grains that resemble fossil pollen from the earliest known flowering plants. With Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy they obtained high-resolution images across three dimensions of six different types of pollen.
In a previous study from 2004 Hochuli and Feist-Burkhardt documented different but clearly related flowering-plant-like pollen from the Middle Triassic in cores from the Barents sea south of Spitsbergen.
The samples from the present study were found 3000 km south of the previous site.
We believe that even highly cautious scientists will now be convinced that flowering plants evolved long before the Cretaceous say Hochuli.
What might these primitive flowering plants have looked like? In the middle Triassic both the Barents sea and Switzerland lay in the subtropics
which are formed in dusty nurseries throughout the cosmos. But how the dust interacts with hydrogen
Using a sophisticated series of intricate experiments involving growing seedlings from surface sterilized seeds in nitrogen-deprived
They might see flowers or angels as boring or clich and that's not how they want their work to be represented.
While spontaneous public memorials with flowers and teddy bears sprang up in Newtown Conn. after the mass murders at a school as well as after the Boston Marathon bombings
Apple Dogwood Pear Plum Begonia flower#¢Plants and Flowers: Daffodil Lilac Magnolia Rose Sunflowerbe Quick to Clean--Mold and pollen can collect on fallen leaves.
Use of pyrethrins derived from chrysanthemum flowers and the related synthetic pyrethroids has been on the increase during the last decade.
Dilcher an IU professor emeritus of geological sciences and biology in the College of Arts and Sciences discovered fossil flowers and fruits resembling those of magnolias
The researchers used advanced technologies of light scanning electron and polarizing microscopy to develop a more detailed picture of the Archaeanthus flowers fruits and seeds and compare them with the flowers fruits and seeds of contemporary plants.
and should be recognized as its own flowering plant family. While the paper provides new insight into the evolution of the tulip tree line questions remain Dilcher said.
Historically Andean cloud forest seedlings sprout higher in elevation during periods of global warming. However an unprecedented rate of projected temperature gain in the region over the next century 5 degrees Celsius will have them going upslope faster than ever before says Miles Silman professor of Biology at Wake Forest University.
and flowers depends upon the activity of meristems. These reservoir-like compartments hold stem cells
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
#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.
Estimates of the amount of missing data were based on 7539 peer-reviewed studies about animals fungi seed plants bacteria and various microscopic organisms.
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.
whether the seed dispersal and seedling distribution pattern of M. miquelii might indicate that it is maladapted to its current dispersers.
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.
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.
#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.
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.
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.
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.
The berry bushes also produce flowers of value to pollinators like butterflies insects and hummingbirds; food for other small and large mammals;
The team used the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) as well as pea bean and rice plants in their experiments observing the same results.
Kepinski expects the same mechanism to be observed in larger plants and young tree seedlings. In older trees the mechanisms driving gravity sensitive growth in woody tissues are different to those in non-woody plants.
They analyzed the samples to find out which flowering plants were the bees'main pollen sources and
But when the researchers collected pollen from bees foraging on native North american crops such as blueberries and watermelon they found the pollen came from other flowering plants in the area not from the crops.
Both palm species are in the Arecaceae family of flowering plants which fossil evidence dates to the Cretaceous period an estimated 140 to 200 million years ago.
#Bees betray their flowers when pollinator species declineremove even one bumblebee species from an ecosystem and the impact is swift and clear:
The study to be published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences focused on the interactions between bumblebees and larkspur wildflowers in Colorado's Rocky mountains.
We found that these wildflowers produce one-third fewer seeds in the absence of just one bumblebee species says Emory University ecologist Berry Brosi who led the study.
That's alarming and suggests that global declines in pollinators could have a bigger impact on flowering plants
The experiments focused on the interactions of the insects with larkspurs dark-purple wildflowers that are visited by 10 of the of the 11 bumblebee species there.
The researchers studied a series of 20-meter square wildflower plots evaluating each one in both a control state left in its natural condition
while in other cases they could follow the bees to 100 or more flowers. Running around after bumblebees in these beautiful wildflower meadows was one of the most fun parts of the research Brosi says.
Much of this bee team was made up of Emory undergraduate students funded by the college's Scholarly Inquiry
. While about 78 percent of the bumblebees in the control groups were faithful to a single species of flower only 66 percent of the bumblebees in the manipulated groups showed such floral fidelity.
Larkspurs produced about one-third fewer seeds when one of the bumblebee species was removed compared to the larkspurs in the control groups.
The small change in the level of competition made the remaining bees more likely to'cheat'on the larkspur Briggs says.
While previous research has shown how competition drives specialization within a species the bumblebee study is one of the first to link this mechanism back to the broader functioning of an ecosystem.
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