and indirectly increase the growth rate of Douglas-fir seedlings replanted after harvest. The findings which are among the first to speak to the benefits of second-growth logging debris are published online in the journal Forest Ecology and Management.
The findings are based on a study of seedling development under three levels of logging debris--0 40 and 80 percent cover--at two sites in Washington
Harrington and his colleagues expanded on previous research on logging debris effects by increasing the number of seedlings studied extending the study period to four years and looking at the responses of additional variables like vegetation abundance
and seedling water potential. In addition to having a vegetation control effect the retained woody debris helped promote Douglas-fir seedling growth by reducing evaporation;
However where the use of herbicides to control competing vegetation was combined with logging debris seedling growth rates were observed the highest in the study especially where debris cover was 80 percent.
#Bees get a buzz from flower nectar containing caffeineyou may need a cup of coffee to kick start the day
but it seems honeybees also get their buzz from drinking flower nectar containing caffeine. Publishing in Science researchers have shown that caffeine improves a honeybee's memory
and citrus flowers were three times more likely to remember a flower's scent than those feeding on just sugar.
Remembering floral traits is difficult for bees to perform at a fast pace as they fly from flower to flower
and we have found that caffeine helps the bee remember where the flowers are. In turn bees that have fed on caffeine-laced nectar are laden with coffee pollen
Typically the nectar in the flower of a coffee plant contains almost as much caffeine as a cup of instant coffee.
and return to some flowers over others will help inform how landscapes could be managed better.
The authors also describe a variety of mutations in the tuber formation regulator gene which occur in different combinations in modern potato cultivars giving rise to early medium
Suggestions for Improved Regulation the authors also advocate liability for industry developers who fail to show due diligence in evaluating the potential invasiveness of a new cultivar.
NREL's Tool Combines Precision and Speedthe path toward an ultra-fast ultra-sophisticated screening tool went through Arborgen one of the nation's largest tree seedling suppliers.
Eighty-seven percent of the world's flowering plants including most of the leading global food crops are pollinated by animals.
Flowers mislead traditional taxonomyfor hundreds of years plant taxonomists have worked to understand how species are related.
And paramount among these morphological traits were aspects of flower shape and arrangement. In the papilionoid legumes--a large diverse group that includes the common pea
and bean--most species have specialized highly butterfly-shaped flowers with bilateral symmetry fused stamens and strongly differentiated standard wing
Papilionoid genera with radially symmetric or weakly differentiated flower parts have been regarded as primitive members of the group.
and the putatively related Sweetia as primitive papilionoid groups because they lack the characteristic papilionate flowers.
Yet evidence from DNA sequences suggested that these plants were closely related to two rainforest genera with true papilionate flowers Vatairea and Vataireopsis.
Despite their striking differences in flower shape Luetzelburgia Sweetia Vatairea and Vataireopsis turned out to be close relatives.
Moreover the two genera with papilionate flowers were not each other's closest relatives. According to Cardoso We showed that similarity in floral morphology does not predict phylogenetic relatedness.
Indeed genera with very different flower shapes are often very closely related (Luetzelburgia and Vatairea and genera with highly similar flowers share such similarity via convergent evolution (Vatairea and Vataireopsis).
For these plants other morphological characteristics may indicate relationships more reliably. Floral traits are apparently more prone to rapid evolutionary changes in response to local ecological conditions Cardoso said
the flowers might just be fooling us. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by American Journal of Botany.
Recollecting 26 spring-blooming flowers from Robertson's network Knight Phd professor of biology at Washington University
Half the bee species associated with these flowers in Robertson's lifetime had disappeared some pollinators were active before their plants had bloomed plants weren't visited as often
Robertson's astonishing legacya professor of biology and Greek at Blackburn College in Carlinville Illinois Charles Robertson collected flower-visiting insects near Carlinville between 1887 and 1916.
Robertson's meticulous database is probably the oldest of its type for flower-visiting insects.
i. d. tags and his privately published book Flowers and Insects. How Robertson's network is studied doingrobertson it all Knight said.
If it was a species of flowering plant within a 10-mile radius of Carlinville it was in his study.
If any community is going to be affected by climate change Knight said it would be this one because the plants flower soon after the winter snow melts.
The flowers were in bloom eight fewer days on average and the insects flew for 22.5 fewer days.
Robertson didn't keep track of how much time he spent in the field watching each flower
One of the plants Marlin studied was Claytonia virginica commonly known as'spring beauty.''We were interested very in Claytonia virginica
because it is the plant in the network currently visited by the greatest diversity of bees Knight said.
Comparing the visitation rates we measured to Marlin's we discovered that the bees were making fewer trips to the flowers than they had in the 1970s.
and Knight picked six bee species that frequently visited Claytonia virginica two named by Robertson and washed Robertson's archival specimens of those bees Marlin's specimens and their own.
Since these were all the same species of bee caught off the same flower the default assumption was that they'd be covered in much the same pollen.
The fraction of the pollen on the bee contributed by Claytonia virginica was highest in Robertson's time lower in Marlin's time and much lower in 2010.
because their flowers are pollinated not adequately says Harder. We also show that adding more honey bees often does not fix this problem
Flowers of most crops need to receive pollen before making seeds and fruits a process that is enhanced by insects that visit flowers.
These pollinators including bees flies butterflies and beetles usually live in natural or semi-natural habitats such as the edges of forests hedgerows or grasslands.
The study found that the proportion of flowers producing fruits was considerably lower in sites with fewer wild insects visiting crop flowers.
The authors examined the effect of GSSE processed from a grape cultivar('Carignan')of Vitis vinifera from northern Tunisia on rats.
In fact Z. mays was the second most common pollen found in the total of all samples behind only pollen from cattails which have wind-pollinated flowers.
and distinguish electric signals given out by flowers. Flowers often produce bright colours patterns and enticing fragrances to attract their pollinators.
Researchers at Bristol's School of Biological sciences led by Professor Daniel Robert found that flowers also have their equivalent of a neon sign--patterns of electrical signals that can communicate information to the insect pollinator.
These electrical signals can work in concert with the flower's other attractive signals and enhance floral advertising Power plants are charged usually negatively
and emit weak electric fields. On their side bees acquire a positive charge as they fly through the air.
No spark is produced as a charged bee approaches a charged flower but a small electric force builds up that can potentially convey information.
By placing electrodes in the stems of petunias the researchers showed that when a bee lands the flower's potential changes
and remains so for several minutes. Could this be a way by which flowers tell bees another bee has recently been visiting?
To their surprise the researchers discovered that bumblebees can detect and distinguish between different floral electric fields.
The discovery of such electric detection has opened up a whole new understanding of insect perception and flower communication.
This novel communication channel reveals how flowers can potentially inform their pollinators about the honest status of their precious nectar and pollen reserves.
The last thing a flower wants is to attract a bee and then fail to provide nectar:
and would soon lose interest in such an unrewarding flower. The co-evolution between flowers and bees has a long and beneficial history so perhaps it's not entirely surprising that we are still discovering today how remarkably sophisticated their communication is.
The research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Bristol.
when looking for nectarflower colors that contrast with their background are more important to foraging bees than patterns of colored veins on pale flowers according to new research by Heather Whitney from the University of Cambridge in the UK and her colleagues.
Their observation of how patterns of pigmentation on flower petals influence bumblebees'behavior suggests that color veins give clues to the location of the nectar.
however that bees have an innate preference for striped flowers. The work is published online in Springer's journal Naturwissenschaften--The Science of Nature.
Very few flowers are a simple block of a single color. Patterns of pigmentation include color patterns within a petal or different colors on different petals.
and are attracted sometimes to patterned flowers over plain flowers. These patterns can increase the speed with
which bees locate the nectar reward in a flower. Venation patterns--or lines of color on flower petals--are common in Antirrhinum flowers commonly known as snapdragons.
The authors looked at the ways in which these color veins influence bumblebee foraging behavior.
They exposed bees who had seen not flowers before to veined ivory and red types of snapdragon flowers.
and veined flowers and which type of flower they preferred when they were looking for nectar.
From the bees'perspective red flowers reflected little light while red veins on ivory flowers slightly changed the color of the flower.
however had the most effect as it contrasted with the brown background more than the red flowers did.
and veined flowers but showed no preference for one or the other. In contrast both ivory and veined flowers were significantly more popular than red flowers.
The authors conclude: Venation patterns might be prevalent in nature because they can be useful nectar guides particularly
when they also increase flower visibility. But it appears that the color contrast of a flower with its background has a greater influence on bee preference.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Springer Science+Business Media. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
instead begins with the natural resins found in trees especially evergreens. The rosin and turpentine derived from their wood is rich in hydrocarbons similar but not identical to some components of petroleum.
Are humans alone in the cosmos and is our life-sustaining world unique? One of the earliest writers to speculate about exoplanets was the Italian philosopher
Some scientists believe masting events evolved to produce a big surplus of nut-carrying cones--far too many for wildlife species to consume in a season--making it more likely the nuts eventually will sprout into pinyon pine seedlings she said.
When prompted by genetic signals cells in the meristem develop into the plant's organs--leaves and flowers for instance.
Our simple hypothesis was that an increase in the size of the inflorescence meristem--the stem-cell reservoir that gives rise to flowers
In corn reproduction male flowers at the top of the plants distribute pollen grains two at a time through individual tubes to tiny cobs on the stalks covered by strands known as silks in a process known as double fertilization.
The tissue in the seeds of flowering plants is what feeds the world said Friedman who also directs the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard.
If flowering plants weren't here humans wouldn't be here. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Colorado at Boulder.
#24 new species of flower fly have been found in Central and Southern Americaa team of scientists have described twenty four new species of dipterans belonging to Quichuana genus of which only a further 24 species were known.
A ten-year study in forests of the American continent has resulted in the description of 24 new insect species from the Quichuana genus that are also known as'flower flies'.
In another study they investigated how HLB infection affects juice quality in the same three varieties of orange with respect to cultivar maturity and processing methods.
The scientists grew seedlings of a laboratory plant (Arabidopsis) that is a relative of mustard using a custom imaging system
#In the eastern U s.,spring flowers keep pace with warming climate, blooming up to a month earlierusing the meticulous phenological records of two iconic American naturalists Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold scientists have demonstrated that native plants in the eastern
and flowering dates and the trend toward climate-driven early blooming it is the first to suggest that the trend in flowering plants may continue beyond
In 1942 Leopold's notes show the woodland wildflower bloodroot blooming on April 12. In 2012 bloodroot was observed first blossoming March 17.
and bud-like shape that have brought it Internet buzz as a Martian flower. Other rocks nearby are siltstone with grains finer than powdered sugar.
and a small magnetic kaolinite stone naturally eroded into an unusual shape similar to a flower.
Firstly they found that honey bees preferred to visit flowers in the top parts of the almond trees.
During high winds the wild bees were observed still visiting almond flowers. Wild pollinators can therefore help sustain pollination service under extreme weather conditions when the service by honey bees declines.
This is particularly important in almond as it flowers early in the year when the weather conditions can be unfavourable for bee flight.
However our method is only likely to deliver success as long as the flowers of the plant in question play no significant role--sugar beet for instance.
Nature's ability to create iridescent flowers has been recreated by mathematicians at The University of Nottingham.
The team of researchers have collaborated with experimentalists at the University of Cambridge to create a mathematical model of a plant's petals to help us learn more about iridescence in flowering plants
Iridescence in flowers may act as a signal to pollinators such as bumblebees which are crucial to crop production.
Flowers and the animals that pollinate plants interact at the petal surface. The surfaces of many petals have produced regular patterns from folds of the waterproof cuticle layer that covers all plant surfaces.
and can learn to use this signal as a cue to identify rewarding flowers. The research has been published in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface.
Seedlings and small saplings cannot survive dry conditions and are drowned easily in wet marshes. Once plants become larger willows can survive droughts
Grass-and-wildflower-dominated fields supported more than three times as many bird species as cornfields including 10 imperiled species found only in the grasslands.
Among the grasslands studied the team found monoculture grasses supported fewer birds and fewer bird species than grasslands with a mix of grass types and other kinds of vegetation like wildflowers...
and disease resistance scientists are now looking at ways to develop tomato cultivars that boast higher antioxidant traits.
Imaging of root systems has until now largely been done in the laboratory using seedlings grown in small pots and containers.
#An innovative way to increase flower, seed and fruit productiona scientist from UPM has developed a method to enhance crop yield by the contact of roots aerial parts or even the substratum of the plant fungus'Colletotrichum tofieldiae'.
or weight of its seeds fruits and flower. Â This discovery has been protected by patent and its implementation could lead to cost savings
This method was patented (P201331839-A method to increase the production of flower seed and fruit of plants:
The study thought to be the first to assess these compounds in apple cultivars grown in the Pacific Northwest appears in October's print edition of the journal Food Chemistry.
Tree seedlings were most numerous where more of the fire-killed trees bore the fire-adapted or serotinous cones.
Beetle-killed trees likely contributed to post-fire seedling establishment too as their seeds remain viable in cones
and the flowering plants visited by the bees at a large number of sites across southern Norfolk including both urban and rural sites over a three month period.
Additionally the Tree Bumblebee preferred to forage on a set of flowering plants different to the sets of plants favoured by the other bumblebee species being more likely to use some species of flowering trees
and thistles but less likely to use some common herbaceous flowers. The results are the first evidence that in its new range in the UK the Tree Bumblebee is associated with built-up areas such as towns and villages and that these areas form a large part of its habitat use.
and monitoring trees researchers describe the relatedness of trees track flower and seed production collect insects survey mammals quantify carbon stocks
Instead of spraying fungicide we're using bees to deliver a biological control agent right to the flowers where it is needed.
The biological control agent contains spores of a parasitic fungus that prevents another fungus that causes the brown rot from colonising the flower.
and bring them to the flowers. The'flying doctors'technology is used successfully in Europe to control strawberry grey mould
Looking at both lines he identified 33 proteins that are expressed differentially in the tolerant cultivar.
and compare those results with the list of differentially expressed proteins from the Korean cultivars.
'For a number of years we have been keen to know just how much phylogenetic diversity the total outcome of millions of years of seed plant evolution we have in the vault.
A new study led by researchers from the University of Arizona reveals that the impact that spelled doom for the dinosaurs also decimated the evergreen flowering plants to a much greater extent than their deciduous peers.
They hypothesize that the properties of deciduous plants made them better able to respond rapidly to chaotically varying post-apocalyptic climate conditions.
Applying biomechanical formulae to a treasure trove of thousands of fossilized leaves of angiosperms--flowering plants excluding conifers--the team was able to reconstruct the ecology of a diverse plant community thriving during a 2. 2 million-year period
The researchers found evidence that after the impact fast-growing deciduous angiosperms had replaced their slow-growing evergreen peers to a large extent.
Living examples of evergreen angiosperms such as holly and ivy tend to prefer shade don't grow very fast
When you look at forests around the world today you don't see many forests dominated by evergreen flowering plants said the study's lead author Benjamin Blonder.
and could take advantage of changing conditions such as deciduous plants. We measured the mass of a given leaf in relation to its area
while slow-growing evergreens dominated the plant assemblages before the extinction event fast-growing flowering species had taken their places afterward.
and flowers of plant species such as water-plantain eyebright lousewort bitter root and European yellow-rattle which are weeds commonly present across Europe and Asia.
This means that it is not possible to predict where seedlings will take root and less specialised species therefore have an advantage even in the species-rich rainforests of the tropics.
and also the technologies--industrial fertilizers sophisticated large-scale irrigation new resilient cultivars--and financial resources to sustain high yields
When did the first canopy flowers appear? Most plant fossils are isolated organs making it difficult to reconstruct the type of plant life or its ecosystem structure.
and colleagues used leaf vein density a trait visible on leaf compression fossils to document the occurrence of stratified forests with a canopy dominated by flowering plants.
when flowering plants became part of the upper forest canopy. Vein density values similar to present ones appeared about 58 million years ago indicating that the emergence of flowering plants in the canopy occurred by the Paleocene.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Geological Society of America. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Furthermore the New zealand Kunzea species provide an important habitat for a wealth of endemic geckos orchids
What Flower Prefers to Grow After You Mow? With their attractive purple and pink flowers gentians are cultivated popular as garden plants.
The Pine Barrens gentian species (Gentiana autumnalis) thrives after its ecosystem has experienced disturbance as one of the earliest species to begin re-inhabiting empty spaces--a phase known as early succession.
But the gentian and other early successional species in the Pine Barrens are growing rare because of human intervention:
suppressing wildfires which are the most common natural disturbance in the area. The Pine Barrens of New jersey are second only to California in the frequency of wildfires.
but means there are far fewer disturbed places where gentians prefer to grow. Is mowing--including roadside mowing--an effective replacement for wildfires to help sustain the Pine Barrens gentian population?
That is one of the questions Rebozo is addressing in research he will present at the Ecological Society of America meeting on Aug 13.
Rebozo also identified sites where gentians grow unmanaged or mowed including one mowed roadside site where gentians happened to grow.
Rebozo found that where mowing and burning disturbances were introduced the gentians responded with increased plant density (more than doubled at some sites) flowering percentage
and patch size--often within one year of the disturbance. Prescribed burns had an even stronger positive impact on gentian growth
and reproduction than mowing did. With a burn comes not only clearing of vegetation but also an influx of nutrients Rebozo said.
Because of its dense evergreen foliage eastern hemlock plays an important role in the water cycle of southern Appalachian forests regulating stream flow year round.
and peak flows were likely higher after hemlock loss due to lower interception by the evergreen canopy in the riparian zone said Brantley.
The cross-pollination services they provide are required by approximately 80 percent of all flowering plants and 1/3 of all agricultural food production directly depends on bee pollination.
Olmstead uses traditional breeding methods to create blueberry cultivars that have traits consumers want. What we're trying to determine is:
when to germinate grow make food flower and even age. Like eyes the phytochrome is a light sensor that converts sunlight into chemical signals to get these jobs done.
when to flower says Vierstra. Plants use the molecule to sense where they are in the canopy;
or to flower and make fruit. Based on the light available the phytochrome cycles between an inactive and active state.
#Brother of Hibiscus flower is found alive and well on Maui, Hawaiimost people are familiar with Hibiscus flowers-they are an iconic symbol of tropical resorts worldwide where they are planted commonly in the landscape.
Some like Hawaii's State Flower-Hibiscus brackenridgei-are endangered species. Only a relatively few botanists
and Hawaiian conservation workers however are aware of an equally beautiful and intriguing related group of plants known as Hibiscadelphus-literally brother of Hibiscus.
#Bees able to spot which flowers offer best rewards before landingbumblebees are able to connect differences in pollen quality with floral features like petal colour and so land only on the flowers that offer the best rewards according to a new
whilst foraging on flowers and so until now it has been unclear whether they are able to form associative relationships between
what a flower looks like and the quality of its pollen. The study used bumblebee foragers housed under controlled conditions to test
whether they do learn about flowers during pollen collection. Their results show that bumblebees can individually assess pollen samples
which may allow bees to quickly learn which flowers provide the most nutritious pollen rewards for rearing their young.
There is still very little known about how bees decide which flowers to visit for pollen collection.
Easily learning floral features based on pollen rewards without needing any nectar rewards is a fast and effective way to recognise those flower species
Bees need to be able to select flowers providing the most nutritious food for rearing their young.
which means they may be able to tell just from the colour of the petals which flowers are worth visiting.
when collecting nectar from flowers but since bees don't eat pollen when foraging we were interested to see
whether they could still learn which flowers to visit when collecting this resource. The experiments involved manipulating the quality of pollen offered to the bees by diluting the samples.
Additionally the 2014 seedling selection trials at both Springlake and Dalhart include 115408 seedlings from 634 families or crosses.
which they cultivated plants in open fields in a normal-temperature environment and in a temperature-controlled area using a temperature free-air controlled enhancement system known as T-FACE.
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