Fruit ripening is all about plants getting animals to eat the seeds that are inside their fruits. This helps the plants get their seeds to somewhere new where they can grow into a new plant.
Bees need flowers to live, and we need bees to pollinate our crops. Understanding bee vision can help us better support our buzzy friends and the critical pollination services they provide.
Many fruits, nuts and other crops rely on bees to pollinate their flowers at just the right time of year. Many farmers rent bees to get the job done at pollination time.
Rather than trying to out-compete each other, flowers may work together to attract bees en masse. It’s the sort of approach that is effective in the world of advertising too.
Pollination in South Africa’s ecosystems is extremely complex. However new advances such as pollen metabarcoding help us understand interactions between pollinators and pollen.
It’s a decade since US beekeepers first noticed that their bees were mysteriously dying. Now we know much more about Colony Collapse Disorder, raising hopes that we can turn bees’ fortunes around.
Sarah Cusser, The University of Texas at Austin and Shalene Jha, The University of Texas at Austin
Bees and other pollinating insects are under stress worldwide. Research in South Texas shows that simple steps like planting wildflowers near fields can help pollinators and boost farmers’ profits.