Human-caused disturbances can affect the ability of animals to help spread seeds, which could reduce the amount of plant diversity in some forests.
Tag - mutualism
Dale Maylea
As a keystone clade, Miconia species support a huge variety of frugivores
Different species fruit sequentially, offering a year-round food resource.
Erin Zimmerman
Ants a principal pollinator for a threatened member of the Proteaceae
The plant is impervious to the pollen damage ants usually cause.
Botanists explore how mint makes a home for ants and mites
Domatia in a member of the mint family are caused by cell proliferation, not leaf rolling
Final course: ‘Coffee’… *
Or, rather, something to ponder as you finish your meal, maybe with a coffee. Whatever your food(s) of choice, you need the right equipment – e.g. teeth – to cope with it (unless it’s a liquid or intravenously...
Nigel Chaffey
Ant pollination in Brazilian savanna
Ant–plant associations are widely diverse and distributed throughout the world, leading to complex ecological networks. Regarding ant–plant mutualism, ant pollination is a very rare interaction and few studies have...
Alex Assiry
Investment in reward by ant-dispersed plants
Myrmecochory is a mutualistic interaction in which ants disperse the seeds of plants. The defining feature of such plants is the elaiosome, a lipid rich seed appendage that serves as a reward to the ants. It is...
William Salter
Employing plant functional groups to advance seed dispersal ecology and conservation
Plants rely on seed dispersal vectors — for example, animals, wind and water — to move across the landscape. Through dispersal, plants may experience reduced exposure to competition, predation and parasitism; colonize...
The diversity and evolution of pollination systems in the Apocynaceae
Interactions between flowering plants and their pollinators are known to be responsible for part of the tremendous diversity of the angiosperms, currently thought to number at least 350,000 species. Using a new database...
Botanists set the relationship status of Plants, Pollinators and Antagonists to “It’s complicated”
What happens when a flower is eaten or pollinated? A study in the American Journal of Botany shows one interaction can impact in an unexpected way on another.
Alun Salt
The potential for phenological mismatch between a perennial herb and its ground-nesting bee pollinator
Flowering time is shifting with climate change. Pollinators may respond differently to changes in temperature and moisture than the flowers they visit, resulting in a phenological mismatch between species. Assessing...
Diurnal and nocturnal pollination in a nursery-pollinated species
Nursery pollination is an unusual plant–insect interaction in which an insect is both pollinator and seed-predator. Depending on the abundance of the nursery pollinator and of other pollinators this interaction can...
AoBPLANTS
Inflorescence arrangement and nursery pollinator occupancy
Nursery pollination systems are excellent biological models to study how obligated plant-insect mutualisms function and have evolved. Jácome-Flores et al. investigated whether and how the spatial distribution, sex, and...
botanyone
Effects of plant polyploidy on the legume-rhizobia mutualism
Polyploidy alters plant genomes, phenotypes, and abiotic interactions. The effects of polyploidy on plant-biotic interactions however are less well known. One important plant-biotic interaction is the legume-rhizobia...
