Using a mobile stamen to slap away insect visitors maximizes pollination and minimizes costs to flowers, a study shows. For centuries scientists have observed that when a visiting insect's tongue ...

If evolutionary biologists are the detectives of the natural world’s past mysteries, then the phylogenic tree is their version of a cork board of crime-scene suspects linked together with red string ...

Insects are the primary pollinators of most flowers and crops. Niklas_Weidner/500px via Getty Images Rachel Mallinger: A lot of different insects pollinate. Insects visit flowers for many purposes, ...

Spring flowers have co-evolved with insect pollinators for a long time. The flowers require pollen delivery to set seed. To entice insects to visit and deliver the pollen, they produce food rewards ...

Many plants, from crops to carnations, cannot bear fruit or reproduce without bees, beetles, butterflies and other insects to pollinate them. But the population of insect pollinators is dropping in ...

Through pollination and feeding on all parts of plants, insects influence which plants thrive, which struggle, and even ...

Oritrophium limnophilum (Sch.Bip.) Cuatr. (Compositae), a rosette plant species of the páramo (alpine) region of the Venezuelan Andes, has strongly helioptropic flower stalks. Flower heads facing the ...

Winter doesn’t have to mean a lifeless garden or a silent backyard. Even when frost creeps in and most plants retreat, some ...

Scientists offer novel insights into why and how wind-pollinated plants have evolved from insect-pollinated ancestors, and what it might mean for a potential pollination crisis. They found that plants ...

For centuries scientists have observed that when a visiting insect's tongue touches the nectar-producing parts of certain flowers, the pollen-containing stamen snaps forward. The new study proves that ...