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 ...

Answer: This question is a good one because the answer is beautiful. Big, fragrant, flamboyant flowers are a good indicator that an insect or other animal pollinates the plant. When the flowers are ...

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 ...

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 ...

Before there were flowers, pollination of plants by insects was likely rare, and scientists had no idea of the insect culprits. But a new discovery suggests at least one flittering pollinator. Strange ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Most of our food is from angiosperms, while more than 90% of angiosperms require insect pollination - making this pollination method hugely important. Nevertheless, scientists have long been unclear ...