Based on the measurements of 1063 flower reflection spectra, we show that flower colours fall into distinct clusters in the colour space of a bee. It is demonstrated that this clustering is caused by a limited variability in the floral spectral reflectance curves. There are as few as 10 distinct types of such curves, five of which constitute 85% of all measurements. UV reflections are less freq...

A number of recent papers have suggested that the amygdala plays a role in the brain's novelty detection circuit. In a recent study, we showed that this role may be specific to certain classes of biologically-relevant stimuli, such as human faces. The purpose of the present experiment was to determine whether other biologically-relevant stimuli also evoke novelty specific amygdala responses. To...

Andromonoecy, the production of both male and hermaphrodite flowers in the same individual, is a widespread phenomenon that occurs in approximately 4,000 species distributed in 33 families. Hypotheses for the evolution of andromonoecy suggest that the production of intermediate proportions of staminate flowers may be favored by selection acting through female components of fitness. Here we used...

The Present paper reports 36 wild edible angiospermic species from Nasik district of Maharashtra. The district is inhabited by the aborigines viz Bhils, Thakur, Katkari, Warli, Kokani, Kunbi-Kokana a Mahadeo-Koli, apart from other rural populace. The use leaves, tubers rhizoms, bulbils, fruits, seeds, flowers, etc as complementary to their diet or in a times of scarcity during famines.

Western Australia is famous for its wild flowers, but its doctors are even wilder. Or so Bruce Shepherd, president of the Australian Medical Association (and a Sydneysider), told the opening session of the BMA's overseas meeting in Perth. The BMA arrived in Perth in early November to find not only a vast isolated land of desert and sea but also streets with Scottish names and Father Christmases...

Consumption of cut flowers is going to increase day by day in Pakistan. It is related with the rising living standards, education and electronic media that have promoted this business in recent years. The production and consumption of cut flowers has increased over the past decade and this increase is expected to continue. However, local consumption and demand is yet to be satisfied. Gladiolus ...

Children are slower and more error-prone when the correct response is counter to their initial inclination (incongruent trials) than when they just need to do what comes naturally (congruent trials). Children are almost always tested on a congruent-trial block and then on an incongruent-trial block. That order of testing makes it impossible to determine whether worse performance on incongruent ...

Central place foragers, such as pollinating bees, typically develop circuits (traplines) to visit multiple foraging sites in a manner that minimizes overall travel distance. Despite being taxonomically widespread, these routing behaviours remain poorly understood due to the difficulty of tracking the foraging history of animals in the wild. Here we examine how bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) dev...

Bumblebee colonies are founded by a single-mated queen. Due to this life history trait, bumblebees are more susceptible to parasites and diseases than polyandrous and/or polygynous social insects. A greater resistance towards parasites is shown when the genetic variability within a colony is increased. The parasite resistance may be divided into different levels regarding the step of the parasi...

Attentional demands can prevent humans and other animals from performing multiple tasks simultaneously. Some studies, however, show that tasks presented in different sensory modalities (e.g. visual and auditory) can be processed simultaneously. This suggests that, at least in these cases, attention might be modality-specific and divided differently between tasks when present in the same modalit...