In this Quick Guide, Johnson introduces the reader to carrion flowers, which evolved to mimic rotting flesh. This adaptation attracts insects that facilitate pollination.

He replied that while on a previous surgical rotation in another state, residents were “mean to one another and mean to the medical students.” He went on to say that the surgical residency program was very hierarchical and medical students “weren’t allowed” to speak with senior level residents let alone speak with the attending surgical staff. The student related being the target of verbal abus...

The Caricaceae is a small family of tropical trees and herbs in which most species are dioecious. In the present study, we extend our previous work on dioecy in the Caricaceae, characterising the morphological variation in sexual expression in flowers of the dioecious tree Jacaratia mexicana. We found that, in J. mexicana, female plants produce only pistillate flowers, while male plants are sex...

Many insects which gather nectar or pollen exhibit flower constancy, a learned fidelity to a particular species of plant. Recent studies suggest that foraging insects may use a perceptual mechanism akin to a search image to detect flowers, in a manner analogous to the way that predators search for prey. This has emerged as an alternative (but not mutually exclusive) explanation for flower const...

Floral color changes and retention of old flowers are frequently combined phenomena restricted to the floral guide or single flowers in few-flowered inflorescences. They are thought to increase the attractiveness over long distances and to direct nearby pollinators toward the rewarding flowers. In Tibouchina pulchra, a massively flowering tree, the whole flower changes its color during anthesis...

The production of seed by both selfing and outcrossing, or mixed mating, may be selected for under conditions of variable pollinator availability. Seed production was examined following experimental manipulations of perfect and pistillate flowers of the gynomonoecious plant Silene noctiflora. Style excision experiments in a greenhouse demonstrated that autonomous selfing occurs in the perfect f...

Arabidopsis flowers have four petals. Other floral organs are not represented on the diagram. KLU expression in petals is shown in red. Wild-type tissue is shown in yellow whereas klu mutant tissue is shown in blue. Wild-type flowers are larger than klu mutant flowers. Flowers that contain wild-type and mutant tissue (chimeric flowers) are of intermediate size between wild-type and mutant flowe...

Matches between the bills of hummingbirds and the flowers they visit have been interpreted as examples of coadaptation and feeding specialization. Observations of birds feeding at flowers longer or shorter than their bills combined with a lack of experimental evidence for foraging trade-offs, however, fail to support these interpretations. We addressed these inconsistencies by considering a sel...

Can absolute freedom of will be defended by arguing that apparent cases of diminished freedom when we act out of passion are cases of weakness of will? Rogers Albritton thought so. What is intriguing about Albritton’s view is that he thought when we act from desire we are making choices, yet our desires are not functioning as reasons for those choices. So our desires must be influencing our cho...