Hedgerow fruits provide a food resource for several UK farmland bird species from late summer, through winter and into spring. This project aims to develop the understanding of the interactions between fruit-bearing hedgerow flowers, their pollinators, hedgerow fruits and frugivorous birds. Experiments revealed that flowers of blackthorn, hawthorn and ivy all benefited from insect visits in ord...

Handroanthus serratifolius produces flowers during the dry season in the Cerrado biome, and it may be an important food source to some bird species. For Psittacidae species, like Forpus xanthopterygius, flowers are important in their diet. This study intended to characterize the behavior of F.xanthopterygius and evaluate the damage to the flowering and in the reproduction of H. serratifolius. F...

The carbonic anhydrase (CA: Carbonate hydrolyase: E.C.4.2.1.1) content from the leaves and flowers of mature yarrow (Achillea millefolium), a plant believed to possess healing qualities, was purified and characterized. The purification levels were 35.58 fold in the leaves and 40.21 fold in the flowers. The optimum temperatures were 25C and 40C for the leaves and flowers, respectively, and optim...

In senescing carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus L.) flowers, ethylene is produced from the gynoecium, and acts as a diffusible signal received by petals to induce the expression of 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) synthase (DC-ACS1) and ACC oxidase (DC-ACO1) genes in the petals. This results in autocatalytic ethylene production in the petals. We investigated ethylene production in cut flow...

Australian crab spiders Thomisus spectabilis ambush pollinating insects, such as honeybees (Apis mellifera) on flowers, and can change their body colour between yellow and white. It is traditionally assumed that the spiders change their colour to match the flower colour, thus rendering them cryptic to insect prey. Here, we test this assumption combining state-of-the-art knowledge of bee vision ...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Studies of the effects of pollination on floral scent and bee visitation remain rare, particularly in agricultural crops. To fill this gap, the hypothesis that bee visitation to flowers decreases after pollination through reduced floral volatile emissions in highbush blueberries, Vaccinium corymbosum, was tested. Other sources of variation in floral emissions and the role of...