 Gregor Mendel. Conducted hybridization experiments on garden peas for seven years (1856 – 1863) and proposed laws of inheritance.  Mendel conducted artificial pollination/cross pollination experiments using several true-breeding pea lines.  A true breeding line is one that, having undergone continuous self-pollination for several generations.  Mendel selected 14 true-breeding peas’ plant v...

Shifts in pollination syndromes involve coordinated changes in multiple floral traits. This raises the question of how plants can cope with rapid changes in pollinator availability by the slow process of accumulation of mutations in multiple genes. Here we study the transition from bee to hawkmoth pollination in the genus Petunia. Interspecific crosses followed by single locus introgressions we...

The role of pollinators in the evolution of the African-Malagasy orchid genus Brownleea (Brownleeinae) was investigated. Taxa show specialization for pollination by bees (B. parviflora, B. recurvata), short-proboscid flies (B. galpinii), and long-proboscid flies (B. macroceras, B. coerulea). All species in the genus produce nectar, but some (B. coerulea, B. galpinii) appear to mimic flowers of ...

Dafni, A. 1983. Pollination of Orchis caspia – a nectarless plant which deceives the pollinators of nectariferous species from other plant families. Journal of Ecology 71: 467-474. In this study of the title species, Dafni contributes to basic knowledge about the nature of deceptive pollination systems and introduces the ideas of pollinators finding it hard to distinguish between a mimic and a ...

Xerophvllunz rentuc is a mass-flowering, nectarless herb in which self-pollination is unavoidable as anthers shed pollen onto the three, receptive stigmatic ridges attached to each pistil within a few hours after expansion of the perianth. We compared the pollination system with reproductive success in this species through controlled. hand-pollination experiments. Ovaries of flowers sampled fro...

Honeybees play an important ecological role as pollinators of many plant species, and their products are the basis for a multi-million dollar commercial industry around the world. They are major agricultural pollinators around the world and are keystone pollinators in tropical ecosystems. Pollination has been considered a keystone process to ecosystem function through the facilitation of both p...

The magnitude of inbreeding depression within populations is important for the evolution and maintenance of mixed mating systems. However, data are sparse on the magnitude of inbreeding depression in Robinia pseudoacacia. In this study, we compared differences in the mature seed set per fruit, seed mass, germination success, and seedling growth between self- and cross-pollination treatments and...

Autophagy is one of the main mechanisms of degradation and remobilization of macromolecules, and it appears to play an important role in petal senescence. However, little is known about the regulatory mechanisms of autophagy in petal senescence. Autophagic processes were observed by electron microscopy and monodansylcadaverine staining of senescing petals of petunia (Petunia hybrida); autophagy...