Opsin Evolution in Flower-Visiting Beetles

Insects on flowers: The unexpectedly high biodiversity of flower-visiting beetles in a tropical rainforest canopy

Opsin Evolution ▶Evolution of Eyes

Definition Specific impairment of the visual control of limb movements observed in patients with lesion of the posterior parietal cortex. This deficit is expressed as errors both in final limb position in reaching/pointing tasks and in the shaping of hand aperture in grasping tasks. These deficits are exacerbated when the movements are programmed and executed under peripheral vision by asking t...

The Overlooked Biodiversity of Flower-Visiting Invertebrates

Estimates suggest that perhaps 40% of all invertebrate species are found in tropical rainforest canopies. Extrapolations of total diversity and food web analyses have been based almost exclusively on species inhabiting the foliage, under the assumption that foliage samples are representative of the entire canopy. We examined the validity of this assumption by comparing the density of invertebra...

Spectral organization of ommatidia in flower-visiting insects.

This article reviews recent advances of studies on the spectral organization of the compound eye in lepidopteran and hymenopteran insects. The compound eyes consist of ommatidia, which contain a set of photoreceptor cells. The common feature is that the ommatidia can be divided into three types, according to the combination of spectral classes of photoreceptors. Honeybees and nymphalid butterfl...

Eocene fossil is earliest evidence of flower-visiting by birds.

Birds are important pollinators, but the evolutionary history of ornithophily (bird pollination) is poorly known. Here, we report a skeleton of the avian taxon Pumiliornis from the middle Eocene of Messel in Germany with preserved stomach contents containing numerous pollen grains of an eudicotyledonous angiosperm. The skeletal morphology of Pumiliornis is in agreement with this bird having bee...