Pollinating insect populations, essential for maintaining wild plant diversity and agricultural productivity, rely on (semi)natural habitats. An increasing human population is encroaching upon and deteriorating pollinator habitats. Thus the population persistence of pollinating insects and their associated ecosystem services may depend upon on man-made novel habitats; however, their importance ...

Flower visiting Eristalis hoverflies feed on nectar and pollen and are known to rely on innate colour preferences. In addition to a preference for visiting yellow flowers, the flies possess an innate proboscis reflex elicited by chemical as well as yellow colour stimuli. In this study we show that the flies' proboscis reflex is only triggered by yellow colour stimuli and not altered by conditio...

Hoverflies and blowflies have distinctly different flight styles. Yet, both species have been shown to structure their flight behavior in a way that facilitates extraction of 3D information from the image flow on the retina (optic flow). Neuronal candidates to analyze the optic flow are the tangential cells in the third optical ganglion - the lobula complex. These neurons are directionally sele...

White noise techniques have been used widely to investigate sensory systems in both vertebrates and invertebrates. White noise stimuli are powerful in their ability to rapidly generate data that help the experimenter decipher the spatio-temporal dynamics of neural and behavioral responses. One type of white noise stimuli, maximal length shift register sequences (m-sequences), have recently beco...

Many animals rely on vision to detect objects such as conspecifics, predators, and prey. Hypercomplex cells found in feline cortex and small target motion detectors found in dragonfly and hoverfly optic lobes demonstrate robust tuning for small objects, with weak or no response to larger objects or movement of the visual panorama [1-3]. However, the relationship among anatomical, molecular, and...

Cholinergic pesticides, such as the neonicotinoid imidacloprid, are most important insecticides used for plant protection worldwide. In recent decades, concerns have been raised about side effects on non-target insect species, including altered foraging behavior and navigation. Although pollinators rely visual cues to forage navigate their environment, of neonicotinoids processing largely overl...

Pollination is an important ecosystem service to agriculture, however, the factors influencing pollination in urban food gardens are poorly understood. We investigated how features within environments, including floral resources and canopy cover, impacted (a) flower visitation seed production of a model plant (Brassica rapa) (b) total yields produce from Sydney, Australia. Floral plants was dom...

Abstract In intensive agricultural landscapes semi-natural habitats for pollinators are often limited, although willingness to establish pollinator habitat is increasing among farmers. A common enhancement measure provide flower strips, but existent or improved hedgerows might be more effective. this study, we compare the effectiveness of three measures at edges conventional apple orchards: (i)...