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...

The objective of this observational study was to determine the association of exposure to selected bedding types with incidence of subclinical (SM) and clinical mastitis (CM) in primiparous Holstein dairy cows housed in identical pens at a single facility. At parturition, primiparous cows were randomly assigned to pens containing freestalls with 1 of 4 bedding materials: (1) deep-bedded new san...

Incorporation of forest slash during stand establishment is proposed as ameans of increasing soil carbon and nutrient stocks. If effective, the increased soil carbon and nutrient status may result in increased aboveground tree growth. Eight years after study installation, the impact of forest slash incorporation into the soil on soil carbon and nutrient stocks, foliar nutrients and loblolly pin...

OBJECTIVE To determine the relation between sleeping position and quantity of bedding and the risk of sudden unexpected infant death. DESIGN A study of all infants dying suddenly and unexpectedly and of two controls matched for age and date with each index case. The parents of control infants were interviewed within 72 hours of the index infant's death. Information was collected on bedding, s...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Eriocaulaceae (Poales) is currently divided in two subfamilies: Eriocauloideae, which comprises two genera and Paepalanthoideae, with nine genera. The floral anatomy of Actinocephalus polyanthus, Leiothrix fluitans, Paepalanthus chlorocephalus, P. flaccidus and Rondonanthus roraimae was studied here. The flowers of these species of Paepalanthoideae are unisexual, and form ca...

Plants often grow in clusters of various sizes and have a variable number of flowers per inflorescence. This small-scale spatial clustering affects insect foraging strategies and plant reproductive success. In our study, we aimed to determine how visitation rate and foraging behaviour of pollinators depend on the number of flowers per plant and on the size of clusters of multiple plants using D...

Brassica napus Linnaeus is considered a self-compatible crop; however, studies show that bee foraging elevates their seed production. Considering bee food shortages during the winter season and that the canola is a winter crop, this study aimed to evaluate the foraging behaviour of Apis mellifera Linnaeus, 1758 regarding those flowers, and to verify if it presents adequate behaviour for success...

That hummingbird-pollinated plants predominantly have red flowers has been known for decades, but well-investigated research studies are still rare. Preference tests have shown that hummingbirds do not have an innate preference for red colours. In addition, hummingbirds do not depend solely upon red flowers, because white-flowered hummingbird-pollinated plants are also common and temporarily ab...