BACKGROUND AND AIMS Studies of local floral adaptation in response to geographically divergent pollinators are essential for understanding floral evolution. This study investigated local pollinator adaptation and variation in floral traits in the rewarding orchid Gymnadenia odoratissima, which spans a large altitudinal gradient and thus may depend on different pollinator guilds along this gradi...

In 1993 Victor Ambros and colleagues discovered that lin4, a gene known to control the of C.elegans larval development produces a pair of small RNAs [1,2]. For seven years after this discovery, there was no evidence for lin-4-like RNAs beyond nematodes. This all changed upon the discovery that let-7, another gene in the C.elegans encoded a second ~22 nt regulatory RNA. Homolog’s of the let-7 ge...

Two fruit fly baits, Nu-Lure/malathion and GF-120 (Spinosad) were evaluated in the laboratory for non-target impacts on beneficial insects. Nu-Lure/malathion proved attractive and toxic to adults and larvae of the coccinellid species, Curinus coeruleus Mulsant, Cycloneda sanguinea L. and Harmonia axyridis Pallas, a lacewing species, Chrysoperla rufilabris Burmeister. The coccinellids Olla v-nig...

Species diversity and seasonal abundance of muscoid flies (Diptera: Muscidae) developing in biosolid cake (dewatered biosolids) stored at a wastewater treatment facility in northeastern Kansas were evaluated. Emergence traps were deployed 19 May through 20 October 2009 (22 wk) and 27 May through 18 November 2010 (25 wk). In total, 11,349 muscoid flies were collected emerging from the biosolid c...

Species often interact indirectly with each other via their traits. There is increasing appreciation of trait-mediated indirect effects linking multiple interactions. Flowers interact with both pollinators and floral herbivores, and the flower-pollinator interaction may be modified by indirect effects of floral herbivores (i.e., florivores) on flower traits such as flower size attracting pollin...

Let T be an orientation-preserving Lipschitz expanding map of the circle T. A pre-image selector is a map τ : T → T with finitely many discontinuities, each of which is a jump discontinuity, and such that τ (x) ∈ T(x) for all x ∈ T. The closure of the image of a pre-image selector is called a flower, and a flower with p connected components is called a p-flower. We say that a real-valued Lipsch...

Relationships between flowers and pollinators are generally considered cases of mutualism since both agents gain benefits. Fine-tuned adaptations are usually found in the form of strict one-to-one coevolution between species. Many insect pollinators are, however, considered generalists, visiting numerous kinds of flowers, and many flower species (angiosperms) are also considered generalists, vi...

The phenological and ecological study on Punica granatum L., a cultivated and wild species found in outer Himalayan ranges and warm inner valleys (alt. 700 2700m), was carried out during April and May of 2006 and 2007 in Kathmandu Valley. The study covered blooming time, size of flower, its correlation and interaction with the visitors and pollinators. The prime pollinator was Apis cerena along...

In this paper, we handle a remote ikebana (i.e., flower arrangement) system with olfactory and haptic media. In the system, a teacher or a student can hold a flower, adjust the length of the held flower’s stem with a pair of scissors, and impale the flower on a flower pinholder in a 3-D virtual space. We investigate the influence of the size of smell space (defined as a sphere in which we can p...