The postharvest life of different cultivars of kalanchoë plants (Kalanchoë blossfeldiana Poelln.) varied widely. The display life of plants of ‘Nadia’ was much longer than that of plants of ‘Debbie’ (10 weeks compared with 7 weeks). During display life, senescing flowers were replaced by opening buds and the difference in display life was primarily a function of differences in life of the indiv...

Flowers bear the function of filters supporting the attraction of pollinators as well as the deterrence of floral antagonists. The effect of epidermal cell shape on the visual display and tactile properties of flowers has been evaluated only recently. In this study we quantitatively measured epidermal cell shape, gloss and spectral reflectance of flowers pollinated by either bees or birds testi...

Pinna nobilis (Linnaeus, 1758) is the largest bivalve endemic to Mediterranean. It distributed in a wide range of coastal environments, including estuaries. has recently become critically endangered species (with almost 100% mortality) along entire Spanish Mediterranean coast. This may be due coinfections caused by Haplosporidium pinnae and bacterial pathogens such as Mycobacterium spp. We exte...

The fan mussel Pinna nobilis is a rapidly growing suspension-feeding bivalve endemic to the Mediterranean Sea and usually inhabits seagrass meadows. This endangered bivalve assimilates carbon and nitrogen isotopic ratios in tissues from its food sources. The dC and dN signatures were used to demonstrate isotopic variation among three tissues (digestive gland, gills and muscle) and (for digestiv...

The present study was undertaken to verify ancient data in the literature on ovipositional preference o f the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis for the terrestrial plant Pistacia lentiscus (mastic tree). Adult specimens o f Sepia were placed in basins together with aerial parts not only of P. lentiscus, but also o f Artemisia arborescens, Centaurea alba var. deusta, Quercus ilex and Laurus nobilis. ...

In the present work Trichodina reticulata and T. nobilis (Ciliophora: Trichodinidae) are morphologically characterised from ornamental freshwater fish culture in the State of Santa Catarina, Brazil. The prevalence of infection and a list of comparative measurements are discussed. We examined "southern platyfish" Xiphophorus maculatus (n = 35), "goldfish" Carassius auratus (n = 31), "guppy" Poec...

Three evergreen (Laurus nobilis, Viburnum tinus and Thuja plicata) and two autumnal abscission deciduous trees (Cydonia oblonga and Prunus domestica) have been investigated for the presence (zymogram and immunodetection) and functionality (post-illumination chlorophyll fluorescence) of the thylakoid Ndh complex. The presence of encoding ndh genes has also been investigated in T. plicata. Wester...

Flowers for a gift are not only goods, but a medium carries a message to maintain social relationship between the sender and the receiver. Some flowers are welcome, and the others are not so, in association with whether the image of the sent flowers which come to the receiver's mind meets the human relationship or not, and is suited for the purpose or not. We developed a system aimed to incorpo...

Stem and leaf tissues of carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus) plants appear to contain a natural antisenescence factor since removal of most of these tissues from cut carnation flowers hastened their senescence. However, kinetin (5-10 mug/ml) significantly delayed senescence of flowers with stem and leaf tissues removed. In addition, the life span of cut flowers with intact (30-cm) stems was incre...