2,674 research outputs found
[To Flower Mission workers].
No full textCaption title. Author from last p.; Cover title: Flower Mission Department, W.W.C.T.U.; Ferguson, J.A. Australia, 18876; Electronic reproduction. Canberra, A.C.T. : National Library of Australia, 2010.Flower Mission Department, W.W.C.T.
Oliver Wendell Holmes and Poem
No full textOliver Wendell Holmes was an American physician, writer, and poet. His portrait is pictured with his poem, "The Golden Flower"
The adaptive significance of sensory bias in a foraging context: floral colour preferences in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris
Get PDFInnate sensory biases could play an important role in helping naïve animals to find food. As inexperienced bees are known to have strong innate colour biases we investigated whether bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) colonies with stronger biases for the most rewarding flower colour (violet) foraged more successfully in their local flora. To test the adaptive significance of variation in innate colour bias, we compared the performance of colour-naïve bees, from nine bumblebee colonies raised from local wild-caught queens, in a laboratory colour bias paradigm using violet (bee UV-blue) and blue (bee blue) artificial flowers. The foraging performance of the same colonies was assessed under field conditions. Colonies with a stronger innate bias for violet over blue flowers in the laboratory harvested more nectar per unit time under field conditions. In fact, the colony with the strongest bias for violet (over blue) brought in 41% more nectar than the colony with the least strong bias. As violet flowers in the local area produce more nectar than blue flowers (the next most rewarding flower colour), these data are consistent with the hypothesis that local variation in flower traits could drive selection for innate colour biases
Anti-Allergic Cromones Inhibit Histamine and Eicosanoid Release from Activated Human and Murine Mast Cells by Releasing Annexin A1
No full textPMCID: PMC3601088This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
"Defining best practice...? Elementary my dear researcher."
No full textIn this brief but engaging article, the author ruminates on the political nature of research and on the problems this poses for East Asian Medicine, and points to the fact that the thorny business of defining best (or at least 'good enough') practice is of central importance here. He concludes by offering a richly simple model - based on the Five Phases (wu xing) - for defining what best practice is.<br/
Ants as flower visitors : floral ant-repellence and the impact of ant scent-marks on pollinator behaviour
No full textAs flower visitors, ants rarely benefit a plant, commonly disrupting pollination by deterring other flower
visitors, or stealing nectar. This thesis examines three aspects of ant-flower interactions, focusing on
the occurrence of floral traits that prevent disruption of pollination and a novel means by which ants
may influence pollinator behaviour.
To assess which types of plant species possess ant-repelling floral traits I carried out a survey
of 49 Neotropical plant species. Around a third of these species were repellent to the common
generalist ant Camponotus novograndensis (Formicinae). This repellence was positively correlated
with large nectar volumes within individual flowers. It appears that there has been selection for floral
ant-repellence as a defence against ant thieves in plant species that invest in large volumes of nectar.
In some cases these repellent traits were effective against a wide range of ant species. However, in no
plant species were predacious ants particularly repelled, indicating that there may be little selective
pressure on non-ant-plants to defend potential pollinators from aggressive ants.
To investigate the importance of coevolution in determining the effectiveness of ant-repellents,
a small but diverse range of Mediterranean plant species were tested with the invasive nectar thieving
ant Linepithema humile (Dolichoderinae) and the native but non-nectar thieving ant Messor bouvieri
(Myrmecinae). Responses of both ant species to floral traits were very similar. The ability of some
plants to restrict access to ant species with which they have no evolutionary history may help to
reduce the impact invasive species, as nectar thieves, have on plant-pollinator interactions.
It is reported that flowers recently visited by bees and hoverflies may be rejected for a period
of time by subsequent bee visitors through the detection of scent-marks. Nectar-thieving ants could
potentially influence the foraging decisions of bees in a similar way if they come to associate ant trail
pheromones or footprint hydrocarbons with poor reward levels. However, my empirical work found no
differences were found in bee visitation behaviour between flowers of Digitalis pupurea
(Plantaginaceae), Bupleurum fruticosum (Apiaceae) or Brassica juncea (Brassicaceae) that had been
in contact with ants and control flowers. Ant-attendance at flowers of these species may not reduce reward levels sufficiently to make it worthwhile for bees to incorporate ant scent-marks into foraging
decisions.
Investigations like these into the interactions between ants, flowers and other flower visitors
are essential if we hope to understand the part ants play in pollination ecology, and determine how
ants have helped shape floral evolution
Letter from Southern California Flower Market, Inc. to Mr. S. [Sei] Hamada, November 1, 1950
No full textA letter from Southern California Flower Market, Inc. to the members. It notifies that Southern California Flower Market, Inc. is dissolved and closes the business on October 31, 1950; and the successor is the Southern California Flower Growers, Inc.The Okine Collection contains materials collected by Seiichi and Tomeyo Okine who were Issei flower growers in Whittier, California. It includes correspondence, photographs, financial documents, and a photo album. A large portion of the collection consists of family correspondence with Seiichi and Tomeyo Okine, including letters from their Nisei children, Masao and Makoto Okine, both soldiers overseas during World War II, to their Issei parents incarcerated in the Rohwer incarceration camp in McGehee, Arkansas. The correspondence also includes letters from their relatives and friends who are former incarcerees in the camps during the war and have “resettled” in Chicago, Illinois as well as letters from the Okines’ family members in Hiroshima, Japan during the Allied occupation of Japan. In addition, the collection includes a family photo album compiled by Dorothy Ai Aoki, a Nisei daughter to the Okines
Nectar theft and floral ant-repellence : A link between nectar volume and ant-repellent traits?
Get PDFThis work was supported by Sir Harold Mitchell Scholarship Fund and University of St Andrews Russell Trust Award. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.As flower visitors, ants rarely benefit a plant. They are poor pollinators, and can also disrupt pollination by deterring other flower visitors, or by stealing nectar. Some plant species therefore possess floral ant-repelling traits. But why do particular species have such traits when others do not? In a dry forest in Costa Rica, of 49 plant species around a third were ant-repellent at very close proximity to a common generalist ant species, usually via repellent pollen. Repellence was positively correlated with the presence of large nectar volumes. Repellent traits affected ant species differently, some influencing the behaviour of just a few species and others producing more generalised ant-repellence. Our results suggest that ant-repellent floral traits may often not be pleiotropic, but instead could have been selected for as a defence against ant thieves in plant species that invest in large volumes of nectar. This conclusion highlights to the importance of research into the cost of nectar production in future studies into ant-flower interactions.Peer reviewe
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