The findings of Shusheng Hu, an IU Southeast research associate; David Winship Taylor, IU Southeast biology professor; and David L. Dilcher and David M. Jarzen, both from the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida, are featured in the prestigious scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Their research uncovered that when it comes to birds, bees, flowers and trees, looks do matter. Flowers are pretty so they will attract animals, such as birds and bees, for pollination. Pines and other seed plants are normally pollinated by the wind.
Furthermore, this form of plant sex has been happening for ages. Fossilized flowers have shown that animals have been helping plants reproduce since ancient times. The new data on plant reproduction suggests that 76 percent of the first flowering plant species were insect-pollinated while 24 percent were pollinated by the wind.
The botanists studied the specialization of fossil pollen from Minnesota and discovered that many species of pollen are found clumped. Clumped pollen is only found in animal-pollinated flowers.
The research also suggested that pollen may have been the source of prehistoric allergies.
At 96 million years ago, about a quarter of flowers were wind-pollinated. Wind-pollinated plants are the main source of allergies in people, which leads to the thought that perhaps those plants caused allergic reactions in dinosaurs and other animals.
Recent molecular work determined an evolutionary tree of living flowering plants and identified the first evolvers. Based on the researchers' analyses, these flowers probably used insect pollinators.
Source: Indiana University
Related stories:
Colonies in collapse: What's causing massive honeybee die-offs?
“To the bee, a flower is a fountain of life, and to the flower, a bee is a messenger of love,” wrote poet Kahlil Gibran. Whether or not love is involved in the exchange, the evolutionary dance between pollen-transporting honey bees and nectar-producing flowers is one of nature’s most extraordinary symbiotic relationships, a hundred million years in the making.
Annuals converted into perennials
Scientists from VIB at Ghent University, Belgium, have succeeded in converting annual plants into perennials. They discovered that the deactivation of two genes in annuals led to the formation of structures that converted the plant into a perennial. This was most likely an important mechanism in plant evolution, initiating the formation of trees.
Plant virus spreads by making life easy for crop pests
(PhysOrg.com) -- In 752, Japanese Empress Koken wrote a short poem about the summertime yellowing of a field in what is thought to be the first account of a viral plant disease. More than 1,250 years later, scientists concluded that the virus Koken described was part of the particularly insidious geminivirus family that continues to decimate tomato, tobacco and cotton crops worldwide. Now, new research shows how cunning an enemy one of these ancient viruses can be, manufacturing a protein that deforms and sterilizes plants and at the same time wrecks their defenses against the pests that spread the disease to others.
Scent on demand: Scientists enhance the scent of flowers
A team of scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has found a way to genetically enhance the scent of flowers and implant a scent in those that don't have one.
Researchers find an essential gene for forming ears of corn
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) professor David Jackson, Ph.D., and a team of plant geneticists have identified a gene essential in controlling development of the maize plant, commonly known in the United States as corn. The new research extends the growing biological understanding of how the different parts of maize arise--important information for a plant that is the most widely planted crop in the U.S. and a mainstay of the global food supply.
When leaves fall, more is occurring than a change of weather
A falling leaf often catches a poet's eye, but scientists also wonder about the phenomenon that causes leaves to fall, or abscission in plants. Abscission is the physiological process plants use to separate entire organs, such as leaves, petals, flowers and fruit, that allow plants to discard non-functional or infected organs. University of Missouri researchers have uncovered the genetic pathway that controls abscission in the plant species
Arabidopsis thaliana. The ability to control abscission in plants is of special interest to those in the commercial fruit tree and cut flower industries, which rely heavily on abscission-promoting or inhibiting agents to regulate fruit quality and pre-harvest fruit drop.
Pollen Alert!
When you stroll through your front door in the morning, does the yellow haze coating the porch send you leaping back into the house? Can the mere word "pollen" make you start to sniffle, sneeze and reach for the tissue to blow your nose?
International experts collect alpine fungi in Beartooth Mountains of Montana
Armed guards once kept polar bears away while Cathy Cripps collected mushrooms and fungi on the island of Svalbard between Norway and the North Pole. Another time, Cripps encountered musk-oxen while gathering fungi in Greenland.
