sábado, 23 de mayo de 2020

Bumblebees Bite Plants to Force Them to Flower (Seriously) - Scientific American

Bumblebees Bite Plants to Force Them to Flower (Seriously) - Scientific American

Bees: “feed me or I’ll cut you”

When pollen is scarce, bumblebees have their way of extorting more from plants. The insects bite into leaves with their mandibles and proboscises to induce flowering up to one month earlier than normal. Chemical ecologists spotted the unusual behaviour in Bombus terrestris during an unrelated laboratory experiment. Artificial cuts were not as effective, suggesting that some chemicals in the insects’ saliva could play a part. “This is one of those really rare studies that observes a natural phenomenon that hadn’t been documented before,” says ecologist John Mola.
Scientific American | 4 min readSource: Science paper

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