Recording animal-view videos of the natural world using a novel camera system and software package.

Plants, animals, and fungi display a rich tapestry of colors. Animals, in particular, use colors in dynamic displays performed in spatially complex environments. Although current approaches for studying colors are objective and repeatable, they miss the temporal variation of color signals entirely.

The thermal ecology of flowers.

Background: Obtaining an optimal flower temperature can be crucial for plant reproduction because temperature mediates flower growth and development, pollen and ovule viability, and influences pollinator visitation. The thermal ecology of flowers is an exciting, yet understudied field of plant biology.

Scope: This review focuses on several attributes that modify exogenous heat absorption and retention in flowers.

Short communication: thermal regimes in hollow stems of herbaceous plants-concepts and models.

Although there have been studies of the temperature regimes within flowers, micrometeorology within stems seems to have been overlooked. We present ideas, hypotheses, and a diagrammatic model on the biophysical and thermodynamic processes that interact in complex ways to result in elevated temperature regimes within hollow stems of herbaceous plants. We consider the effects of the ambient air around the stems, the possible importance of insolation, and greenhouse effects as influenced by stems' orientation and optical properties, i.

Functional significance of the optical properties of flowers for visual signalling.

Background: Flower coloration is a key enabler for pollinator attraction. Floral visual signals comprise several components that are generated by specific anatomical structures and pigmentation, and often have different functions in pollinator attraction. Anatomical studies have advanced our understanding of the optical properties of flowers, and evidence from behavioural experiments has elucidated the biological relevance of different components of floral visual signals, but these two lines of research are often considered independently.

A Mathematical Model of Forager Loss in Honeybee Colonies Infested with Varroa destructor and the Acute Bee Paralysis Virus.

We incorporate a mathematical model of Varroa destructor and the Acute Bee Paralysis Virus with an existing model for a honeybee colony, in which the bee population is divided into hive bees and forager bees based on tasks performed in the colony. The model is a system of five ordinary differential equations with dependent variables: uninfected hive bees, uninfected forager bees, infected hive bees, virus-free mites and virus-carrying mites. The interplay between forager loss and disease infestation is studied.

Multispectral images of flowers reveal the adaptive significance of using long-wavelength-sensitive receptors for edge detection in bees.

Many pollinating insects acquire their entire nutrition from visiting flowers, and they must therefore be efficient both at detecting flowers and at recognizing familiar rewarding flower types. A crucial first step in recognition is the identification of edges and the segmentation of the visual field into areas that belong together. Honeybees and bumblebees acquire visual information through three types of photoreceptors; however, they only use a single receptor type-the one sensitive to longer wavelengths-for edge detection and movement detection.

Functional mismatch in a bumble bee pollination mutualism under climate change.

Ecological partnerships, or mutualisms, are globally widespread, sustaining agriculture and biodiversity. Mutualisms evolve through the matching of functional traits between partners, such as tongue length of pollinators and flower tube depth of plants. Long-tongued pollinators specialize on flowers with deep corolla tubes, whereas shorter-tongued pollinators generalize across tube lengths.

A Mathematical Model of the Honeybee-Varroa destructor-Acute Bee Paralysis Virus System with Seasonal Effects.

A mathematical model for the honeybee-varroa mite-ABPV system is proposed in terms of four differential equations for the: infected and uninfected bees in the colony, number of mites overall, and of mites carrying the virus. To account for seasonal variability, all parameters are time periodic. We obtain linearized stability conditions for the disease-free periodic solutions.

Conditional discrimination and response chains by worker bumblebees (Bombus impatiens Cresson, Hymenoptera: Apidae).

We trained worker bumblebees to discriminate arrays of artificial nectaries (one, two, and three microcentrifuge tubes inserted into artificial flowers) from which they could forage in association with their location in a three-compartmental maze. Additionally, we challenged bees to learn to accomplish three different tasks in a fixed sequence during foraging. To enter the main three-compartmented foraging arena, they had first to slide open doors in an entry box to be able to proceed to an artificial flower patch in the main arena where they had to lift covers to the artificial nectaries from which they then fed.

Development of a Pollination Service Measurement (PSM) method using potted plant phytometry.

The value of pollination to human society is not limited to agricultural production, but also in the sustainability of ecosystems and the services that they provide. Seed set can be used as a comparative measure of pollination effectiveness, with minimum variability expected when other resources are not limiting. Six species of self-incompatible fall asters (Symphyotrichum) were used to evaluate pollination service at 12 sites across a spectrum of expected levels of pollination.

Problem solving by worker bumblebees Bombus impatiens (Hymenoptera: Apoidea).

During foraging, worker bumblebees are challenged by simple to complex tasks. Our goal was to determine whether bumblebees could successfully accomplish tasks that are more complex than those they would naturally encounter. Once the initial training to successfully manipulate a simple, artificial flower was completed, the bees were either challenged with a series of increasingly difficult tasks or with the most difficult task without the opportunity for prior learning.

The diversity and biogeography of the Coleoptera of Churchill: insights from DNA barcoding.

Background: Coleoptera is the most diverse order of insects (>300,000 described species), but its richness diminishes at increasing latitudes (e.g., ca.

The effect of sugar solution type, sugar concentration and viscosity on the imbibition and energy intake rate of bumblebees.

Nectar is an essential resource for bumblebees and many other flower-visiting insects. The main constituents of nectar are sugars, which vary in both composition and concentration between plant species. We assessed the influence of sugar concentration, sugar solution viscosity and sugar solution composition on the imbibition and energy intake rate of bumblebees, Bombus impatiens Cresson (Hymenoptera: Apidae).

Flow currents and ventilation in Langstroth beehives due to brood thermoregulation efforts of honeybees.

Beekeepers universally agree that ensuring sufficient ventilation is vital for sustaining a thriving, healthy honeybee colony. Despite this fact, surprisingly little is known about the ventilation and flow patterns in bee hives. We take a first step towards developing a model-based approach that uses computational fluid dynamics to simulate natural ventilation flow inside a standard Langstroth beehive.

DNA barcoding a regional bee (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) fauna and its potential for ecological studies.

DNA barcoding has been evaluated for many animal taxa and is now advocated as a reliable and rapid means for species-level identification. The coming-to-light of this identification tool is timely as we are now facing perhaps the greatest rate of species loss in recent millennia. This study contributes to an ever-increasing number of published accounts of DNA barcoding successfully and accurately distinguishing animal taxa, in this instance, the bee fauna of Nova Scotia, Canada.

Comment on "Session V: estimating likelihood and exposure", by Zaida Lentini, Environ. Biosafety Res. 5 (2006) 193-195.

We comment on Zaida Lentini's summary of Session V (titled "Estimating Likelihood and Exposure") of the 9th International Symposium on the Biosafety of Genetically Modified Organisms. We provide an explanation of the drawbacks of using empirical pollen dispersion models, based largely on the general representativeness of the data used to generate the empirical models. We exemplify the drawbacks by highlighting the limited data used to develop the empirical model of Gustafson (presented in the same Symposium session).

Perfect syncarpy in apple (Malus x domestica 'Summerland McIntosh') and its implications for pollination, seed distribution and fruit production (Rosaceae: Maloideae).

Background And Aims: The gynoecium of the domestic apple, Malus x domestica, has been assumed to be imperfectly syncarpic, whereby pollination of each stigmatic surface can result in fertilization within only one of the five carpels. Despite its implied effect on fruit quantity and quality, the resulting influence of flower form on seed set and distribution within the apple fruit has seldom been investigated. Instead, poor fruit quality is usually attributed to problems with pollination, such as low bee numbers and/or ineffective pollinators within apple agro-ecosystems.

Black flower coloration in wild Lisianthius nigrescens: its chemistry and ecological consequences.

The major pigments responsible for the flower color within the black flowered Gentianaceae, Lisianthius nigrescens, were characterized by HPLC and chemical analyses HPLC analysis showed one major and one minor anthocyanin and 3 major and 3 minor flavone glycosides. The anthocyanins [delphinidin-3-O-rhamnol(1-6)galactoside and its 5-O-glucoside] comprised an extraordinary 24% of the dry weight of wild collected L. nigrescens corallas, and were accompanied in a 1:1 ratio by a range of apigenin and luteolin 8-C-glucosides and their 7-O-methyl ethers.