Impact of the annular solar eclipse on December 26, 2019 on the foraging visits of bees.

Solar eclipse has remarkable effect on behavior of animals. South India experienced a 97% magnitude annular eclipse on December 26, 2019 during 08:04-11:04 h with the totality phase appeared during 09:25-09:30 h. We investigated whether the foraging activity of the bees was limited by the eclipse, what bees are affected most, and which part of the eclipse was critical for bee activities to understand how a group of insects that rely the Sun, the sunlight, and the sun rays for their navigation and vision behaves to the eclipse.

Urban tropical forest islets as hotspots of ants in general and invasive ants in particular.

Urbanization is a crucial driver of environmental and biodiversity change. It is suggested that urbanization favours generalist and invasive species and might harm specialists of natural and semi-natural habitats. In this study, we examined how an urbanization gradient and environmental gradients in the habitat area, habitat diversity, elevation, and proportion of built-up area influenced the abundance and richness of ants within tropical forest islet habitat in south India.

Nectar robbing in bellflower (Sesamum radiatum) benefited pollinators but unaffected maternal function of plant reproduction.

Nectar robbing - foraging nectar illegitimately - has negative, neutral, or positive effects on maternal function of plant reproduction and/or on pollinators. It has been suggested that nectar robbing has a non-negative effect on maternal function of plant reproduction in autogamous and mixed breeding plants; however this hypothesis requires deeper understanding with more studies. We investigated the impact of natural nectar robbing on maternal function of plant reproduction and visitation characteristics of pollinators in Sesamum radiatum, an autogamous plant.