Year: 2022

HIGH COST. “The nectar reward is expensive for the plant to produce. In milkweed, up to 37% of the daily photosynthetic energy is spent producing nectar reward for pollinators, energy that is no longer available to the plant.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

A NEW DIMENSION. “Here, we present an aspect of plant–pollinator interactions that has been underappreciated thus far: the presence of electrostatic forces between bees and flowers.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

“ELECTRORECEPTION, defined as the ability of an organism to detect external electric forces, has long been known in animals living in aquatic, electrically conductive environments, for example, in fish, in amphibians, and in platypus.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

AQUATIC FORMS. “In aquatic animals, electroreception relies on direct transmission of stimulus from the conductive medium (water) to the nervous system, via conductive receptor channels (ampullae of Lorenzini).” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

NEW SENSES. “For terrestrial animals residing in air, an electrically resistive medium, detection of electric fields must operate differently and constitute a new sensory capacity.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

WEAK ELECTRIC FIELDS. “Bumble bees, Bombus terrestris and honey bees, Apis mellifera have been shown capable of detecting weak electric fields, each in different behavioural contexts, using different sensory mechanisms.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

SPECIAL HAIRS. “Bumble bees can sense the presence of weak electric fields (e-fields) surrounding flowers, and discriminate between e-fields with different radial geometries. The sensory basis for e-field detection in bumble bees appears to rely on mechanosensory hairs, which are mechanically deflected by an applied electric stimulus (Fig. 1b, c).” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

THE PATHWAY. “The mechanical deflection of these hairs in turn elicits neural responses, conveying information to the bee’s central nervous system.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

ENERGY. “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”(Nikola Tesla). https://lnkd.in/dWsaP7xy View in LinkedIn

Traditions based on deep archetypes have persisted for millenia, seen here at the annual St Narcis fair in Girona. View in LinkedIn