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"FRAUDS are imposters, individuals who cheat and deceive. They abound in many facets of nature. Among flowering plants, perhaps the most infamous frauds are the orchids. Flowers of a third or more of the Orchidsceae deceive their pollinators by some means or another. Obviously, this is a rather disreputable family." A lovely Victorian voice. https://lnkd.in/db9X2SK View in LinkedIn

UNRIVALLED AMONGST PLANTS. "The diversity of plant–pollinator interactions in orchids is unrivalled by any other group of plants. The spectacular floral diversity of orchids, and the fact that many are pollinated by a single species, has led to an historic belief that pollinator isolation is the predominant reproductive barrier in the family." https://lnkd.in/dU8FUkt View in LinkedIn

DRIVERS OF ORCHID DIVERSITY. "The evolution of pollinia, specialization on individual pollinators or mycorrhizal fungi, pollination via deceit, euglossine bees or Lepidoptera, epiphytism per se or associated traits such as CAM photosynthesis, and predominant distribution in the tropics (and especially in extensive cordilleras) have all been proposed as drivers of the extraordinary species richness of orchids." http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1814/20151553 View in LinkedIn

CORRECTIVE VIEWPOINT. "There is a common belief that Redwood trees and Bristle cone pines can achieve great age. Yet, the cells in these trees, alleged to be thousands of years old, are dead. The living cells in the needles, cambium layer and root hairs are no older than about 30 years. Humans, older than 30 years, who stand in awe of Redwood trees should more accurately stand in awe of their own living post mitotic neurons that are older than the tree’s living cells." https://lnkd.in/esfPTAR View in LinkedIn

HAYFLICK LIMIT CONSENSUS. "Since our first tentative suggestion that the finite lifespan of cultured normal human cells was a manifestation of aging at the cellular level, an enormous fund of knowledge has been acquired about the nature of the phenomenon. Few if any of the experimental results that have been reported are completely incompatible with an interpretation that the finite lifetime of cultured normal cells is aging at the cell level." http://protein.bio.msu.ru/biokhimiya/contents/v62/full/62111380.html View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS the first of two weekends dedicated to the curious orchid family. The nuanced strategies employed by these flowers for reproduction by false representation require a close co-evolution. These plants have no centralized brains, no vertebrate eyes, yet they can mirror the needs of a variety of pollinators with ingenious accuracy, and, according to the theory of evolution, all by dumb trial and error. No wonder Darwin was mesmerized by these clever plants. View in LinkedIn

PLANT MODULARITY AND SENESCENCE. "However, maintaining organism integrity with increased complexity in an evolutionary timescale has some costs. In a meta-analysis of plant life-history tables, data provided by Silvertown et al. support the idea that organisms which remain integrated in modules are more likely to senesce than organisms whose ramets separate into unconnected entities." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03360.x/full View in LinkedIn

PLANT MODULARITY "seems to increase organism plasticity in terms of whole-organism regeneration, a property that has been maintained with increasing complexity during evolution of species over time within the plant kingdom, but not within the animal kingdom." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03360.x/full View in LinkedIn

REGENERATION. "By contrast, some animals, such as zebrafish, can restore normal organ (heart) function after severe injury, and a few species of animals, such as some marine clonal invertebrates (e.g. many cnidarians), can even regenerate their entire body as a result of their modular development, a trait shared with plants.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03360.x/full View in LinkedIn

REGENERATIVE CELLS IN ANIMALS. "A single haematopoietic stem cell can reconstitute the entire haematopoietic system of an irradiated mammal. Progenitor cell populations have been identified within most mammalian organs, including skin, blood, bone, reproductive tissues, skeletal muscle, kidney, lung, liver, intestine, heart and brain." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03360.x/full View in LinkedIn