Using a mobile stamen to slap away insect visitors maximizes pollination and minimizes costs to flowers, a study shows. For centuries scientists have observed that when a visiting insect's tongue ...

If evolutionary biologists are the detectives of the natural world’s past mysteries, then the phylogenic tree is their version of a cork board of crime-scene suspects linked together with red string ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Ruby E Stephens, Author provided Plants existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years before the first flowers bloomed. But ...

Insects play an important role in the world’s food production. Roughly 70 percent of all crop species, including apples, strawberries and cocoa, depend on them for pollination. Insects rely on a ...

Scientists offer novel insights into why and how wind-pollinated plants have evolved from insect-pollinated ancestors, and what it might mean for a potential pollination crisis. They found that plants ...

Before there were flowers, pollination of plants by insects was likely rare, and scientists had no idea of the insect culprits. But a new discovery suggests at least one flittering pollinator. Strange ...

Plants existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years before the first flowers bloomed. But when flowering plants did evolve, more than 140 million years ago, they were a huge evolutionary success ...