For Want of a Pollinator, a Flower May Be Lost--or a Forest

Earth's last passenger pigeon--Martha--died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo, the final remnant of flocks that once darkened the sky. What's unknown, even nearly a century after this extinction, is how many of the plants in the eastern woodlands of the U.S. might have suffered as a result--or even gone extinct themselves. Now, new findings from halfway around the world suggest plants may indeed suffer in the absence of the animals they have relied on for pollination or dispersing seeds. [More]

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