How Plants Outsmart Their Two-Faced Pollinators
Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 14:49
in Mathematics & Economics
Some animal-pollinated plants face an interesting dilemma. The same animals they rely on for pollination also like to eat them. This is the case for Nicotiana attenuata, a wild tobacco plant that grows in the American Southwest. The plant is pollinated by the night-active hawkmoth, which after the quib pro quo exchange of pollination for nectar likes to lay its eggs on N. attenuata—eggs that develop into voracious, leaf-eating caterpillars. read more