The Most Effective Pollinator Principle is a caricature of floral divergence. Adaptive landscapes can offer a more nuanced depiction of floral divergence that recognizes the fitness contributions of all visitors, not just the ones we think are important. academic.oup.com/aob/advance…

Here is a media release for our new paper about explosive pollination and male male competition in flowers eurekalert.org/news-releases…

Sujay Sanan - one of favourite biological artists has a new exhibition coming soon. sujaysanan.com/ instagram @sujaysanan

Mario Vallejo-Marin and his team have just released a great study contrasting pollen fates of 2 different buzz pollinated plants (with fused and unfused anthers). doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.01.6…

Pollen Wars: explosive pollination removes pollen deposited by previously visited flowers Check out the early view publication in Am Nat journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10… and the video below

Some pollen is for loving, but some is for fighting: Check out this popular article explaining how explosive pollination is used to remove the pollen of rival flowers from the bills of hummingbird pollinators sciencenews.org/article/proj…

It bites down on the upper peal of a flower when it lands, scrapes the oil from the flower and stores it in the dense hairs of its hind legs

A Centris bee approaching the oil producing inflorescences of Byrsonima intermedia

Found a little family of burrowing owls hanging out on the street corner. Someone even built them a little house

Also home to the largest living rodent. ..capybaras roam the shoreline of the lake munching on shoreline vegetation. They get over a meter long and weigh up to 70kg

Curious terrapins in an urban park in Uberlandia, Brazil

With areas are characterized by stands of palms where red shouldered macaws noisily roost

A walk with Vini and colleagues through the fire-dependent cerrado vegetation of Brazil

Allan Ellis is well known for his work on mimicry, crypsis and deception journals.uchicago.edu/doi/fu… Here, he ttempts to hide among the daisies with his yellow t-shirt. But his students are not easily fooled!

Back in Brazil, with Vini and his great students

This year the Nobel prize for chemistry was awarded to the researchers who discovered and made quantum dots accessible to applied sciences nobelprize.org/prizes/chemis… What better time to apply quantum dots to biological research

Congratulations to Sam McCarren who won best session presentation at the 12th International Symposium on Pollination (ISPXII) for his talk: Fire maintains coexistence of divergent flower forms

Enantiostyly making styles go opposite directions but bringing scientists together at @Grootbos

This is so cool!

Vertebral disk of a young southern right whale found on the beach