"Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is a common refrain. But usually it is not followed by the words "because your neighbours may kill you". However, this is precisely the scenario faced by some female Brazilian fig wasps ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 28, 2015
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Female insects have one goal in life: to find the best place to lay their eggs. For fig wasps, that is the developing fruit of the luscious fig plant. However, when one particular parasitic fig wasp (Apocryta westwoodi grandi) ...
Plants & Animals
May 28, 2014
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A 115-million-year-old fossilized wasp from northeast Brazil presents a baffling puzzle to researchers. The wasp's ovipositor, the organ through which it lays its eggs, looks a lot like those of present-day wasps that lay ...
Archaeology
Dec 5, 2013
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Figs and fig trees are familiar to a wide cross-section of human society, both as a common food and for their spiritual importance. What is less well understood is the global nature of this association between figs and humans, ...
Ecology
May 2, 2013
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Gardeners and landscapers may want to rethink their fall tree plantings. Warming temperatures have already made the U.S. Department of Agriculture's new cold-weather planting guidelines obsolete, according to Dr. Nir Krakauer, ...
Environment
Sep 13, 2012
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Published online in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, the study confirms that placid male pollinator fig wasps work together to chew an escape tunnel for their females, before crawling back into the fig to die – ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 1, 2011
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The common fig is a subtropical, deciduous fruit tree grown in most Mediterranean-type climates. Although some believe that figs may be the oldest cultivated fruit species on earth, global expansion of fig crops has been ...
Ecology
Mar 17, 2011
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The world's oldest known example of a fig wasp has been found on the Isle of Wight. The fossil wasp is almost identical to the modern species, proving that this tiny but specialised insect has remained virtually unchanged ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 15, 2010
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Figs and fig wasps have evolved to help each other out: Fig wasps lay their eggs inside the fruit where the wasp larvae can safely develop, and in return, the wasps pollinate the figs.
Plants & Animals
Jan 27, 2010
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Figs and the wasps that pollinate them present one of biologists' favorite examples of a beneficial relationship between two different species. In exchange for the pollination service provided by the wasp, the fig fruit provides ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 14, 2010
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