Pollination is the process in which plants turn animals into sexual toys.
A nutritious nectar, a striking flower (
And the strange things about cheating)
They attract animal carriers that can transport pollen to another flower.
These partnerships paint the world in gorgeous tones.
But pollination can create other feasts for those senses who don't know anything about our visual focus.
Malgravia evonia, a vine in the Cuban rainforest, is pollinated by bats, which are transmitted by sonar rather than vision. They make high-
In the rebound sound, the return sound and time resonate with the world. And M.
Evenia, Super
Perceive with a leaf that can be used as a sonar antenna.
It reflects the strong, unique echo of the bat, creating a sonic beacon that stands out in the general clicking sound of the forest.
There is also a circle of red and white flowers on the vine, sitting on a cup full of nectar.
But there's one or two dishes above the flower.
Leaves in the shape of an upward twist, so the concave faces towards the near pollinator. In cross-
They can form the top of a sphere.
These leaves are very different from those found elsewhere on the vine, and Ralph Simon of Ulm University in Germany thinks they can act as bats
Attracting beacons
To test his idea, he hit the leaves with the same frequency as the sound of Pallas longtongued bats.
Normal leaves reflect stronger echoes right in front of them, but these reflections become very weak at any angle.
However, Simon found the dish
The shaped leaves reflect a strong echo at an angle of up to 60 degrees.
Bats can detect these sounds in a larger space than normal leaves.
The sound is also very distinctive.
For normal leaves, the Echo changes depending on where the listener is standing or flying.
Even small shifts in direction produce very different sounds. But the dish-
The different shapes of the leaves give almost the same echo in different directions.
The curve of the plate sends back two very strong echoes, one from the center of it and the other from both sides, which fuse together at a wide angle in a basically constant way.
For a flying bat, its hearing must be the equivalent of Mona Lisa's eyes, and there will be bursts of Echo wherever it goes.
To prove that these loud, wide and unique sounds are attractive, Simon trains bats to find a nectar feeder in the artificial leaves.
When he moved the feeder, it took about 23 seconds for the bat to find it again.
If he added a normal leaf to it, it took them 22 seconds.
If he added a grape dish
The shape of the leaves, the search time is reduced by half. The bat found the feeder in 12 seconds.
According to Simon, green leaf beacons are good for both vines and bats.
The Vine will obviously have sex. on-wings.
At the same time, bats find nectar faster.
This is useful because they do hundreds of such visits every night to fuel their gas --
Consume metabolism.
Other plants that rely on bat pollination may also use similar methods.
Otto van helfsson, who was involved in the Simone study, found another example in 1999, another tropical vine known as mokuna Holden, and another tropical vine.
It also reflects a strong echo in many directions, and if you cut it off, the flowers of the Vine will not be frequented.
Perhaps there is a whole world with similar echo beacons, rich in sound, comparable to the visual splendor of flowers.
Reference: Simon, Holder, Koch and von helfson. 2011.
Floral acoustics: a striking echo of a dish
The shape of the leaf attracts the bat pollinator.
Science on pollination more information: Insert the tongue flower arrow here to guide flies tonguesTobacco plants to promote their opening by switching pollinators to hummingbird flowers to change colors and come back again
Fly pretending to be fungus
Infected wine