Concept
Nectar
Related concepts (49)
Honeyeater
The honeyeaters are a large and diverse family, Meliphagidae, of small to medium-sized birds. The family includes the Australian chats, myzomelas, friarbirds, wattlebirds, miners and melidectes. They are most common in Australia and New Guinea, and found also in New Zealand, the Pacific islands as far east as Samoa and Tonga, and the islands to the north and west of New Guinea known as Wallacea. Bali, on the other side of the Wallace Line, has a single species.
Flower
A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). Flowers produce gametophytes, which in flowering plants consist of a few haploid cells which produce gametes. The "male" gametophyte, which produces non-motile sperm, is enclosed within pollen grains; the "female" gametophyte is contained within the ovule. When pollen from the anther of a flower is deposited on the stigma, this is called pollination.
Ranunculus
Ranunculus ræˈnʌŋkjʊləs is a large genus of about 1700 to more than 1800 species of flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae. Members of the genus are known as buttercups, spearworts and water crowfoots. The genus is distributed in Europe, North America and South America. The familiar and widespread buttercup of gardens throughout Northern Europe (and introduced elsewhere) is the creeping buttercup Ranunculus repens, which has extremely tough and tenacious roots.
Hypanthium
In angiosperms, a hypanthium or floral cup is a structure where basal portions of the calyx, the corolla, and the stamens form a cup-shaped tube. It is sometimes called a floral tube, a term that is also used for corolla tube and calyx tube. It often contains the nectaries of the plant. It is present in many plant families, although varies in structural dimensions and appearance. This differentiation between the hypanthium in particular species is useful for identification.
Hummingbird
Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and comprise the biological family Trochilidae. With about 366 species and 113 genera, they occur from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, but most species are found in Central and South America. About 28 hummingbird species are listed as endangered or critically endangered, with numerous species declining in population. Hummingbirds have varied specialized characteristics to enable rapid, maneuverable flight, exceptional metabolic capacity, adaptations to high altitude, sensitive visual and communication abilities, and long-distance migration in some species.
Pollen
Pollen is a powdery substance produced by flowers of seed plants. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophytes during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants, or from the male cone to the female cone of gymnosperms. If pollen lands on a compatible pistil or female cone, it germinates, producing a pollen tube that transfers the sperm to the ovule containing the female gametophyte.
Pollen basket
The pollen basket or corbicula (plural corbiculae) is part of the tibia on the hind legs of the female of certain species of bees. They use the structure in harvesting pollen and carrying it to the nest or hive where it is used as food by the colony. Bee species with no pollen baskets have scopae, which fulfil a similar role. There was little formal description of the corbicula before Carl Linnaeus explained the biological function of pollen in the mid-18th century.
Bee sting
A bee sting is the wound and pain caused by the stinger of a female bee puncturing skin. Bee stings differ from insect bites, with the venom of stinging insects having considerable chemical variation. The reaction of a person to a bee sting may vary according to the bee species. While bee stinger venom is slightly acidic and causes only mild pain in most people, allergic reactions may occur in people with allergies to venom components. A honey bee that is away from the hive foraging for nectar or pollen will rarely sting, except when stepped on or roughly handled.
Coevolution
In biology, coevolution occurs when two or more species reciprocally affect each other's evolution through the process of natural selection. The term sometimes is used for two traits in the same species affecting each other's evolution, as well as gene-culture coevolution. Charles Darwin mentioned evolutionary interactions between flowering plants and insects in On the Origin of Species (1859). Although he did not use the word coevolution, he suggested how plants and insects could evolve through reciprocal evolutionary changes.
Insect
Insects (from Latin insectum) are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes and one pair of antennae. Their blood is not totally contained in vessels; some circulates in an open cavity known as the haemocoel. Insects are the most diverse group of animals; they include more than a million described species and represent more than half of all known living organisms.