| ficus rubiginosa 'variegata', a chlorophyll-deficient chimera with mosaic patterns created by cell divisions from the outer meristematic layer. | sections leaves of ficus rubiginosa 'variegata' show that it is a chimera with a chlorophyll deficiency in the second layer of the leaf meristem (gwg structure). like other ficus species, it has a multiseriate epidermis on the adaxial and abaxial sides of the leaf, formed by periclinal cell divisions as well as anticlinal divisions. the upper and lower laminae of the leaf often exhibit small dark and light green patches of tissue overlying internal leaf tissue. | 2004 | 15145795 |
| ethanol and methanol as possible odor cues for egyptian fruit bats (rousettus aegyptiacus). | frugivorous bats from the old and new world use odor cues to locate and assess fruit condition. we hypothesized that egyptian fruit bats (rousettus aegyptiacus) use as odor cues those volatile compounds that increase in emission rate as fruit ripens. we examined whether the smell of fermentation products may indicate the degree of ripeness to fruit bats. we analyzed volatile compounds in the headspace (the gas space above a fruit in a closed container) of dates (phoenix dactylifera) and rusty fi ... | 2006 | 16770719 |
| deep mtdna divergences indicate cryptic species in a fig-pollinating wasp. | figs and fig-pollinating wasps are obligate mutualists that have coevolved for ca. 90 million years. they have radiated together, but do not show strict cospeciation. in particular, it is now clear that many fig species host two wasp species, so there is more wasp speciation than fig speciation. however, little is known about how fig wasps speciate. | 2006 | 17040562 |
| a role for parasites in stabilising the fig-pollinator mutualism. | mutualisms are interspecific interactions in which both players benefit. explaining their maintenance is problematic, because cheaters should outcompete cooperative conspecifics, leading to mutualism instability. monoecious figs (ficus) are pollinated by host-specific wasps (agaonidae), whose larvae gall ovules in their "fruits" (syconia). female pollinating wasps oviposit directly into ficus ovules from inside the receptive syconium. across ficus species, there is a widely documented segregatio ... | 2008 | 18336072 |
| characterization of microsatellite markers for sycoscapter nonpollinating fig wasps. | we isolated 18 microsatellites from sycoscapter australis, a nonpollinating fig wasp that develops in figs of ficus macrophylla, and assessed their variability in 20 wasps. we further optimized nine of these loci for use in three other sycoscapter species that develop in ficus rubiginosa figs and assessed their variability in 47-140 wasps per species. these are the first microsatellites developed for nonpollinating fig wasps and show sufficient polymorphism to become important tools in evolution ... | 2009 | 21564760 |
| local coexistence and genetic isolation of three pollinator species on the same fig tree species. | molecular tools increasingly reveal cryptic lineages and species that were previously unnoticed by traditional taxonomy. the discovery of cryptic species in sympatry prompts the question of how they coexist in the apparent absence of ecological divergence. however, this assumes first that the molecular taxonomy used to identify cryptic lineages delimits species boundaries accurately. this issue is important, because many diversity studies rely heavily or solely on data from mitochondrial dna seq ... | 2017 | 28074845 |
| one step ahead: a parasitoid disperses farther and forms a wider geographic population than its fig wasp host. | the structure of populations across landscapes influences the dynamics of their interactions with other species. understanding the geographic structure of populations can thus shed light on the potential for interacting species to co-evolve. host-parasitoid interactions are widespread in nature and also represent a significant force in the evolution of plant-insect interactions. however, there have been few comparisons of population structure between an insect host and its parasitoid. we used mi ... | 2016 | 26876233 |