Kaz Ohashi

Bandwagon effects in a floral market: Early pollinator acquisition offsets colour disadvantages in less attractive flowers Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Some flowers aren’t the flashiest, but they can still get a crowd. Our study shows less colourful flowers can attract as many pollinators as bright ones by getting early visitors—a floral “bandwagon effect” like a popular restaurant drawing the next wave of customers.

bit.ly/4aq7WVL #Ecology #Bees

Conveying a sense of buzz: how plain flowers benefit from early pollinators in winning followers Lina G. Kawaguchi, Kazuharu Ohashi, Akihiro Konuma, Yukihiko Toquenaga This is a plain language summary of a Functional Ecology research article which can be found here. Why do some flowers invest …

📰Published📰Conveying a sense of buzz: how plain flowers benefit from early pollinators in winning followers🐝

buff.ly/ldxNWh9

🧪🌍️

Thanks! The “bandwagon effect” is a term often used in psychology and sociology to describe how people follow early customers. In our study, it means pollinators tend to follow early visitors, so even less flashy flowers can get noticed—kind of like diners flocking to a busy restaurant. 🐝

Our new paper is out! Here’s the lay summary. #Ecology #Pollination #AnimalBehavior #SocialInformation #FloralEcology #BandwagonEffects #Bumblebees

Bandwagon effects in a floral market: Early pollinator acquisition offsets colour disadvantages in less attractive flowers Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Some flowers aren’t the flashiest, but they can still get a crowd. Our study shows less colourful flowers can attract as many pollinators as bright ones by getting early visitors—a floral “bandwagon effect” like a popular restaurant drawing the next wave of customers.

bit.ly/4aq7WVL #Ecology #Bees

The findings found that managed stingless bees can “markedly enhance coffee production”

www.gcrmag.com/brazilian-be...

Review in #ProcB - Flower constancy in #pollinators: a bouquet of agendas shapes interactions among mutualistic partners #OpenAccess @chrisleduck.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Job advertisement

I am looking for a PhD working on tracking trait changes in insects/spiders at the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity change @leibnizlib.bsky.social and the University of Hamburg.
Apply here: www.uni-hamburg.de/en/stellenan...

Four swans swiftly descending toward a pond, with a quote by Gary Snyder reading, “Nature is not a place to visit; it is home.”

2026 Happy New Year!

Earlier on the expedition we found the most beautiful flower, and here, my friends, is the biggest: Rafflesia arnoldi seen in full bloom today in the Sumatran jungle. This is the largest flower on earth and one of the greatest wonders of the natural world.

Increasing temperatures affect thoracic muscle performance in Arctic bumblebees - Nature Communications Increasing temperatures threaten cold-adapted pollinators such as Arctic bumblebees by disrupting their physiology. This study found that thorax acceleration during non-flight vibrations peaks at 25 °...

Too warm to buzz? Check out our newest paper on how warming temperatures affect bee buzzes in the Arctic. Well done to Charlie and Guadalupe and other coauthors for this nice study in the Swedish Arctic! @hfspo.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I cannot believe our work is finally out there and in @journal-evo.bsky.social ! This was an enormous group effort!

We provide an updated estimate of the number of buzz pollinated angiosperm species, genera, and families, look at consequences for diversification, number of transitions, and more!

How many plant species are buzz pollinated? After more than six years in the making, our paper on the convergent evolution of buzz pollinated flowers is out in @journal-evo.bsky.social. Thanks @draverbee.bsky.social @roszenil.bsky.social and all co-authors for your hard work! doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Green butterfly sat on a flower.

I'm looking for PhD students to join the lab starting August 2026. We study the evolution of insect chemical signals so if you're interested in evolutionary biology, chemical ecology, molecular biology, behavior, or genetics, this could be a good fit for you! More info here: tinyurl.com/mrxchwfm

Known and proposed ecological functions of aboveground aromatic emissions (i.e. constitutive volatile emissions from vegetative plant tissues) in mediating biotic interactions with arthropods, other plants, and microorganisms.

#Viewpoint: Exploring the importance of aromatic #plants' extrafloral volatiles for #pollinator attraction

Kantsa et al. 👇

📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#LatestIssue #PlantScience

Ants on flowers: Protective ants impose a low but variable cost to pollination, moderated by location of extrafloral nectaries and type of flower visitor Individuals who engage in multiple mutualisms often have to pay indirect costs because of the interference of one mutualism on another. We found that protective ants had a low but variable impact on ....

🐜 Ants on flowers

A meta-analysis shows protective ants reduce flower visits, especially by bees, but usually do not harm plant reproduction. Effects depend on nectary location and visitor type.

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/1365...

#SciComm 🧪 #Ecology #Pollination

"The fate of pollen in two morphologically contrasting buzz-pollinated Solanum flowers" by Vasquez-Castro et al. freshly published! doi.org/10.26786/192...

A new review gives us a deeper understanding of the evolution of plant-pollinator interactions If you’ve read my book Birds & Flowers: An Intimate 50 Million Year Relationship, you’ll know that I spend a few pages discussing the long-standing paradigm of how interactions betw…

A new review gives us a deeper understanding of the evolution of plant-pollinator interactions!

A brilliant critical review of the Grant–Stebbins model of how plants evolve by Kathleen Kay and Bruce Anderson just published.

Read more about it here: jeffollerton.co.uk/2025/09/12/a...

See last article on "The cognitive side of communication in social insects", just published in @TrendsCognSci . Free access under this link!
authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Spent hours being spellbound by Convolvulus Hawk Moths last night as they nectared on Nicotiana plants in my highland garden!. Up to 3 feeding at a time, their entire abdomens glowing red hot in the thermal from flight muscle use!! #teammoth @migrantmothuk.bsky.social @savebutterflies.bsky.social

Assistant Professor Plant-Microbe Interactions We seek a creative, collaborative, and visionary plant biologist to establish an internationally recognized research program at the forefront of plant-microbe interactions aimed at understanding how t...

The Department of Biology at Colorado State University is hiring an Assistant Professor in the area of plant-microbe interactions! Please spread the word!

jobs.colostate.edu/postings/165...

The surprising power of your nature photos Scott Loarie has a challenge for you: go outside and take a picture of a living thing. He introduces the global community of people building a living atlas of the natural world by sharing their nature...

Scott Loarie talks about #iNaturalust at #TED | The surprising power of your nature photos

www.ted.com/talks/scott_...

#Wildlife #CitizenScience #Conservation #Biodiversity

Beyond the Grant–Stebbins model: floral adaptive landscapes and plant speciation AbstractBackground. Floral diversity, a striking feature of angiosperm evolution, provides the impetus and rationale for linking pollinator-driven selectio

Is the Most Effective Pollinator Principle a zombie idea? How do plants adapted to one pollinator shift to another without traversing an adaptive valley? How should we measure fitness in pollinator selection studies? We explore these questions and more in a new review doi.org/10.1093/aob/...

Assistant Professor of Biology The Biology Department at Oberlin College invites applications for a full-time tenure track faculty position in the College of Arts and Sciences in conservation ecology. Initial appointment to this po...

🚨🚨 New tenure track position in #ConservationBiology @oberlincollege.bsky.social in the #Biology department--come join us, and contribute to our brand new Environmental Science major too! #biologyjobs #ecologyjobs

jobs.oberlin.edu/postings/16671

Even more fascinating after reading ‘Birds and flowers’ book by @jeffollerton.bsky.social
#BirdPollination #Generalists #Ecology

Exclusion of bird pollinators impacts mating system and reduces offspring fitness in a pollination-generalist tree AbstractBackground and Aims. Compared to pollinating insects and non-flying mammals (NFM), nectarivorous birds may display behaviours leading to greater po

🐦🐝 In Banksia menziesii, excluding birds cut fruit set, seed viability, and genetic diversity, while inbreeding rose. Honeybees moved plenty of pollen but increased selfing. Birds proved the most effective pollinators, with genetic gains that may drive bird-pollinated flowers. bit.ly/4fuAz58

This is a photo of a brown and red bird to the left of a flowering cactus, it is set against a blue sky.

Are specializations evolutionary dead ends? Morrison et al. reveal that in bird carotenoid evolution, continuity and stability are two sides of the same coin.

Read now ahead of print!
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Fig.3 Micropatterns on the petal surface are created by variation in epidermal cell pigment, shape and cuticle textures.

✨ Paper spotlight ✨

(🧵 1/3) Evolution of petal patterning: blooming floral diversity at the microscale
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Are you a PI in a biology field looking for postdocs? Here is a Starter Pack of early career biologists currently seeking postdoctoral positions! (Also if you are searching for a postdoc, let me know if you want to be added!) go.bsky.app/8zZNEGV

Dieunomia heteropoda? I got curious and asked the BeeMachine app, then looked for similar Dieunomia images. We don’t have this genus in Japan, but what an amazing look for a halictid! (if I’m correct)