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Ozone Overdose Confuses Pollinators

Tuesday, April 9, 2013 6:41
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(Before It's News)

Ozone isn’t just bad for your lungs, it also gets in the way of insects finding their favorite food, say researchers. Ozone, because it reacts readily with aromatic compounds put out by plants, interferes with the come-hither call of the plants to insects.

“The insects need a threshold amount of gas released by the flower,” said Jose Fuentes of Penn State University. That threshold is pretty low, only about six molecules, for the beetles to detect the plant odor.

He and meteorology undergraduate John Zenker and University of Virginia researcher T’ai H. Roulston tested beetles inside a Y-shapped tube so that the insect could choose which branch to follow the plant scent. Researchers collected the insects from pumpkin and squash plants then tested them using wild buffalo gourd plants

More here:
http://news.discovery.com/earth/plants/o…130409.htm



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