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From: kegarvey@ucdavis.edu<BR>To: Ladadams@aol.com<BR>Sent: 10/13/2011 10:42:07
A.M. Pacific Daylight Time<BR>Subj: For server<BR></DIV>
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<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'">This just
in—should be of interest.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><A
title=http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/miot-mrs101211.php
href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/miot-mrs101211.php">http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/miot-mrs101211.php</A><o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Contact: Caroline McCall<BR><A
title=mailto:cmccall5@mit.edu
href="mailto:cmccall5@mit.edu">cmccall5@mit.edu</A><BR><SPAN class=relinst><A
title=http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice
href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice">Massachusetts Institute of
Technology</A></SPAN> <o:p></o:p></P>
<H1>MIT research: Sugar high for bees<o:p></o:p></H1>
<H2>Bees, and similar nectar feeders, get sweeter juice with dipping
tongues<o:p></o:p></H2>
<P>CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A field of flowers may seem innocuous — but for the
birds and bees that depend on it for sustenance, that floral landscape can be
a battlefield mined with predators and competitors. The more efficient a
pollinator is in feeding, the less chance it has of becoming food
itself.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>Now mathematicians at MIT have found that efficient feeding depends on how
sugary a flower's nectar is, and whether an animal dips or sucks the nectar
out. The researchers found that animals such as bees, which probe with their
tongues, are "viscous dippers," and are most efficient when feeding on more
sugary, or viscous, nectar. Suction feeders, such as birds and butterflies
that draw nectar up through tubes, do their best when sucking up thinner, less
sugary nectar.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>The difference, says John Bush, a professor of applied mathematics, may
point to a co-evolutionary process between flowers and their
pollinators.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>"Do the flowers want a certain type of bug or bird to pollinate them? And
are they offering up the nectar of their preferred pollinator?" Bush asks.
"It's an interesting question whether there's a correlation between the
morphology of the plant and the morphology of the insect."<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>The researchers published their results in a recent issue of the
<I>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</I>.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>While Bush is not a biologist, he says curiosities in nature, including
nectar feeding, pose fascinating challenges for mathematicians. As he sees it,
nectar feeding is a classic example of optimization in nature: The sweeter the
nectar, the more energy it delivers, but the more energy it takes to
transport. The optimal sugar concentration shifts according to how the fluid
is taken up.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>As a large-scale analogy, Bush says it's more efficient to suck up sugar
water than molasses through a straw. Conversely, it's more effective to dip a
spoon in and out of honey versus juice. There's an ideal viscosity for a given
uptake mechanism, an optimization puzzle that Bush says is tailored for
mathematics.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P><B>The birds and the bees<o:p></o:p></B></P>
<P>To get at this puzzle, Bush and his colleagues analyzed data from previous
papers on nectar-feeding species, which include bats, birds, bees and
butterflies. Most papers described two kinds of nectar-drinking mechanisms:
active suction, whereby butterflies and moths suck nectar up through long,
narrow tubes, or probosci; and passive suction, in which hummingbirds and
sunbirds draw nectar up in their tongues via capillary action.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>The team compiled the papers' data and found that both groups of suction
feeders were most efficient at taking up the same concentration — 33 percent —
of sugar in nectar.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>The researchers did the same for viscous dippers: species such as ants,
bees and bats, which extract nectar by dipping their tongues in and out of
flowers. For these dippers, they found the ideal sugar concentration was 52
percent, demonstrating a preference among these species for nectar that's much
more viscous, and sweeter, than their sucking counterparts.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>Going a step further, Wonjung Kim, a graduate student of mechanical
engineering and lead author of the paper, took an experimental approach,
studying live bees in the lab. Kim collected several bees from around MIT and
kept them in a box lined with paper towels soaked in a sugar solution. Kim
filmed the bees with a high-speed camera, confirming that the insects did
indeed dip their tongues in the syrupy surface.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P><B>Going with the flow<o:p></o:p></B></P>
<P>Bush and Kim plan to examine the ways in which other species drink, in
order to model more small-scale fluid dynamics. One target, Bush says, is a
certain desert lizard that "drinks" through its skin. The lizard simply has to
step in a puddle of water, and an intricate system of cracks in its skin soaks
up moisture — a useful trait in extremely dry environments.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>"People are now interested in moving around small volumes of fluid for
microfluidic applications," Bush says. "It's clear that nature has been
solving these problems for millions of years. Animals have learned how to
efficiently navigate, transport and manipulate water. So there's clearly much
to learn from them in terms of mechanisms."<SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'">Kathy
Keatley Garvey<BR>Communications Specialist<BR>Department of Entomology<BR>372
Briggs Hall<BR>One Shields Ave.<BR>University of California, Davis<BR>Davis,
CA 95616<BR>Phone: (530) 754-6894<BR>Fax: (530) 752-1537<BR><A
title=mailto:kegarvey@ucdavis.edu
href="mailto:kegarvey@ucdavis.edu">kegarvey@ucdavis.edu</A></SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'"> <BR>UC
Davis Department of Entomology website:<BR></SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><A
title=http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/home.cfm
href="http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/home.cfm">http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/home.cfm</A><BR>Harry
H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility website:<BR><A
title=http://beebiology.ucdavis.edu/
href="http://beebiology.ucdavis.edu/">http://beebiology.ucdavis.edu</A><BR>UC
Agriculture and Natural Resources website:<BR><A
title=http://ucanr.org/index.cfm
href="http://ucanr.org/index.cfm">http://ucanr.org/index.cfm</A><BR>Bug Squad
Blog<BR><A title=http://ucanr.org/blogs/bugsquad/
href="http://ucanr.org/blogs/bugsquad/">http://ucanr.org/blogs/bugsquad/</A><BR>Flickr
Photos </SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'"><BR><A
title=http://www.flickr.com/photos/pho-tog/
href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pho-tog/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/pho-tog/</A></SPAN></P></DIV></DIV></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>