Some flowers may be using their pollinators as sexual battlegrounds.
Red, Brazilian flowers called Hypenea macrantha use projectile blasts of pollen to knock rival pollen off of hummingbirds’ beaks and replace it with their own, researchers report in a study to appear in the American Naturalist. If a male flower can send a hummingbird away with more of its own pollen and less of its competitors’, it increases its chances of siring seeds in the next female flower the bird visits.
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