8 ms·
Brazilian frog might be the first pollinating amphibian known to science
- raybb 3y agoThe frog the article talks about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenohyla_truncata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenohyla_truncata
- deafpolygon 3y agoThat is so bizarre... a frog that is frugivorous.
- antalyagrill 3y ago[dead]
- doenertier 3y ago[dead]
- derjanni 3y ago[dead]
- sarahbecker 3y ago[dead]
- dvt 3y agoAwesome discovery, and I absolutely love this alliteration: > planet’s pantheon of pollinators
- gweinberg 3y agoYeah, except it really isn't a pantheon. "Pandemonium" might work better.
- dvt 3y agoI think we can stretch the meaning here; after all, a pantheon is a group of important people, and pollinating seems like an important job :) I think pandemonium usually has a negative connotation, but it's also good.
- selimthegrim 3y agoI believe their point is that pandemonium can be a collective noun too
- jdthedisciple 3y agoWhat's up all these GPT bot comments here on HN lately? Seems like a fairly new phenomenon.
- mmanfrin 3y agoVery strange indeed, first I've seen it, but they're all the same format and all new accounts.
- hombre_fatal 3y agoBots seem to be seasonal creatures. Some months you won't see any. And then some months you'll see four per submission. I'd just downvote and reconvene when it seems to be a substantial issue. As for GPT, the bots you usually see on HN are just as easily written by humans. GPT makes sense for scale, but it's not very interesting when bots are posting at such low volume, so it doesn't necessarily have to be the case nor does it really change anything.
- doctoboggan 3y agoI see 4 dead comments, but I suspect one of them is from a real human (derjanni)
- hackbert 3y agoI’ve seen a lot of new users today that were rage silenced, including obviously human ones.
- whimsicalism 3y agoLooking at their history I think they are related to the bots as they have a suspicious number of threads where the bots also chime in.
- InitialLastName 3y agoThey have submitted two "blog posts" from their own website whose insightlessness reeks of GPT, whose comments here are nothing but bots from brand new accounts. If there's a ring, they are the ringleader.
- samstave 3y agojust curious, how do underwater plants pollinate in general, while Ive never thought about it - I guess it would be currents?
- tomrod 3y agoPBS Eons has a few related videos iirc
- samstave 3y agoBut do they pollinate through their roots? because - then a whole realm of hydroponic polination for anything that can be pollinated through a root, would be really interesting. Think of real Wasabi - which thrives in very shallow, consistently flowing steams... -- Nevermind, I find the answers... Wasabi, still uses flowering insect polination in the wild, but is farmed via vegatative cloning. Seaweed is really interesting, male and female plants release cells that fuse to create the zygote --- Thanks for the min rabbit hole by posting this to HN ---- Sexual reproduction in seaweed typically involves the production of male and female gametes, which are released into the water column. The gametes then fuse to form zygotes, which develop into a new seaweed plant. Asexual reproduction in seaweed involves the fragmentation of the plant, where pieces of the seaweed break off and develop into new individuals. In commercial seaweed farming, propagation is typically done through vegetative propagation or by seeding. Vegetative propagation involves taking cuttings from mature seaweed plants and growing them in a suitable environment until they form new plants. Seeding involves the placement of young spores or young plants onto lines or ropes, which are then suspended in the water and allowed to grow.
- cubefox 3y agoNote that seaweeds are algues, not (flowering) plants. These are called seagrasses.
- pvaldes 3y agoMost underwater "plants" are algae, too primitive to produce flowers. Their life cycles are complicated and the fecundation happens in special short lived individuals called gametophytes that are generated from spores and produce gametes that fuse into other spores. They don't produce pollen, so can't be pollinated. To speak crudely, pollen is like a vase that hosts inside a crew of "spermatozoan like" gametes and then injects them directly in the right place. Algae just release the gametes without the "mothership". Some have "smart" gametes that act basically like tiny animals. This was a headache for a lot of time until a new kingdom was created for "neither exactly a plant nor an animal". The upper aquatic plants normally just raise the flowers over the surface to use the old reliable insects (Lotus). Only a few remain totally submerged at all times (Posidonia) and those probably use crustaceans and sea currents as pollinators.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoThis is super cute
- hackernj 3y agoThat’s the bee’s knees!
- darth_avocado 3y agoThis is strange but I swear growing up, I read in science textbooks that pollinators included insects, birds, mammals, reptiles AND AMPHIBIANS. Maybe I’m misremembering or it is one of those Mandela effect things?
- steve_adams_86 3y agoDon’t you remember the Berenstain Frogs books in which the young frogs would go around pollinating flowers in their pond?
- deafpolygon 3y agoI recall Papa Bear dying in prison. Maybe it's all connected.
- boffinAudio 3y agoI remember hearing that Salamanders are involved in pollination at some point in my life, but I'll be darned if I can find any references to it online.
- yawaramin 3y agoFirst time it's been observed maybe, OK cool. But, it's not that hard for a small-ish animal to roll around in pollen and carry it to another flower. I'd be more impressed if they found an animal that was photosynthesizing :-)
- merlincorey 3y agoApparently (according to this article[0]), a spotted salamander is capable of photosynthesis. [0] https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/can-any-animals-photosynthesise/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/can-any-animals-photosyn...
- deafpolygon 3y agoNature is ... metal!
- yawaramin 3y agoNow that's impressive :-)
- throwaway892238 3y agoI like how they say "known to science", as it's equally likely such a creature was made up in a treatise on the natural world by some clueless ancient writer and it just happened to end up being real
- borski 3y agoI always wondered if frogs pollinated water lilies. Do they?