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Happy to be dinner

when Ken Paige of the University of Illinois, Urbana, usa , reported a decade ago that scarlet gilia, a delicate red-flowered herb found in the mountains of northern Arizona, produced more seeds when deer nibbled at them, there were few takers. Ecologists were skeptical and were not ready to accept that reproduction of a plant could benefit from being eaten by herbivores.

After studying seeds and pollen production in gilia, Paige now claims that browsing by herbivores enhances the overall reproductive functioning of the plant. His findings are based on experiments in which he trimmed gilia plants with scissors as a substitution for browsing. Paige observedthat the plants regrew to produce more than twice as many flowers and pollen grains per plant than the uncut ones ( New Scientist , Vol 155, No 2096).

To cross-check his finding, Paige pollinated cut and uncut plants with a humming bird and hawkmoth

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