Nightlife: Marsupial meets mistletoe.That's no bird--that's a marsupial marsupial (märs  `pēəl), member of the order Marsupialia, or pouched mammals. . But it's doing a fine job of what was thought to be a bird's task: dispersing mistletoe mistletoe, common name for the Loranthaceae, a family of chiefly tropical hemiparasitic herbs and shrubs with leathery evergreen leaves and waxy white berries. They have green leaves, but they manufacture only part of the nutrients they require. seeds. The nocturnal, squirrel-size Dromiciops australis eats seeds of a South American mistletoe and then excretes them onto trees, report Gillermo Amico and Marcelo A. Aizen of the Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Rio Negro Río Negro or Rio Negro ("black river" in, respectively, Spanish and Portuguese) may refer to: Rivers
Mistletoes parasitize par·a·sit·ize v. To live on or in a host as a parasite. parasitize to live on or within a host as a parasite. other plants, and most mistletoe seeds need to catch rides to new host plants. In most cases, birds serve as the on-time carriers (see p. 411). But in the 500 hours that the scientists staked out the plant, no birds ate the South American mistletoe, Tristerix corymbosus. The researchers note that this species blooms at an odd time, from the austral fall through the winter, when their marsupial carriers are particularly abundant. These mistletoes could easily have been feeding ancestors of their current marsupial carrier for some 70 million years, the Years, The the seven decades of Eleanor Pargiter’s life. [Br. Lit.: Benét, 1109] See : Time researchers say. |
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