{"id":869,"date":"2008-08-27T15:14:12","date_gmt":"2008-08-27T20:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/?p=869"},"modified":"2008-08-27T15:21:01","modified_gmt":"2008-08-27T20:21:01","slug":"extra-floral-nectaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/?p=869","title":{"rendered":"Extra Floral Nectaries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/img_14341.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-864\" title=\"img_14341\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/img_14341.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"336\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/img_14341.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/img_14341-300x201.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Several years ago Chip Taylor asked me to go along with him as he was exploring Baker Wetlands brainstorming potential ideas\/questions that his introduction to research class could investigate.  It was there that I first became aware that many of our local plants had extrafloral nectaries.   Before, I thought EFN&#8217;s were primarily a tropical phenomenon.  EFN&#8217;s are a great starting point for original student research.  There&#8217;s a cost to the plant to produce nectar so what is the benefit?  It&#8217;s probably not to attract pollinators since the nectar is not produced in the flower.  Of course this is where evolutionary theory helps to structure your questions.   Chip considered developing a fall research project focused on the partridge pea&#8217;s extrafloral nectaries and the ants they attract.  However, he decided to pursue other questions but I&#8217;ve never been able to drop the idea that partridge pea could be a great plant to generate student research questions that can be answered by motivated high school students.<\/p>\n<p>Now, this is not a project to be taken lightly, but it is one that could be pursued over a couple of years or one that you, as a biology teacher could set up on campus in a garden.  Here&#8217;s the link to a recent paper on the plant\/ant mutualism relationship that may give you some ideas of methods you could use if you too find this plant fascinating:  <a title=\"Rutter and Rausher\" href=\"http:\/\/www.biology.duke.edu\/rausher\/evgen\/reprints\/nectar.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Rutter and Rausher  (2004<\/a>) So take a new biology challenge and see if you can&#8217;t find some way to incorporate the findings and methods described in this paper into your class.<\/p>\n<p>BW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Several years ago Chip Taylor asked me to go along with him as he was exploring Baker Wetlands brainstorming potential ideas\/questions that his introduction to research class could investigate. It was there that I first became aware that many of our local plants had extrafloral nectaries. Before, I thought EFN&#8217;s were primarily a tropical phenomenon.<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/?p=869\">+ Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kabt-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":871,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions\/871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}