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symbiosis

Cold-seep communities

Article

Cold-seep communities

Cold seeps are places on the seafloor where cold hydrocarbon-rich water escapes. They occur most often at tectonic plate boundaries. ...

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Mistletoes and mutualism

Article

Mistletoes and mutualism

In some of the beech forests of New Zealand, bright red or yellow mistletoe flowers stand out in the summer. ...

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Attracting pollinators

Article

Attracting pollinators

Flowering plants need to get pollen from one flower to another, either within a plant for self-pollination or between plants ...

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Insects and forest ecosystems

Article

Insects and forest ecosystems

Our native forests – ngahere – have complex ecosystems. Within the wider ecosystems are smaller ecosystems, such as the one ...

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Amazing ryegrass

Article

Amazing ryegrass

Ryegrass is an important food for cattle, but it is also a favourite food of competing insects. Can biological control ...

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Life in the upper troposphere

Article

Life in the upper troposphere

Sci-fi writers from Arthur Conan Doyle to Ray Bradbury have long speculated about the invisible lighter-than-air creatures that must surely inhabit the realms above the ground. ...

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Investigating pollination – writer insight

Article

Investigating pollination – writer insight

Hub's writer, Nelville Gardner, talks about our pollination resources. One of the scientists featured in the articles on pollination, Dave Kelly of the University of Canterbury, ...

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Jenny Ladley

Article

Jenny Ladley

Position: field services manager and research assistant, University of Canterbury. Field: Ecology As part of her job as Terrestrial Ecology Technician, at the School of Biological ...

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Dr Mark Goodwin

Article

Dr Mark Goodwin

Position: Head of research, Plant & Food Research. Field: Honey bees and pollination. For Dr Mark Goodwin, working with pollination has its challenges. Most crop plants ...

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Honey bee heroes

Article

Honey bee heroes

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are the most important pollinators of many cultivated food crops and other flowering plants. These plants would be in trouble without bees, ...

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Flowering plant life cycles

Article

Flowering plant life cycles

The flowers and fruit of flowering plants come and go as part of their life cycle. Some flowering plants don’t even have stems and leaves all ...

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Flower parts

Article

Flower parts

Most flowers have the same basic parts, even though they come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours. Flowers are there to make sure that ...

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Pollination and fertilisation

Article

Pollination and fertilisation

Sexual reproduction is a way of making a new individual by joining two special sex cells, called gametes. In the sexual reproduction of animals and plants, ...

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Decline of birds and pollination

Article

Decline of birds and pollination

Birdlife has been declining in the New Zealand bush for many years, mainly due to introduced predators such as rats and stoats. Professor Dave Kelly and ...

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Pollination – key terms

Article

Pollination – key terms

Learn about the role of flowers in the life cycles of flowering plants. Discover how flowers ensure the transfer of pollen, and meet some of the ...

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Viruses

Article

Viruses

It doesn’t breathe, it doesn’t eat, it doesn’t excrete, and it doesn’t grow – so it can’t be alive, can it? It hijacks a living cell ...

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Explore a cow's digestive system

Activity

Explore a cow's digestive system

Cows are ruminants – mammals with specialised digestive systems that use fermentation processes to gain nutrients from plant material. Cattle, sheep, horses, deer and goats are ...

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Pollination – three-level reading guide

Activity

Pollination – three-level reading guide

In this activity, students read about pollination using a three-level reading guide and use their ability to locate information to interpret the scientific information. Students apply ...

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Pass the pollen

Activity

Pass the pollen

In this activity, students take on the role of flower parts and act out the process of insect pollination By the end of this activity, students ...

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Kōwhai, kōtukutuku/tree fuchsia and a male flower of kanono.

Activity

Pollination pairs

In this activity, students match native flowers with their pollinators, basing predictions on the main characteristics of flowers pollinated by wind, insects or birds. Botanists use ...

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Make an adenovirus

Activity

Make an adenovirus

In this activity, students use a template to make a model of an adenovirus and investigate the different shapes of different viral diseases and the similarities ...

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Pollination resources – planning pathways

Teacher PLD

Pollination resources – planning pathways

Flowers are a common sight in most New Zealand school grounds. They offer a colourful starting point to teach about plant reproduction and adaptation and offer ...

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Pollination (lower primary) – unit plan

Teacher PLD

Pollination (lower primary) – unit plan

Flowering plants create seeds, which get spread away from the parents and grow into new plants in new places. Pollination has to happen before seeds can ...

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Interactive diagram with boxes to drag and drop labels for parts of flowers.

Interactive

Label the flower parts

Flowers are how most plants produce seeds. In this interactive, you can label the flower parts. See the Labelling the parts of a pua/flower activity for ...

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