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By Sarah Wild, first published by GroundUp.org.za South Africa’s National Biodiversity Institute is calling on nature lovers to help it save the Karoo — with science “Scientists know very little about the plants and animals in the Karoo, and there is an urgent need to document the indigenous species found in this important part of…
It looks like a pellet of buck dung, it smells like one too, but the centimetre-long seed is not dung, and is one of the few proven instances of sensory deception for seed dispersal. “The smell is incredible,” says Jeremy Midgley, a professor in biological sciences at the University of Cape Town. “From the smell,…