Thu, Jan 18, 2018
Mistletoes, a group of parasitic plants comprising over 1,500 species, have intricate relationships with different host species, pollinators, and seed dispersers to carry out their life cycle. The authors from a new study in Oecologia used data from the USA-NPN’s National Phenology Database from Arizona and California to look for consistencies in the leafing, flowering, and fruiting phenology between desert mistletoe and their host plants. The authors found that mistletoes are not constrained by their hosts when it comes to phenology, and use diverse strategies to maintain reproductive success.