adhere water
91. Mounds shed water: West African termites
"In West Africa and other areas where there is heavy rain, the colonies build nests like mushrooms with flat roofs which shed the water." (Attenborough 1979:100)
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Email92. Hydrophobic microscopic bumps made from waxes cause water droplets to bead off.
Similar to surface structures of feathers, hairs, and trichomes, microscopic bumps, or peaks and valleys, on the surface of an organism reduce particle adhesion to the substrate and water surface tension, thus encouraging the shedding of both dirt...
93. Corky tuber stores water: Hottentot bread plant
"Swollen roots are used by a great number of plants as storage tanks. Beneath the sand, they are out of sight and not easily found by thirsty animals living on the surface. Hottentot bread is the name given to a yam that develops an immense underg...
94. Surface cells store water: ice plant
"Southern Africa is the headquarters of a vast and varied family, the mesembryanthemums…One species retains liquid in tiny bladders on the surface of each bloated leaf that glisten in the sunshine and so give it the name, apt though improba...
95. Xylem conduits transport water: plants
"The transport system that drives sap ascent from soil to leaves is extraordinary and controversial. More than a century ago, H. H. Dixon (1896) proposed that a pulling force was generated at the evaporative surface of leaves and that this force w...
96. Millipede absorbs water vapor.
“This paper demonstrates clearly that Polyxenus lagurus is capable of active water vapour absorption with an uptake threshold of 0.85 at 25°C. This confirms the suggested utilization of WVA in this species (Eisenbeis and Wichard, 1987) and make...
97. Insect walks on water.
“The legs of water striders have numerous oriented micrometer-scale needle-shaped setae on the legs, which are arranged at an inclined angle of about 20° from the surface. Interestingly, many elaborate nanoscale grooves are found on each...
98. Silk protects from flooding, captures water: barking spider
"The whistling spider uses a silk film over the entrance to its burrow to maintain humidity, and a silk-covered mound at the burrow entrance traps dew or raindrops for drinking and helps prevent flooding in heavy rain. The air trapped around the s...
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