Flowers May Have Lived Existed With First Dinos

Flowering plants may have been around when the earliest known dinosaurs were around.

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Flowering plants may have been around when the earliest known dinosaurs were around. Here, an artist's illustration of a Nyasasaurus, possibly the oldest known dinosaur, from the Middle Triassic of Tanzania.

History Museum, London/Mark Witton

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Dinosaur Feathers Found in Amber: Photos

View Caption + #1: Sept. 15, 2011 --

A stunning array of prehistoric feathers, including dinosaur protofeathers, has been discovered in Late Cretaceous amber from Canada. The 78 to 79-million-year-old amber preserved the feathers in vivid detail, including some of their diverse colors. The collection, published in this week's Science, is among the first to reveal all major evolutionary stages of feather development in non-avian dinosaurs and birds. In this slide, an isolated barb from a vaned feather is visible trapped within a tangled mass of spider's web. BLOG: 40-Million-Year-Old Sex Act Captured in Amber

Science/AAAS

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"These specimens were most likely blown into the tacky resin, or were plucked from an animal as it brushed against resin on a tree trunk," lead author Ryan McKellar told Discovery News. "The fact that we have found some specimens trapped within spider webs in the amber would suggest that wind played an important role in bringing the feathers into contact with the resin," added McKellar, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. The feather filaments shown here are similar to protofeathers that have been associated with some dinosaur skeletons. NEWS: Cretaceous African Life Sealed in Amber

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McKellar and his team made the discovery after screening over 4,000 amber samples from Grassy Lake, Alberta. The amber, collected by the Leuck family, is now housed at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. The researchers ruled out that the inclusions were mammal hairs, plant or fungal remains based on their structure. Some dinosaur fossils retain skin impressions, so the scientists could match dinosaur protofeathers (hair-like projections) to some of the objects within the amber. Here, a feather is visible near a plant bug. The high number of coils in the this feather suggests it could have come from a water-diving bird.

Science/AAAS

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The translucent tree resin provides a window into feather evolution, from non-avian dinosaurs to birds. "Part of what makes this particular set of feathers interesting is that we find the very simple Stage I and II feathers alongside advanced feathers that are very similar to those of modern birds, Stages IV and V," McKellar said. The researchers aren't yet certain why feathers first evolved, but the density of the protofeathers suggests that they helped dinosaurs with regulating temperature. Dinosaurs such as Troodon or Deinonychus may have produced the feathers. The cork-screw shaped structures in this slide are the tightly coiled bases of feather barbules.

Science/AAAS

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As feathers continued to change, they developed tufts, barbs, branching features, little hooks, and more. Some of the most advanced feathers in the collection are comparable to those of modern grebes. They appear to help diving, indicating that some of the prehistoric birds were divers. McKellar suspects the marine birds might have been Hesperornithiformes, a specialized flightless diving bird from the Dinosaur Era. This is a white belly feather of a modern grebe, showing coiled bases comparable to those seen in the Cretaceous specimen.

Science/AAAS

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Some of the feathers appear transparent now, but would have been white in life. A range of colors for the feathers is evident, though, with grays, reds and various shades of brown preserved. This, and prior research, suggests that non-avian dinosaurs and prehistoric birds could be quite flashy. The pigment within this fossilized feather suggests it would have originally been medium- or dark-brown in color. NEWS: Dino's True Colors Revealed by Tail Feathers

Science/AAAS

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In an accompanying "Perspectives" article in Science, Mark Norell points out that the dinosaur Sinosauropteryx is thought to have had a reddish banded tail, while Anchiornis likely possessed a striking black body, banded wings and a reddish head comb. Norell, chair and curator of the American Museum of Natural History's Division of Paleontology, told Discovery News that the newly discovered feathers are "very exciting." Here, a feather barb within Late Cretaceous Canadian amber shows some indication of original coloration.

Science/AAAS

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Some dino aficionados have wondered if DNA could be extracted from the feathers. "Almost anything is possible," Norell said, quickly adding that most DNA-extraction studies have been conducted on much younger amber, dating to around 20-30 million years ago, and even those led to questionable results. "Maybe bits and pieces could be identified, but not the whole genome." Shown are 16 clumped feathers in Late Cretaceous amber.

Science/AAAS

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People with amber objects, such as jewelry, also probably don't have prehistoric feather inclusions, since such items are extremely rare and dealers isolate the best pieces. Nevertheless, McKellar said, "There is some hope that you could have small feather fragments that have been overlooked." An unpigmented feather and a mite in Canadian Late Cretaceous amber.

Science/AAAS

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Newfound fossils hint that flowering plants arose 100 million years earlier than scientists previously thought, suggesting flowers may have existed when the first known dinosaurs roamed Earth, researchers say.

Flowering plants are now the dominant form of plant life on land, evolving from relatives of seed-producing plants that do not flower, such as conifers and cycads.

Get a behind-the-scenes look at how information is extracted from ancient fossils.

iStockphoto/Thinkstock

"Flowering plants were the last group of plants appearing in Earth's history," said Peter Hochuli, a paleobotanist at the University of Zürich's Paleontological Institute and Museum and a co-author of the new study. "They are an extremely successful group on which all terrestrial ecosystems today depend, including the existence of humanity."

Flowering plants, or angiosperms, became the dominant plants about 90 million years ago, when the dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. However, the exact time when these plants originated remains hotly debated.

Now, scientists have unearthed ancient pollen grains with microscopic features typically seen in flowering plants. These well-preserved fossils, discovered in two core samples drilled in northern Switzerland, are about 245 million years old, dating back to the earliest known dinosaur in the Middle Triassic period. ( See Images of the Earliest Known Dinosaur)

"Our findings suggest that the origin of flowering plants is rooted much deeper than originally thought," Hochuli told LiveScience.

Pollen grains are small, robust and numerous. This makes them easier to find in the fossil record than comparably large and fragile leaves and flowers. After analyzing the structure of these grains, the researchers suggested that the associated plants were pollinated by insects -- most likely beetles, as bees did not evolve until about 100 million years later.

Six different types of pollen were found in the ancient samples, revealing that flowering plants back then may have been considerably diverse. The researchers have seen these pollen grains in both Switzerland and the Barents Sea, north of Scandinavia. However, back in the Middle Triassic, both areas were located in the subtropics, and the region that is now Switzerland was much drier than the Barents Sea region, suggesting the flowering plants spanned a broad range of environments.

The fossil record of flowering plants is continuous, dating back 140 million years. Until now, the fossil record of flowering plants suggested they dominated the planet rather quickly after their earliest appearance. "This sudden appearance has bothered scientists ever since Darwin, who called the origin of flowering plants an 'abominable mystery,'" Hochuli said.

These newfound fossils reveal that flowering plants may have existed more than 100 million years longer than previously thought. This increased span of time might help explain how flowering plants spread, diversified and prevailed on land.

The ancestors of flowering plants currently remain a mystery, and scientists aren't sure what kind of events or conditions might have spurred their origin.

"So far, no direct ancestors of flowering plants are known," Hochuli said. "Some groups of plants are suspected to be closely related. But the evidence is weak, and most of these groups are thought to be too specialized to be at the base of the flowering plants."

Hochuli and his colleague Susanne Feist-Burkhardt detailed their findings Oct. 1 in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.

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Dinosaur Extinction Paved Way for Mammal Giants

Global temperature and the amount of land available for an animal's range are two primary ecological factors that appear to correlate with the evolution of maximum body size.

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THE GIST

- When dinosaurs became extinct, they left ecological niche voids that certain mammals filled.

- Without competition from reptiles and dinosaurs, some mammals grew to enormous multi-ton sizes.

- Without competition from reptiles and dinosaurs, some mammals grew to enormous multi-ton sizes.

When dinosaurs died out, some mammals became huge, according to a new Science paper.

The research helps to explain mammal giants such as Indricotherium transouralicum , an 18-foot-tall, 17-ton hornless rhinoceros-like herbivore that lived in Eurasia 34 million years ago.

This towering plant eater, along with Deinotherium -- a member of the order elephants belong to -- were the largest mammals to ever walk the earth. They were a far cry from the often mouse-sized mammals that scurried around dinosaurs.

"Mammals evolved around 210 million years ago and stayed small for their first 140 million years," lead author Felisa Smith told Discovery News. "This is probably because of competition from reptiles and dinosaurs, who dominated the ecosystem."

"Although mammals were also severely influenced by the K/T extinction (65.5 million years ago), they had a number of adaptations that helped after the devastation that followed the impact," explained Smith, an associate professor of biology at the University of New Mexico. "Many of the survivors were small, burrowers, and ate just about anything."

Such scrappy ways permitted mammals to fill ecological niche voids that opened up when dinosaurs went extinct.

Smith and her team made that determination after compiling fossil data indicating the body size of land mammals belonging to each taxonomic order, on each continent, throughout their evolutionary history.

The scientists found that the maximum size of mammals began to increase sharply about 65 million years ago. It peaked in the Oligocene Epoch around 34 million years ago in Eurasia, and again in the Miocene Epoch about 10 million years ago in Eurasia and Africa.

Some mammals stayed small or evolved to occupy niches previously occupied by tiny to medium-sized animals. For the mammals that evolved to become larger, their pattern of growth was consistent across time and across various groups, even if those groups had different diets and were descended from different ancestors.

The researchers now believe that global temperature and the amount of land available for an animal's range are two primary ecological factors that appear to correlate with the evolution of maximum body size.

Despite the impressive size of mammals like Indricotherium, dinosaurs such as Argentinosaurus were up to 130 feet long, weighing 110 tons. Even the largest mammals today could never become that big, Smith believes, because they are endotherms that regulate their body temperature. Around 90 percent of the energy we take in goes to this activity, constraining our growth.

"It's interesting that the biggest dinosaurs were just about ten times as big as the biggest mammals, just in line with differences in energy requirements," she said.

The lack of humongous mammals now is also an artifact of the Pleistocene extinction event, which Smith said, "was probably caused by human hunting and other activities."

"If you go back to 13,400 years ago, we did have mammals (mammoths) of 10-12 tons around," she added.

Mammoths then must have been like giant walking steaks to our hungry human ancestors. Today, however, times are especially tough for large predators that have to work so hard to find their next meal, according to another new study in this week's Royal Society journal Biology Letters .

"We found that the largest species exhibited a five to six fold greater decrease in relative abundance in response to a decrease in their prey," Phillip Stephens, who worked on this second study and is a Durham University researcher, said.

"It's hard work being a large predator roaming and hunting across extensive areas to find food," he added. "The apparent vulnerability of tigers and polar bears to reductions in the availability of prey may be linked to the energetic costs of being a large carnivore."

Given these pressures, and additional ones affecting other animals, it's doubtful that most mammal species will experience much of an overall growth spurt anytime soon.

Earthquake Forced Rapid Evolution in Fish

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The plant kingdom has a rich natural history all its own.

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At one point, life on Earth came out of the ocean and moved onto land. When did this happen?

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Orchid lips are irresistible to pollinators, such as bees, and these lips can develop and change over time.

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Ecuador declared a state of emergency at the Galapagos Islands, a week after the stranding of a cargo ship loaded with supplies that included hazardous materials.

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Just 14 million years after the start of the solar system, Earth and the rest of the inner planets were inundated with water, setting back the clock for when life could have evolved.

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Neanderthals disappeared from Europe 40,000 years ago, about the same time as the region's biggest volcanic blast. But don't blame the volcano.

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The 'boring billion:' the long evolutionary pause when algae ruled the Earth, might be due to stalled plate tectonics.

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There Are 3 Trillion Trees on the Planet

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Photographer Beth Moon spent 14 years traveling across the world to find and photograph the world's oldest trees.

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Photos Capture Some of the Oldest Trees on Earth

Photographer Beth Moon spent 14 years traveling across the world to find and photograph the world's oldest trees. She spent time in the United States as well as remote areas and reserves in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Living up to 500 years, the Heart of the Dragon (pictured) is unique to Socotra island in Yemen. Growing in severe conditions, they have raised their branches upward over time in an effort to obtain moisture from the highland mists -- hence the distinctive appearance of their canopies, like an umbrella blown inside out. PHOTOS: The Oldest Living Things in the World

Beth Moon, 'Ancient Trees'

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The legendary Bowthorpe Oak, with its rugged bole, gnarled branches, and great spreading crown, stands in a grassy meadow behind a stone farmhouse in Bourne, Lincolnshire. With a circumference of 40 feet, it competes for the title of largest-girthed living oak in Britain. It is also perhaps the oldest living oak tree, with an estimated age of 1,200 years (give or take a century). NEWS: Oldest Rock Speck Zeros In On Earth's Cooling Date

Beth Moon, 'Ancient Trees'

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Above, a desert rose on the island of Socotra in Yemen, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The trees store water in their trunks to survive the dry climate. VIDEO: Found: Youngest Galaxy and Oldest Star!

Desert Rose (Wadi Fa Lang)

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This Spanish Chestnut on the grounds of Croft Castle in Herefordshire, England, is between four and five centuries old. PHOTOS: Oldest Flowering Plant Genome Mapped

Beth Moon, 'Ancient Trees'

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Elegant in shape and form, these strange and magnificent baobabs, Adansonia grandidieri , seem to rise effortlessly to heights of 100 feet. Living Fossils: Animals From Another Time

Beth Moon, 'Ancient Trees'

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At Wakehurst Place, set among 170 acres of beautifully manicured gardens, is a gloomy cliff of Ardingly sandstone. A few hundred English winters have eroded the soil, but the yews of these woods have adapted to their surroundings. Tangled, black and menacing, they send their naked roots cascading over the huge greenish-blue rocks of the cliff’s edge, in search of soil to sink into. BLOG: New Plant Language Discovered

Beth Moon, 'Ancient Trees'

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There is something magical about these two stately yews, which act as pillars, framing the north door of the church in Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire. Not much is known about these trees. It is presumed that they were planted sometime in the 18th century and are the survivors of a formal avenue that led to the church. It has also been suggested that this church door was the inspiration for the Doors of Moria in The Lord of the Rings, as J.R.R. Tolkien is known to have passed through the area. NEWS: Petrified Wood Contains Oldest Fossilized Fire Scar

Beth Moon, 'Ancient Trees'

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Elegant in shape and form, these strange and magnificent baobabs seem to rise effortlessly to heights of 100 feet. They are found only on the island of Madagascar, where they are known as renala , Malagasy for ‘mother of the forest.’ These trees are a valuable source of food, fiber, dye, rope and fuel, among other things. The trees in this grove, known as the Avenue of the Baobabs, are approximately 800 years old. Sadly, these 20-25 baobabs are the only survivors of what was once a dense tropical forest. The avenue was granted temporary protected status in 2007, as a prelude to its promised future as Madagascar’s first natural monument. VIDEO: How Bionic Plants Will Change Everything

Beth Moon, 'Ancient Trees'

There are a whopping 3.04 trillion trees on the planet — or 422 trees per human being — according to a Yale-led study recently published in the journal Nature.

Although that might sound like a lot of trees, human-driven deforestation has had a staggering impact on the world’s flora. Researchers estimate that the number of trees on the planet has nearly halved since the dawn of human civilization. More than 15 billion additional trees are lost to human-related causes each year.

Presently, tree population density is highest in sub-Arctic areas of Russia, Europe and North America. Nearly half of the world’s tress, however, are found tropical forests.

The research team utilized satellite imagery, previous peer-reviewed studies and density information from 400,000 forest plots worldwide to estimate the tree population. The only prior attempt to estimate the world’s tree population fell short, landing at only 400 billion.

Study lead author Thomas Crowther, from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, hopes that his research will be used to prevent further deforestation and preserve existing forestland.

“This study highlights how much more effort is needed if we are to restore healthy forests worldwide,” he said in a news release. “They store huge amounts of carbon, are essential for the cycling of nutrients, for water and air quality, and for countless human services.”

This originally appeared on DSCOVRD .

Stone Age Farmers Were First Beekeepers

A hollow log hive of the Cévennes (France) shows the circular comb architecture in Apis mellifera.

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Eric Tourneret

Gallery

Plant These Flowers to Power Bees: Photos

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If you're looking to help the bees in your hood, consider adding some native flowering plants to your garden. "Think of the flowers your grandmother used in her garden as a practical guide, especially when using nonnative plants," advises a USDA report. "The pollinators will thank you." Looking for some ideas? Check out these flowering plants that can help give bees a boost. PHOTOS: Go Inside a Rat's Mind and Metal 'Flowers'

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Crocus are a good choice to attract bees in the early spring. They're also pollinated by butterflies. BLOG: Spring Flowers Arriving Month Earlier at Rocky Mountains

Sudhir Viswarajan/Getty Images

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Asters are perennials that provide nectar and pollen, and do well when planted in late summer and fall. NEWS: Global Warming Brings Earlier Spring Flowers

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View Caption + #4: Geraniums are another pollinator-friendly perennial.

Top 10 Flower Technologies

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The Calendula is an annual that's sometimes called a pot marigold. PHOTOS: Oldest Flowering Plant Genome Mapped

Tetsuo Wada/Corbis

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Cleome are annuals that are native to the western United States, and they provide pollen in summer to bees. PHOTOS: Animals And Bugs That Look Like Flowers

Carol Sharp/Corbis

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Bees loves sunflowers and sometimes even stop on them to catch a few zzzzs. BLOG: Flowers Communicate With Electricity

Corbis

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Cut flowers, including zinnia (above), celosia, ageratum and wildflowers like goldenrod are bumble bee magnets. So are herbs including lavendar, anise hyssop, motherwort, basil and sage. Want to see more flowers -- and herbs to help bees? Check out this cool illustration from American Bee Journal.

Autumn Cruz/Sacramento Bee/Corbis

Humans have been exploiting honey bees for almost 9,000 years, according to chemical analysis on ancient pottery from Europe, the Near East and North Africa.

In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, a large international team of researchers and archaeologists, reveals that traces of beeswax were found trapped in the clay fabric of cooking vessels dating from between 9,000 and 4,000 years ago.

In over 20 years of research carried out at the University of Bristol’s School of Chemistry, led by chemist Richard Evershed, more than 6,400 pottery fragments from over 150 Old World archaeological sites were analyzed.

“Although evidence from ancient Egyptian murals and prehistoric rock art suggests mankind’s association with the honeybee dates back over thousands of years, when and where this association emerged has been unknown — until now,” Evershed said.

Indeed, since bees leave no fossil record, they remained ecologically invisible for most of the past 10,000 years.

The researchers found the distinctive chemical fingerprint of beeswax in pottery from Neolithic Europe, the Near East and North Africa, suggesting the use of bee products was geographically widespread.

Traces of beeswax were found in Neolithic pottery from southern Britain to Denmark, from the Balkans to Algeria.

The oldest beeswax-bearing pot was found in Çatalhöyük, a nearly 9,000-year-old site in Turkey.

“Bee products were exploited continuously, and probably extensively in some regions, at least from the seventh millennium B.C., likely fulfilling a variety of technological and cultural functions,” the researcher wrote.

However climate limited the spread of bees into Northern Europe. There was no trace of bees wax in any of the 1,200 pottery samples from Ireland, Scotland and northern Scandinavia.

According to Mélanie Roffet-Salque, a chemist at the University of Bristol, and lead author of the paper, honey might have been the most obvious reason for exploiting the bee.

“It would have been a rare sweetener for prehistoric people,” Salque said.

“However, beeswax could have been used in its own right for various technological, ritual, cosmetic and medicinal purposes, for example, to waterproof porous ceramic vessels,” she added.

According to the researchers, the close association of honeybees with Neolithic farming communities may provide evidence for the beginnings of honeybee domestication.

Plant Makes Fake 'Poop' to Fool Dung Beetles

Antelope dung (left) and C.

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Antelope dung (left) and C. argenteneum dung-resembling seed (right).

Jeremy Midgley, University of Cape Town

Gallery

Animals That Look Like Poop: Photos

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It's a rough-and-tumble world in the animal kingdom. Some creatures survive on strength, others on sheer guile, and others by, well, looking like poop. Following are a few examples of animals that aren't too proud to dress down to keep themselves safe and keep food on the table. First, we see Arkys curtulus , aka "the bird-dropping spider." It really has the poo look down. Top 10 Things Poop Makes Better

Peter Woodard, Wikimedia Commons

View Caption + #2: Here's a giant swallowtail butterfly (

Papilio cresphontes ) larva looking not-yummy. If you were a predator, would you eat one if you didn't have to? Dogs Have a Butt Compass, Poop Facing N/S Pole

Ianaré Sévi/WikiMedia Commons

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You're thinking this is a worm, right? Well, it looks like one, except it's underwater and goes by the only slightly more appealing name of "common sea cucumber." It's adept at blending in with its surroundings -- and looking like ... you know. VIDEO: Poop Shield Could Protect Astronauts

Erin Silversmith/WikiMedia Commons

View Caption + #4: Here's another bird-dropping spider (

Celaenia excavata ). The key to dodging predators and living for another day, it will tell you, is to look like a Whitman's holiday sampler gone horribly wrong. PHOTOS: Golden Spider Silk Makes Rare Cloth

Fir0002/WikiMedia Commons

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Meet Pasilobus, another spider that doesn't mind looking like crap. As for exactly why spiders don't seem to mind the raw-sewage look ... your guess is as good as ours. Zoo Doo: Giraffe, Zebra Poop for Sale

Vipin Baliba/Flickr

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Seeds of a South African plant look and smell just like antelope poop — the better to attract the attention of beetles.

The seeds, produced by the plant Ceratocaryum argenteum , fool dung beetles, which roll the seeds away and bury them, later resulting in a new plant. T

The discovery, published in the journal Nature Plants, adds to the growing body of evidence that plants can be clever, even without a brain.

Most adult animals on Earth share one thing in common: brown poop. But what's in it that makes it that particular color? Trace does the dirty work to find out.

DNews Video

The study is also the first to confirm that such an unusual form of deception occurs to benefit plant seed dispersal. As for how the unusual phenomenon first emerged, author Jeremy Midgley of the University of Cape Town told Discovery News, “I guess that a mutant individual, which had some chemical on the seed coat, attracted the odd beetle and the seed was buried. This plant then did very well because fewer seeds were discovered and eaten by small mammals, and that fires damaged fewer of the buried seeds.”

Midgley and his team analyzed the volatile chemicals given off by the seeds, as well as by dung from elands and bonteboks (two types of antelopes from the region). Sure enough, the smell-related chemicals in the seeds were very similar to those emitted from the antelope poop.

The deception is a win-win for the plant, since the poor dung beetles get no reward for helping the plant increase its numbers. Often deception between insects and plants does lead to a reward.

For example, some flowers lure bees in because the bee thinks it is going to mate with another bee. At least the deceived animal may come out with some nutrients from the plant. But dung beetles get zilch from the stinky seeds. So the researchers were surprised by the findings.

“Dung beetles have great olfactory senses, so they may not be that easy to fool,” Midgley said.

Perhaps the dung beetles even help fertilize the seeds, by burying them near some of their actual collected poop? Midgley thinks not because, he said, “the beetles are quite small and roll one dung pellet at a time and tend to bury them singly. Also, seeds only germinate after fire, and by then any dung would have dissolved.”

The overall system is brilliant, though, and ultimately benefits all. The antelopes feast on plants. These antelopes create poop that the dung beetles eat. The beetles, in turn, help produce more plants.

Some Plants Can Count

A Venus flytrap captures a lizard victim.

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Hugo A. Quintero, Flickr

Gallery

Carnivore Plant Tops BioScapes Contest: Photos

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The image of a humped bladderwort, an aquatic carnivorous plant, (above) won first place in this year's Olympus BioScapes International Digital Imaging Competition. In the photo, you can see the floating plant catching its prey, microinvertebrates that are sucked into its trap a millisecond after they touch its trigger hairs. This is the 10th year Olympus has sponsored the photo contest, which features microscope-based photography.

Igor Siwanowicz, HHMI Janelia Farm Research Campus, Ashburn, VA, USA. First Prize, 2013 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®

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The wings of a black mastiff bat embryo have grown to cover its eyes.

Dorit Hockman, University of Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK. Second Prize, 2013 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®

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Single-cell, fresh water algae (desmids) are seen in a composite image. The red in the image comes from the innate fluorescence of chlorophyll.

Igor Siwanowicz, HHMI Janelia Farm Research Campus, Ashburn, VA, USA. Third Prize, 2013 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®

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A stitched image shows a stained cross-section of a lily flower bud.

Spike Walker, Staffordshire, UK. Fourth Prize, 2013 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®

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Mouse embryonic fibroblasts show actin filaments (red), mitochondria (green) and DNA (blue).

Dylan Burnette, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA. Fifth Prize, 2013 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®

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"Brother bugs" -- box bugs -- are just two hours old and 3mm in size.

Kurt Wirz, Basel, Switzerland. Sixth Prize, 2013 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®

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The musculature of the phantom midge larva "Glassworm" is usually clear and colorless. Here it's made visible by specialized illumination.

Charles Krebs, Issaquah, WA, USA. Seventh Prize, 2013 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®

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These mouse tail whole mounts show hair follicle stem cells and proliferating cells.

Yaron Fuchs, Howard Hughes Medical Institute/The Rockefeller University, New York, NY USA. Eighth Prize, 2013 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®

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This caddisfly larva is a good indicator of water quality, because it's sensitive to organic pollution and dies if water is dirty.

Fabrice Parais, DREAL (Regional Directorate of Environment, Planning and Housing) of Basse- Normandie, Caen, France. Ninth Prize, 2013 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®

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This fresh-water paramecium swells and expels water through an opening in the cell membrane. The sweeping motion of the hair-like cilia helps the single-celled organism move.

Dorit Hockman

Venus flytraps and other carnivorous plants have the ability to count, according to a new study.

The discovery adds to the growing body of evidence that certain plants possess many animal-like abilities, even though they do not have brains. In this case, it’s now known that meat-eating plants can count up to at least five.

As for why this would be useful, project leader Rainer Hedrich of Universität Würzburg explained: “The carnivorous plant Dionaea muscipula , also known as Venus flytrap, can count how often it has been touched by an insect visiting its capture organ in order to trap and consume the animal prey.”

For the study, published in the journal Current Biology, Hedrich and his team used a machine to simulate an insect touching Venus flytraps. The machine emitted electric pulses to fool the plants into thinking an insect had just landed.

The researchers found that each numbered pulse/touch was associated with a particular response:

One: The plant’s trap enters a “ready to go” mode, noting the stimulation.

Two: The trap begins to close around the source of the stimulation.

Three: The trap closes tightly.

Four: The plant produces a hormone associated with the feeding process.

Five: Glands on the inner surface of the trap produce digestive enzymes and transporters that help to take up nutrients. At this point, if the stimulation were a real insect or other victim, it would be dinner.

Hedrich describes the numbered steps as a “deadly spiral of capture and disintegration.” The more the insect or other prey feels trapped, the more the plant closes in on the victim.

The process further benefits the hungry diner, because the plant doesn’t immediately invest its resources in prey that could, at the earlier stages, escape, or that might be too small to bother with much.

“The number of action potentials informs (the plant) about the size and nutrient content of the struggling prey,” Hedrich explained. “This allows the Venus flytrap to balance the cost and benefit of hunting.”

A puzzling observation during the study was that the plants show a marked increase in production of a transporter that allows them to take up sodium. The scientists are not sure what salt does for the plant, but they suspect it has something to do with how carnivorous plants maintain the right balance of water inside their cellular walls.

To answer this question and others, the researchers are now sequencing the Venus flytrap genome. They expect it will reveal more about how the plants evolved to support their meat-loving ways.