And now for the strange part: While watching an orchid at night, these researchers recently filmed a new kind of cricket — one never before reported by scientists. Not only was the cricket new, but it was doing something never observed in any kind of cricket: It was pollinating the orchid. The scientists, who are from France and England, reported on the new cricket — and its new behavior — in a recent paper.

View video | This cricket species is the first insect of its kind known to pollinate flowers.

Sylvain Hugel

Claire Micheneau, who worked on the study, is finishing her Ph.D. at a university on Réunion. (A Ph.D., also known as a doctorate, is an advanced academic degree. University professors in the sciences usually have earned a Ph.D.) “This was very unexpected,” says Micheneau, who worked with scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in England. “The answer to a question brings us further questions.” Scientists would like to know, for example if cricket pollination is more common than they thought.

Micheneau and her colleagues weren’t looking for crickets. They wanted to know how an orchid called Angraecum cadetii becomes pollinated, so they aimed their night-vision cameras at the flowers and hit the “record” button. For a flower to make seeds that can grow into new plants, the flower needs to be pollinated: Pollen from the male part of a flower has to land on the female part of the flower, the stigma. Wind might help the pollen get there—or bugs like bees and butterflies, or birds, might. Surprisingly, in recent years scientists have even seen lizards and cockroaches carrying pollen from flower to flower. But never have they seen crickets doing so — until now.

When the scientists watched the movies they recorded, they saw a cricket moving away from an orchid with pollen on its head. They considered that maybe this was one strange cricket, so they set up the experiment again and recorded that type of orchid for many hours. Over and over, they saw the same thing: Crickets were pollinating the flowers.

W. Scott Armbruster, a scientist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, says if flowers are growing far from where they originated, they might attract strange pollinators — like crickets or lizards. (Armbruster did not work on the orchid study.) This orchid, for example, probably originated on the nearby island of Madagascar but at some point migrated across the water.

The orchid and this type of cricket seem made for each other. The orchid gives off its sweet smell at night, when the crickets are out — and can snack on the orchid’s delicious nectar. This cricket is particularly good at finding its way around every night, so it could easily find the orchids in the dark and remember where to find them later. “It was the right orchid and the right cricket,” Armbruster told Science News.

Armbruster notes that the word biodiversity usually refers to a list of all the different kinds, or species, of organisms that exist in a place — so the biodiversity of Réunion would include both the orchids and the crickets. He says that should change: “We tend to think of biodiversity in terms of lists of species, but it is actually lists of interactions”—meaning the relationships between different species like the orchid and the cricket.

The French word reunion means “meeting” — which seems fitting for this pair. The meeting of the cricket and the orchid may be a surprise, but it’s no surprise to scientists that different species are so strongly connected and depend on each other for survival.

POWER WORDS (adapted from the Yahoo! Kids Dictionary)

pollinate To transfer pollen from an anther to the stigma of a flower.

orchids The largest family of flowering plants, found chiefly in the tropics and subtropics and characterized by showy flowers, strong relationships with pollinators and dustlike seeds.

biodiversity The number and variety of organisms found within a geographic region; also, arguably, the number of interactions among organisms.

species A fundamental group of organisms capable of interbreeding.

anther The pollen-bearing part of the stamen (the organ that produces the pollen).

stigma The receptive portion of a flower where pollen is deposited at pollination.

pollen The fine, powderlike material consisting of pollen grains, which is produced by the anthers of seed plants.

Cricket Takes Plunge? from Science News on Vimeo.

A new species of raspy cricket is caught on film pollinating the Réunion island orchid Angraecum cadetii. It is the first documented instance of flower pollination by a cricket.

Video credit: Claire Michenau and Jacques Fournel

Going Deeper:

Yellow jewelweeds, wildflowers that grow along shady watersides in eastern North America, apparently can recognize their siblings as long as roots share soil.

Jewelweeds, or Impatiens, are pretty flowers that grow in wet, shady spots all over the Northern Hemisphere. According to a recent experiment, they seem to know their own flower family.

The experiment suggests that these flowers can recognize each other—or at least, recognize whether or not they came from the same mother plant. Together with other experiments, these results show that if the plants are recognizing their kin, it’s not through their leaves, it’s through the roots.

Guillermo P. Murphy and Susan Dudley are a pair of botanists, or scientists who study plants, from McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. In this experiment, they planted jewelweeds in pots with either siblings or strangers. Sibling plants were grown from seeds that came from the same mother plant. Stranger plantswere grown from seeds from different plants.

If people were plants, then this experiment would be like showing that a person behaves differently if he grows up next to his brother than if he grows up next to a stranger.

When jewelweeds were planted in pots with strangers, the plants started to grow more leaves than if they had been planted alone. This response suggests that plants are competing with strangers for sunlight, since a plant with more leaves can receive more light—and make more food. Impatiens normally grow in the shade, where sunlight is scarce.

Researchers grow jewelweed seedlings in tall pots to test for effects of growing near siblings or non-siblings. Plants react mildly to siblings but start shifting their resources to leaf warfare when surrounded by strangers, researchers found.

G. Murphy

When jewelweed seedlings were planted with siblings, they grew a few more branches than they normally would if they were alone — but they did not start growing lots of extra leaves. This behavior suggests the plants are more likely to share resources, rather than compete.

The plants only responded this way when they shared soil. If stranger seedlings were planted in different pots and placed next to each other, for example, they did not grow more leaves. This difference shows that the plants must use their roots to detect sibling plants in the same soil.     

“This is the first paper that shows that plants are responding above ground to sibling roots,” Murphy told Science News.           

Impatiens plants are not the first plants that botanists have studied for family recognition. In 2007, Dudley and her team studied the Great Lakes sea rocket, a plant that grows on the beach—where it may be hard to get fresh water. In that experiment, the botanists observed that when sea rockets were planted with siblings, they tolerated each other. But when they were planted with strangers, the sea rockets reacted by working extra hard to grow lots of roots, but not extra leaves. Dudley says this behavior makes sense because sea rockets, on the beach, get plenty of sun but struggle for water—so when they’re threatened, they compete for water. Impatiens, on the other hand, have plenty of water but have to compete for sunshine.

The different types of plants may react in different ways, but they have one thing in common: the roots. In both experiments, on Impatiens and sea rockets, the key was the shared soil—and other plant species may turn out to show similar behavior. These experiments, as well as earlier experiments, suggest “the phenomenon is quite common,” says Hans de Kroonof, an ecologist in the Netherlands.

POWER WORDS (from the Yahoo! Kids Dictionary)

seedling A young plant that is grown from a seed

botany The science or study of plants

ecology The science of the relationships between organisms and their environments

impatiens   Any of various plants of the genus Impatiens, which includes the jewelweed.

Going Deeper:

Western white pine cones light up when seen through an infrared camera. Even under cloudy conditions, the cones run 15 degrees Celsius warmer than the surrounding needles.

Superman may have something in common with one kind of seed-eating bug. Both use special powers to zero in on a warm target. In the bug’s case, the target is dinner.

For humans, finding some Oreos or popcorn can be a challenge in a crowded supermarket. Now imagine how hard it must be for a tiny bug on the lookout for pine cone seeds. The insects have to search among many needles. And there aren’t any aisles with signs.

Recently scientists discovered that a bug that dines on pine cone seeds uses a special ability to seek them out. This insect finds its next meal by sensing the food’s temperature. All living things give off heat in the form of infrared light. While this kind of light is invisible to humans, scientists have found that the seed-eating bug is able to detect it.

When it grows cold outside this cone-loving bug shows up in people’s homes. This got bug scientists thinking. Perhaps the seed-eaters were creeping into homes looking for a warm place to catch some zzz’s. And if the bugs could sense the warmth in homes, maybe they could sense warm food, too.

Scientists know that some plants can generate heat. Skunk cabbages, for example, heat themselves and even melt the snow around them. So the bug scientists thought the seed bugs could be searching for cones that give off some heat.

The researchers took their theory, or idea, outdoors for a test. They brought along a special camera that gave them the ability to see warmth. Through this camera, heat showed up in shades of yellow and orange. When the scientists looked at the pine cones through the camera, the bugs’ food lit up. The trees looked as if they were covered in candles. “All we could think of was Christmas,” said Stephen Takács, the leader of the study and a scientist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. “We were just stunned.”

The researchers took the temperatures of different kinds of cones and needles during each season. It turned out the cones were always about 15 degrees Celsius warmer than the surrounding needles. That’s the difference between needing a light jacket and knowing it’s time to break out your shorts. The find was proof enough that the cones were warmer than their environment. Still, the team wanted to explore if the bugs were truly detecting the hotter food.

Seed-eating bugs armed with infrared detectors zero in on the glow of cones.

Photography Iisak Andreller; Thermography: Stephen Takács

The scientists hunkered down and watched the bugs search for food in the wild and in the lab. Sure enough, the insects had an obvious preference for cones that glowed especially bright from their warmth.

This is the first time scientists have found a seed-eater with a knack for detecting heat given off by its plant meal, Takács says. Scientists have started to wonder if other bugs have similar skills.

“We tend to focus on things humans can see, can observe easily” explains scientist Irene Terry of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Now scientists are learning that other things help insects find food, she says.

On the bugs’ bodies, researchers found sensors that seemed to be used to find the warm cones. The scientists tested this theory by painting over the sensors with silica paint. This kind of paint blocked the bugs’ sensors from detecting the heat. The team found that, once painted, the bugs no longer hunted for the “lit up” cones.

The scientists also peered inside the bugs’ nervous system, which responds to input from the senses. The researchers found a clear pathway from the sensors to the brain. This connection might be used to tell the bugs’ brains that hot food is directly ahead or, maybe, a little to the left.

Takács isn’t sure why the cones are warm. He thinks the cones may be hotter because bigger objects collect heat better than smaller objects. He says the warmth could also be produced from the energy generated during seed development.

While scientists continue to search for these answers we can be sure of at least one thing. These seed-eating bugs have the skills to find their next hot meal.

Going Deeper:

Some very odd creatures swim through the world’s waters. Now, getting to know them is about to get easier. Beginning last week, a new Web site went live. Called the Encyclopedia of Life (www.eol.org), this online book of life will offer basic facts on about 30,000 species—or kinds—of fish. That’s every type known.

This tally includes the first six species named in 2008: all damselfish from what are sometimes called Twilight Zone coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean. The fish are not well-known because they dwell deeper beneath the surface of the sea than standard SCUBA gear lets divers go. Scientists published the first formal descriptions of the six new species on New Year’s Day.

BLUE FISH. An artist who works with scientists made this image of the deep-blue chromis, a damselfish from the Pacific. It’s one of the first fish named in 2008; its official description was published Jan. 1.

T. Clark

But as impressive as 30,000 fish sounds, it’s barely a baby step for the Web site. Its developers dream of making it the largest biological encyclopedia ever, with a Web page for every living species.

True, there are already a lot of Web sites about living things, and a lot of encyclopedias too. But they’re not the best tools for working biologists, say the encyclopedia’s designers. Scientists need sites with information that has been double-checked by other scientists. An ideal site would include links to all the basic research, from genetics to detailed pictures of museum specimens. The dream site would automatically update itself as new research is published. Finally, even people who aren’t scientists should be able to use such a site to identify what’s living in their backyards—or anywhere else in the world.

Think of it as one humongous book that can keep growing in size—to millions of pages. If those pages were made of paper, the book would become unwieldy and heavy and hard to update. However, because it’s available online—and only online—anyone and everyone with access to a computer can browse its virtual pages effortlessly. Moreover, those new pages can be added quickly—indeed, the same day new information becomes available.

One wish

The dream for a better encyclopedia comes from biologist Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University. In 2007, he was invited to that year’s TED conference, a meeting of leaders in technology, education, and design. Each year at this meeting, several participants get a chance to make a wish in front of the crowd and explain why that wish deserves everybody’s help. In 2007, Wilson wished for an encyclopedia of life.

For starters, it could speed the process of naming species, he argued. This naming process is something that few people understand. For more than 250 years, scientists have been naming species, using the same basic rules (two names, in Latin). So there’s a widespread belief that by now just about everything already has a name, Wilson says.

But that’s not true. Although biologists have assigned formal names to about 1.8 million species, new ones are being discovered all the time. Wilson estimates that among plants alone, 2,000 new species are named every year. That’s more than five a day. Nobody knows how many more species await discovery, but some biologists suspect another 8.2 million species remain unnamed.

FIRST FLOWERS. The first plants in the encyclopedia will be members of the potato family. It’s full of celebrity cousins, such as the tomato and tobacco. The family has plenty of members that don’t grow in gardens, such as this Solanum

M. Nee/NY Botanical Garden

And scientists probably haven’t even discovered all the really important species. For example, biologists have been studying life in the sea for hundreds of years. Yet within the lifetimes of today’s college seniors, biologists finally described a group of microscopic bacteria called Prochlorococcus. Great masses of them float in the oceans performing important work, harvesting energy from sunlight that will later help fuel the microbes’ predators.

Describing an organism is just the first step in understanding it. Yet that first step isn’t easy. To figure out whether a funny-looking fish or plant, or speck of marine life, really is a new species can take a great deal of research, says Wilson. A scientist has to look at creatures like it, or at really good pictures of them. Those specimens could be in museums anywhere in the world. The describer also has to read about related species. Some of these descriptions appear in fragile old books, available in only a few libraries. A good Web encyclopedia though would help a scientist find all these things in one convenient place, Wilson argued. And it would save scientists a lot of travel time—and expense.

Turning pages

The oldest books that a scientist might want online were published long before anyone had a clue what electricity was, much less how to build a 21st-century computer. So several libraries around the world are electronically scanning rare, fragile old books and then posting digital images of them, page by page, online. When the Encyclopedia of Life gets going, people will be able to click on the page for a species and from that, get a look at the book page of the oldest description. Some of the books being scanned are several hundred years old with yellowing pages and a weird spot or two. The project already has some books online (See www.biodiversitylibrary.org/).

Thomas Garnett of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., heads the scanning team. During a recent visit, he led this visitor into the museum’s basement to see the project in action. (The museum is old and has huge collections of just about everything, but the basement hallways are wide and well lit. Alas, no piles of dinosaur bones spill out of closets.)

The trip ends up in a large room with a computer desk pushed back against the wall. A framework above it supports a tent of black fabric that falls down around the desk. In the center of the desk, a small book with yellowed pages rests in a V-shaped cradle. The shape prevents elderly books from spraining their backs. A pair of cameras hangs from the frame, lined up just so. The workers photograph each pair of open pages at the same time, with a “ja-chick” sound and a flash of light. The black tent protects the setup and keeps those flashes from disrupting nearby workers. A person running one of these stations can copy about 3,000 pages each day.

SCAN THIS. A page from a botany book published in 1807 shows a Calliandra grandiflora. The electronic-scanning team has copied this book page by page and posted it on the Web. Old biology books such as this one will eventually be

Biodiversity Heritage Library

For more modern content, the producers of the encyclopedia are turning to scientists who have already created databases with accurate, up-to-date, computerized information. The fish pages—among the first to debut in the encyclopedia—will come from a project called FishBase, headquartered in the Philippines. It won’t have all the fancy links planned for the final version of the pages. For instance, the site may not yet have details about the mucus products of the shining tubeshoulder fish, but it should give pictures of honeycomb cowfish. It will also provide the weight of an adult northern blue-fin tuna—these can tip the scales at about 1,500 pounds (680 kg), which is around the combined weight of four kitchen refrigerators.

Next will come pages of plants in the nightshade family, put together by botanists around the world. This varied group of plants includes tomatoes, tobacco, and potatoes as well as their wild relatives. It’s a fine way to celebrate the International Year of the Potato. (Not a joke. See “It’s Spud Time”.)

One for all

As much as scientists may look forward to using the new encyclopedia, it isn’t just for them, says Mark Westneat of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. “The other audience we’re targeting is middle schoolers,” says Westneat. “They’re very quick. They’re interested. They’re also capable of handling complex ideas.” Plus, they’re agile Web surfers.

And soon, possibly within a year, these students may be able to help construct the encyclopedia. Everybody’s going to get a chance. The project’s executive director, James Edwards, also based at the Smithsonian, says he’s already working on ways for nonscientists to contribute. The plan is evolving, he says, but he imagines a system where anyone can submit a photograph or information. Once a scientist verifies a species’ identification and information, that image will receive some mark of approval. The best images will be added to the encyclopedia.

So practice taking clear pictures. With perhaps 10 million species on Earth, the encyclopedia is going to need a lot of photographers.

Going Deeper:

Additional Information

Word Find: Living Encyclopedia