SCIENCE LAB SCENICS : PLANTS PLANS [ 2 ]

CYCADS cones follow daily cycles of heating and cooling : Pollen-laden male cones produce big burst of heat in the late afternoon, and then ovulating female cones warm up about three hours later, cooling by sundown.

This push-pull pollination guides bottles through the steps of plant reproduction, from male to female.

And as it seems as if different parts of the cones heat at different times, the temperature change also shepherds the beetles in entering the cones.

'' Somehow these signals are helping you get you get very fast where you have to go,'' Dr. Valencia-Montoya said.

But the signalling is not just the warmth emanated by the cones. It is also the heat's infrared signature, which is invisible to human eyes but can be sensed by the beetle's antennae.

Dr. Valencia-Montoya replicated the experiment of the 3D-printed cone by covering the cone with a thick but transparent material; the beetles couldn't feel the heat, but they could see its infrared signal.

In fact, when the team analyzed the antennae of two beetle species that pollinate different cycads, they found that they were full of the same genes that allow snakes and mosquitoes to hunt down prey by sensing body heat.

The sensors of the two kinds of beetle are tuned in slightly different ways to detect the specific signatures of their preferred cycad species.

The World Students Society thanks Sofia Quaglia.