Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Rhopalotria furfuracea beetles pollinate the cones of cycad plants. Researchers now know that the cones attract pollinators by ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. New research shows cycads heat their cones and beetles sense infrared, revealing one of Earth’s oldest pollination systems.

Before plants wooed insects with colorful flowers and fragrances, they turned up the heat. A new study shows how cycads, ancient plants often mistaken for palms or ferns, use thermal infrared energy ...

Harvard researchers have discovered that cycads—one of the oldest living lineages of seed plants—heat up their reproductive organs to attract beetle pollinators and the insects possess infrared ...

Long before flowers dazzled pollinators with brilliant colors and sweet scents, ancient plants used another feature to signal insects: heat. The findings, based on an analysis of the biology and ...

A study from Kobe University has uncovered a surprising partnership between Japanese red elder plants and Heterhelus beetles. The beetles pollinate the flowers but also lay eggs inside the developing ...

Some of the earliest plants attracted pollinators by producing heat that made these plants glow with infrared light, according to a new set of experiments. The work, published in the journal Science, ...

The buzz around pollinators keeps getting louder, and for good reason. Bees, butterflies, beetles, and even bats hold entire ...

Flowers are often described as visual advertisements, using bright colors and strong scents to draw in insects. Yet long before petals and pigments dominated the landscape, some plants relied on a ...