\\ |l^1 ^ 1 llrtk «1^J% •^'^^ ,! , / TOVQv <*%# If' ""Wp \ c %' V .^^ . .«- JS^-^^ It's an engine for economic J^ I V^ VV \im I This V8 engine is part of a very powerful system. Built by the team at Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Alabama, it will provide the power for one of over 1 00,000 Tundra trucks being manufactured at our plant in Indiana* It's all part of our commitment to investing in the places where we do business. A commitment that has grown to include eight U.S. manufacturing facilities, research and design centers, sales and marketing operations, and a network of local suppliers and dealers. As a result, Toyota is responsible for creating more than 1 90,000 jobs across America, and with two new plants under construction in Texas and Tennessee, we'll continue to create opportunities for economic growth.** Local manufacturing, local investment, local jobs - it's a pretty powerful combination. 'Toyota components and vehicles are made using many U.S. sourced parts. "Direct U.S. employment; 31,040 jobs as of 12/03. ©2004 toyota.com/usa TOYOTA Some Previous Laureates Michel Andre Created a system to prevent collisions between whales and ships. TECHNOLOGY Manteca Onate ^ll^HHBtf ^ JHB^^^^^ Promoted sustainable Wwfr farming techniques in JSi^^'^X Could you take if. ^^^B ENVIRONMENT the next small step ^^^^ Laurent Pordie ^^^^^^^1 Revived traditional ^^ ' ->l^^^^l Amchi medicine and for mankind? K-. 'J^^^l improved healthcare in Ladakh. m^^i)^H SCIENCE Jean-Fran?ois Pernette Explored the sub-polar islands of Patagonia, ^^wftiw;. -i*;:3gjBti, -.-*,., Cristina Bubba Zamora 'r-^..-. »*»-.' Returned sacred ceremonial textiles to Bolivian communities. w »_ STTIll mil ^_^ CULTURAL HERITAGE i^ [lyw9Mr For almost 30 years, the Rolex Awards for Enterprise have helped scores of men and women to make our world a better place. If you believe that, like them, you have a groundbreaking, original idea and the ability and determination to bring it to a successful conclusion, this is your chance to apply for a Rolex Award in 2006. An international panel of distinguished specialists will judge entries on originality of thought, an exceptional spirit of enterprise, and potential impact on society. The five most outstanding candidates will each receive $100,000 towards the completion of their projects and a personally inscribed gold Rolex chronometer. Up to five other applicants will each receive $35,000 and a steel and gold Rolex chronometer. If you have a project in the fields of science, technology, exploration, environmental protection or cultural conservation, this could be your first step towards making it happen. , , , 2™ CALL FOR ENTRIES: THE 1 ROLEX AWARDS. For further details or an application form, write to: The Secretariat, t - - The Rolex Awards for Enterprise, P.O.Box 1311, 1211 Geneva 26, Switzerland, orvisitwww.rolexawards.com. The Rolex Awards " ^r Enterprise J www.rolexawards.com SEPTEMBER 2004 VOLUME 113 NUMBER 7 FEATURES COVER STORY 32 HOW PLANTS "SEE" Plants catch light for the information it carries as well as for its energy. Tlie light helps plants determine when to germinate, when to flower, or how to respond to neighboring plants. MARCELO J. YANOVSKY AND JORGE J. CASAL 38 THE SEX LIVES OF SCALES Scale insects appear to be caught in a game of cat and mouse with internal, symbiotic hacteria- a game that has unleashed genetic bedlam. BENJAMIN B. NORMARK 46 A ROOM REVISITED A contemporary artist is inspired by a "cabinet of curiosities" collected by a naturalist of another era. ROSAMOND PURCELL 50 SECRET SURVIVOR "Extinct" for 50 million years, an enigmatic fossil species may still live at the bottom of the sea—but it defies capture. PETER A. RONA ON THE cover: Albrecht Diirer, A Large Piece of Turf, 1503 iSi,'-^"- DEPARTMENTS 6 THE NATURAL MOMENT Rest Stop Photograph by Roger Eriksson 8 UP FRONT Editors Notebook 10 LETTERS 12 CONTRIBUTORS 16 SAMPLINGS News from Nature 22 BIOMECHANICS Flexible Feeders Adam Suuiiuers 56 THIS LAND 24 UNIVERSE From Water Hole to Rhino Barn Sandy S. Mosel The Information Trap Neil deGrasse Tyson 58 REVIEW "A Paradox to Everyone but Himself" Menno Schilthuizen Blurring Wallace's Line Robert R. Dunn 66 BOOKSHELF Laurence A. Marschall 70 nature.net Slip-SUding Away Robert Anderson 72 OUT THERE Ablaze from Afar Charles Liu 73 THE SKY IN SEPTEMBER Joe Rao 76 AT THE MUSEUM 80 ENDPAPER Mixing It Up Lynn Margulis PICTURE CREDITS: Page 30 Visit our Web site at www.naturalhistorymag.com I YOUR SIX '4^^-^^' ^^''SHa i~tt^ — / '> ^^^^%^^pi. History, biodiversity and living traditions. The spirit of a nation with over 10.000 years of history lives on its people. de Dios Machu Prcchu, Cusco Living Tradition, Arequipa IVIacaw, Madre prom. ^ii' COME TO PERU ^ peru www.peru.info Commission for the Promotion of Peru .'V*i^> LAilD OF THH MKAS Toll free telephone line U.S. and Canada 1 (866) 661-PERU Local telephone line (305) 476 1220 (7378) Fax N" (305) 476 9702 [email protected] THE NATURAL MOMENT UP FRONT "* See preceding two pages Flying long dis- It Came from Outer Space tances can take the wind out of al- most any traveler. Strange things are happening here, on this old, familiar planet. Even members of The age of terrestrial exploration, somerimes thought to have the hummingbird burned itself out for lack of the fiiel of new frontiers, is still rag- family, champions ing for those willing to probe. And the more you probe, the less famil- of the continuous iar, the more, well, extraterrestrial the Earth and its life-forms seem to wing beat, can tire on their long be. The organisms and behavioral patterns we're covering in this issue seasonal migrations. The female are not what most people mean when they think of life on Earth. ruby-throated hummingbird (Ar- Some of the creatures occur in plain sight, in fields and forests, not chilochits cohibris) pictured here to mention on the windowsills of urban apartments. Others are so was probably leapfrogging its way well hidden that the habitats themselves were unimaginable just a south for the winter when it few decades ago, and the creatures still go unobserved. Consider the landed on a feeder in Michigan familiar scale insects, as inconspicuous as they are ubiquitous on one sunny August morning and plants. Once you begin to look closely, though, at the ways they dropped into an energy-conserv- transfer their genes, these creatures might as well have blown in from ing state even deeper than sleep: another solar system on stellar winds (see "The Sex Lives of Scales," torpor. In torpor, brain waves by Benjamin B. Normark, page 38). slow down, the body cools, and Here's another example. Ordinary weeds and grasses are proving to the metaboHc rate plummets. have elaborate systems for discrimination and action that go far be- Sara Hiebert, a biologist at yond conventional "vegetable intelligence." The plants look around; Swarthmore College in Pennsyl- they measure the length of the day; they check out the density of vania, studies torpor and stress nearby plants and adjust their growth accordingly. In their intelli- in a similar migratory "hum- gence report from the front, Marcelo J. Yanovsky and Jorge J. Casal mer," Selasphoms nifus. She re- describe their surprising findings about the molecular details of cently found that the birds go "How Plants 'See'" (page 32). into torpor most often just be- But "extraterrestrial" bugs and plants are just warm-ups for an even fore they head south, when their weirder Hfe-form. Peter A. Rona, the author of "Secret Survivor" energy reserves are greatest. In (page 50), was the first scientist to discover an undersea community winter, torpor is less frequent, thriving on the deep-sea floor of the Atlantic, living on chemicals but more closely tied to the birds' cooked up by Earth's own internal heat. Among the traces of Hfe he day-to-day stress-hormone levels found were bizarre hexagonal patterns of holes in the seafloor. Years than it is in summer. Torpor is later, Rona became a scientific adviser to the makers of the recent also known to happen almost ex- IMAX film. Volcanoes of the Deep Sea, and the filmmakers adopted his clusively at night in S. rufus, end- quest to identify the hexagonal patterns as a story line for their movie. ing like clockwork about two In his article for this issue, Rona makes a positive connection, only hours before sunrise. guessed at in the movie, between those holes and the fossil remains of The hummer in our picture a creature thought to have been extinct for the past 50 miUion years. was literally at the lip of a Uter of How the creature survived environmental change and catastrophe sugar water when photographer in its reflige on the seafloor poses a pertinent rejoinder to those who Roger Eriksson spotted it at the imagine that other planets offer a refiage for humanity, in case the Earth feeder. As Hiebert put it, the bird becomes uninhabitable. Wouldn't it be just as "easy" to follow the ex- was probably "in energetically ample of that mysterious creature, and seek bleak refuge in the warmth deep trouble." Eriksson took a from the fires that burn inside the planet, on the bottom of the sea? few pictures, and then moved both feeder and lolling bird to a safe area. A few hours later the Late this month on NOVA, PBS wiU broadcast a four-hour televi- rubythroat revived and quickly sion miniseries hosted and narrated by our "Universe" colum- flew off—renewed, one hopes, nist, Neil deGrasse Tyson. The show, titled "Origins," will air in two for its flight south.