Orchid Mantis: The Predator That Lures Prey By Mimicking Flowers

Praying or preying

The orchid mantis (hymenopus coronatus) is famous for its remarkable similarity to the orchid
flower, but researchers from Macquarie University have now discovered that its’ unique form of deception not only attracts its prey by resembling a blossom, but is in fact even more attractive to pollinators than the real flower.
Since its discovery in South East Asia more than a century ago, the rarity and elusive nature of the orchid mantis has made it difficult for scientists to understand why and how it has evolved this bizarre appearance.
Researchers James O’Hanlon and Marie Herberstein from Macquarie University, along with Gregory Holwell from the University of Auckland mounted an expedition to Malaysia to study the orchid mantis. They observed that the body of the orchid mantis was attractive to flying insects, demonstrating how their flower-like appearance has evolved to lure in unsuspecting pollinators searching for nectar in flowers.
“What really surprised us was the fact that the orchid mantises were even more successful at attracting pollinators than real flowers,” said O’Hanlon.
“Their bright floral colours and petal shaped legs create a tantalizing lure for insects. So it seems that orchid mantises not only look like flowers but also beat flowers at their own game.
“After more than a century of conjecture we provide the first experimental evidence of pollinator deception in the orchid mantis and the first description of a unique predatory strategy that has not been documented in any other animal species.”
Their findings have been published in the Chicago Journals for The American Society of Naturalists.

Chowing down on a butterfly.

Press release source: Macquarie University

Mathematical crime-fighter helps hunt for alien worlds

A curious mathematical crime-fighter has just boosted our confidence that the galaxy is brimming with alien worlds.

The statistical phenomenon, called Benford's law, has been shown to fit existing data on both confirmed and candidate exoplanets. The results suggest that of the thousands of planetary candidates, the majority will turn out to be real worlds and not errors in the data.

Initially a mere mathematical oddity, Benford's law states that the first digits of the numbers in certain sets follow a pattern of probability. For the numbers in a variety of data sets, 1 is the leading digit about 30 per cent of the time. Higher digits are less frequent: on average, just 4.6 per cent of numbers in such sets begin with 9.

Thomas Hair at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers wondered if Benford's law would hold true even beyond the solar system. "I became intrigued with the idea that exoplanet mass might fit," he says.

Hair examined data from the online catalogue exoplanets.org, which lists 755 confirmed exoplanets and nearly 3500 planet candidates, many of them found only in the past few years by NASA's Kepler space telescope. Masses are given in multiples of Earth's or Jupiter's mass. He found that the figures closely fit Benford's law for both units.

"The close fit with Benford's law gives a confirmation to experts' belief that most of the candidates are valid," says Hair, who will present the work in January at the Joint Mathematics Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.

Source: New Scientist