We get a lot of press releases about photo contests, but this winning image from the Olympus BioScapes Imaging Competition (which I didn't even know existed) stood out for a few reasons: 1. The image ...

Swollen bladderwort is an invasive, carnivorous plant that has been spotted in eight bodies of water in Maine. It eats insect larvae and water fleas, forming mats on the surface of the water. The ...

In the 12 years since the human genome was sequenced, so many critters have had their DNA deciphered—oysters, bees, eels, camels, clawed frogs, elephant sharks—that it’s hard to suppress a yawn ...

An error has occurred. Please try again. With a The Portland Press Herald subscription, you can gift 5 articles each month. It looks like you do not have any active ...

Great, wonderful, wacky things can come in small genomic packages. That’s one lesson to be learned from the carnivorous bladderwort, a plant whose tiny genome turns out to be a jewel box full of ...

How’s this for spring cleaning? Scientists have discovered that a carnivorous plant deletes so much of its own junk DNA that it has hardly any left. The finding, published online in Nature, hints that ...

Take a look inside the bladder of an aquatic bladderwort plant. You can see the single-celled algae, called desmids, that it has consumed. They will be digested to provide the plant with needed ...

What is a Venus fly trap? The Venus fly trap is a carnivorous plant that is native to North and South Carolina. The plant gets its name from its ability to trap and eat flies and other small insects.

The bladderwort plant may seem simple at first glance, but inside its small structure is a tiny genome packed with more genes than larger, more well-known plants. A team of scientists at the ...

The evolutionary secrets of one of nature's marvels – the carnivorous bladderwort – have been uncovered by scientists. The aquatic plant has no recognisable roots and floats around, catching prey with ...