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Day 1 Step 1: Find three plants native to your state!

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Day 1 Step 1: Find three plants native to your state!

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Day 1 Step 2: Learn about the differences in leaf shapes.

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Day 1 Step 2: Learn about the differences in leaf shapes.

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Day 1 Step 3: Learn about different types of plants

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Day 1 Step 3: Learn about different types of plants

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The author is a biologist who worked in conservation, aquatic biology, and woodland management over many years.

Most people will recognize most of the plants on this page. At the same time, we don't always pay too much attention to what makes some living things similar and what makes them different. It is not easy to see that an oak tree and a geranium are near relatives until you start to look closely.

The way we look at plants now has a lot to do with the work of Carl Linnaeus. He was a 17th Century Swedish scientist, and he wanted to work out just how many different kinds of living things there were.

He separated living things into plants and animals-in the same way that people had done for a very long time-but then went much further. He proposed groups and families where living organisms could be placed with their closest relatives. This was the beginning of modern scientific classification.

Classification has changed as science has advanced, but the Linnaean system is still in pretty good shape. On this page you will find the main groups of plants according to that system.

The Main Kinds of Plants

Plants Without Seeds

Algae: green, brown and red (see discussion below: "Are algae really plants?")

Liverworts

Mosses

Ferns and horsetails

Plants With Seeds

Cycads: palm-like plants with cones

Ginkgo: a living fossil

Conifers: spruce, fir, larch and so on

Flowering plants: from oak trees to geraniums

This list covers most of the plants on our planet, but if you want a really exact understanding you will need to dig into the science. This bibliography is one place to start.

Green Algae
This is a very varied group of living things with many thousands of individual species. Most green algae live in water. Others live where it is very damp all the time; they hate being dried out.

If you see a pond where the water is green, it will probably be because millions of tiny green algae have grown there. Each alga is invisible to the naked eye.

On a seashore, you might come across kinds of green algae that are very big indeed: the green seaweeds.
Brown Algae
Brown algae are more common in the ocean than in fresh water.

Some of the tallest plants in the world are brown algae. Giant kelp, for example, is common in shallow oceans, especially off the coast of California. It can be as tall as 250 feet!

Are Algae Really Plants?
To a scientist, the answer is "no." To most people, the answer is "yes."

Close study suggests that algae have more in common with bacteria than plants, and scientists have removed them from the plant kingdom.

Algae photosynthesise (make food from water and carbon dioxide), as do all plants, but they lack the distinctive structures of true plants like roots and leaves.

Liverworts are small plants that you see in damp places. They can stand being dried out a little better than algae, but not much.

A common kind of liverwort is pictured above. You usually see this kind near waterfalls or in woods with a lot of rain. The picture has a high magnification. These plants are pretty small!

Liverworts are believed to have evolved soon after plants made the transition from water to the land. In this sense they are more advanced than algae.

They do not have the sophisticated vessels that transport water from roots to leaves found in more advanced plants.

Mosses are close relatives of liverworts. They also like damp places and they need a lot of water to make offspring. Often mosses and liverworts fight for space around rivers and streams. Mosses don't need soil to grow, so rocks and trees can be covered in moss.

Mosses are the first plant group which show 'apical' growth. This means individual stems grow from the tip or special points along the stem, just as flowering plants do. Liverworts simply expand, growing outwards from every point.
Sphagnum Moss
Sphagnum moss is an especially successful moss that will grow on water. It can form floating mats many feet deep. In places, it is possible to walk on these floating mats, sometimes called "quaking bogs."

One of the strangest experiences I ever had was walking across one of these bogs. Small trees grew in the sphagnum and trees leaned to the side as I passed-my weight on the moss was enough to cause this! This is why they are called "quaking bogs."

Ferns are far better at coping with dry periods than either algae or mosses, but still need very wet conditions to reproduce. This limits where they can grow. You will not find a fern in a desert!

Bracken is an especially successful kind of fern in countries with a cool, wet climate. It spreads quickly by using underground "creeping rhizomes" and can cover many acres very quickly.

In Devonian times, many millions of years ago, ferns were the dominant land plant on our planet. Instead of forests of fir trees or oaks, there were forests of huge tree ferns. Later on, many familiar dinosaurs like the Triceratops would be happy to dine on ferns.

Plants With Seeds

Seeds have an outer layer that helps protect against drying out, infection, or consumption by animals.

Cycads mostly grow in Central America, Africa, Southeast Asia and parts of Australia.

They are the kinds of exotic-looking plants you see in jungle movies, though some are popular house and garden plants. They like moisture and heat.

They can be tall and often have woody trunks. The leaves tend to be long and thin.

If you have grown up in a northern climate, cycads can be strange plants to encounter. Quite suddenly unfamiliar and fascinating structures will grow out of a cycad in my garden, for example, and have me hunting through my books to find out exactly what is happening.

These structures are usually cones of some kind, similar to the cones that conifers produce.

Cones bear exposed seeds rather than the kinds of seeds that you find in flowering plants, which are well protected until they are released. The seeds are often pollinated by special kinds of beetles rather than bees or other insects.

More on cycads: berkeley.edu/cycads.html

There is only one species of Ginkgo in the world today: Ginkgo biloba.

When you look at the fossils of this plant, it seems that there only ever was one kind of ginkgo; the modern plant looks a great deal like its ancient relatives, who date back to the Permian period (a time well before the dinosaurs).

Despite its lack of diversity, the ginkgo once covered huge areas of the world. Now it is only found naturally in Central China.

Most scientists think that flowering trees have been outcompeting the ginkgo, and so the ginkgo has gradually been dying out.

It is sometimes called a living fossil.

At the same time, the tree's beauty has meant that gardeners and park keepers have carefully planted and tended ginkgo trees around the world.

Conifers are close relatives of cycads. They have cones with seeds and they also have woody trunks.

The most noticeable difference is that conifers like cold, northern climates where they can form huge forests that can stretch from one side of a continent to the other.

The typical conifer shape is excellent at shedding snow. They also have many ways of coping with freezing at the cellular level.

Conifers are popular garden plants too. They are evergreen and most grow very quickly.

Some people think of plants and trees as very different. The truth is that trees are plants, just as much as a row of lettuce or a fine rose.

Flowering plants are the most familiar kind of plant for anyone who lives in a temperate climate (not too hot, not too cold).

The thing that makes a geranium so similar to an oak tree is the flowers that they both produce. Flowering plants protect the female parts of the plant inside thick walls of tissue. The male parts of the plant produce pollen, and this needs to burrow its way through this tissue to produce an embryo that then develops into a seed.

Pollen can be transferred from one plant to another by the wind or by insects like bees. Plants that use wind pollination usually have small, drab and inconspicuous flowers. Flowers that use insects for pollination are often big and bright so that the insects can see them from a long way off.

Flowering plants are the plants most able to cope with dry conditions. Cacti can flourish in places where there is no rain for many years at a time.

While flowering trees grow more slowly than conifers, their hard wood is more resistant to insect damage. This means they do better in warmer places.

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The author is a biologist who worked in conservation, aquatic biology, and woodland management over many years. Most people will recognize most of the plants on this page. At the same time, we don't always pay too much attention to what makes some living things similar and what makes them different.

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Day 1 Step 4: Learn about a plant ID Key

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Day 1 Step 4: Learn about a plant ID Key

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I'll be the first to admit, using plant ID keys isn't what I do for fun. It's like trying to navigate a map without knowing your destination.

When I first learned to identify plants, wildflower enthusiasts carried paper field guides into the field. The procedure went something like this: Upon finding a plant you didn't know, you would first take a seat (akin to "taking bad news sitting down"), and then answer questions about the specimen.

The first few questions you answer easily, but that only makes arriving at the inevitable, unanswerable question more maddening.

You need flower color? The petals are gone. You need leaf characteristics? The foliage is dried or missing. Frustration escorts you out of the woods.

But no longer.

The organization www.discoverlife.org has harnessed the power of electronics to create a faceted search engine called IDnature guides, or as I call it, a really useful thing.

Now, I'm not generally a great believer in electronic solutions. I'm the father of two young boys whom snuggle into bed with tablets instead of teddy bears. My anti-electronic rants have become both repetitive and ineffective. But my relationship to electronics changed when I realized the content is key.

Here is how my plant ID process works now: Put in any characteristic(s) you can confidently identify on your specimen: petal number, petal color, leaf shape, or other. It gets checked and by process of elimination, returns a list of potential positive IDs. The more characteristics you add, the shorter the potential list gets. It's really cool. But if the boys ask, I'll deny everything.

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Plant ID Just Got Easier - My Wisconsin Woods

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By Steve Swenson, Ecologist, Aldo Leopold Foundation I'll be the first to admit, using plant ID keys isn't what I do for fun. It's like trying to navigate a map without knowing your destination. When I first learned to identify plants, wildflower enthusiasts carried paper field guides into the field.

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Day 2 Step 1: Identify differences between regions in the United States

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Day 2 Step 1: Identify differences between regions in the United States

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Day 2 Step 2: Read about the way our world shapes our plants

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Day 2 Step 2: Read about the way our world shapes our plants

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Ever seen a raccoon unlatch a garbage can in search of leftovers? Or shimmy across power lines to get from one rooftop to another? If so, you've witnessed an animal adapting its behavior to city life. That's been going on since people started building cities thousands of years ago.

Now, biologists are seeing signs that animals and plants are also adapting in a more basic way to survive in cities. Their genes are changing.

Genes are segments of DNA that influence how an organism looks and functions. An animal or plant's DNA is like an instruction book for how it develops and grows. Some instructions guide its reproductive habits. Others influence the way it moves. Still others might let it withstand poison.

Urban pollution, traffic and shrinking wild spaces have been causing changes in these genetic instructions. And scientists have been tracking more and more signs of these genetic changes. They've seen it in fish in New York's polluted Hudson River, in weeds growing out of sidewalks in France, in cliff swallows living near highways in Nebraska and in the mice scampering through New York City parks.

When genes change in response to their environment, it's called evolution. Some of those changes may leave animals and plants better suited to their homes. It may offer new traits that increase the odds of surviving long enough to reproduce. This means the individuals will pass on these new traits to their offspring. Eventually, traits that had once been rare can now become common throughout a population.

Until fairly recently, scientists thought evolution happened very slowly - too slowly for people to notice during their lifetimes. But no more. "We are now showing evolution can occur a lot faster than most people think," says Isaac Wirgin. And, he adds, that's true "especially in urban environments."

Wirgin is an expert in environmental medicine at New York University Medical Center in New York City. He studies how the environment affects the health of animals, including humans. It may seem like a good thing for animals and plants to adapt to city life. But he warns that there can be costs that biologists are only beginning to understand.

"In my mind, it's not a good thing," he says. "Usually if you evolve to become less sensitive to a pollutant, you're less good at reproduction or life expectancy, or you're more sensitive to other stressors."

Wirgin is talking about evolutionary costs. These are trade-offs. To gain some advantage, a species often will pay a price. For example, if an animal evolves to become bigger, fewer predators can kill it. But being bigger will now mean the animal needs more food. And that can be a problem when food becomes scarce.

The case of the Hudson River PCBs

Urban evolution is hardly new. During the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, heavily polluted areas of Britain turned black with soot. The light-colored peppered moths that lived there now stood out against dark walls and tree trunks. In no time, they were picked off by predators. But some mutations - accidental genetic changes - caused some peppered moths to have black wings. This camouflaged them in the newly sooty environment. And over time, they survived to breed more black moths. The light-colored ones didn't. In short order, most peppered moths were now black.

ILIK SACCHERI

In the past hundred years, humans have built and enlarged cities at a much faster pace than ever before. As cities grew, so did their impacts on the environment - and on evolution. A century ago, just two in every 10 people lived in towns. Today, more than half of us do. And our cities are rapidly spreading across more and more of the globe.

A growing number of scientists are asking what this means for city wildlife. Wirgin is among them. He led a research team that studied fish living in a very polluted segment of the Hudson River. Some these fish, called tomcod, carried a genetic variant. That's a gene with a slightly different DNA sequence - or genetic blueprint - from most others of its species.

This genetic variant helped the tomcod that carried it withstand some toxic chemicals called PCBs, for polychlorinated biphenyls (Paal-ee-KLOR-ih-nay-ted By-FEE-nuls)).

Manufacturers relied on these chemicals for many decades as a fluid to insulate industrial equipment. And from 1947 to 1976, two General Electric plants spewed PCB pollution into the Hudson River. In all, they released nearly 600,000 kilograms (about 1.3 million pounds) of those oily chemicals. PCBs don't easily break down, so they can remain in air, water and soil for a long time.

Eventually, the United States banned the production of PCBs, as did other nations. Prompting that decision: Research showed PCBs could cause cancer in animals, and likely posed a similar risk to people.

What about those Hudson River fish living amidst all of that PCB pollution? Many young fish exposed to PCBs are severely deformed. For instance, they may lack a jaw. With such defects, these fish can starve.

Some protection comes with a cost

But the tomcod with the newfound genetic variant survived. This variant showed up in a gene called AHR2. It appears to shield the fish from PCBs' normal toxicity. Wirgin and his team published their findings in Science.

Here's how the gene adaptation works: The normal form of AHR2 gives instructions for building a certain protein in the fish. To do damage, PCBs must attach to this protein. But the variant gene gives slightly different protein-building instructions. This change makes it hard for PCBs to latch on.

Mark Mattson of Normandeau Assoc.

A small number of tomcod carried this gene variant before this region of the Hudson River became heavily polluted with PCBs. After the oily pollutants started pouring into the river, tomcod with the more common gene mostly died off. Today, nearly all tomcod in this part of the Hudson carry the protective form of the AHR2 gene.

Elsewhere, in less polluted areas - in Canada and New England, for example - tomcod populations still have the susceptible form of the gene.

Wirgin's group did not look for a cost to the tomcod's resistance to PCBs. But other researchers found such a trade-off in a different fish, the Atlantic killifish.

Joel Meyer and Richard Di Giulio of Duke University in Durham, N.C., studied this species in Virginia's Elizabeth River. A former wood-treatment plant had polluted the water with a family of chemicals known as PAHs, for polycyclic (PAH-lee-SIK-lik) aromatic hydrocarbons. These chemicals have been linked to cancers and heart deformities.

The killifish in this river showed no sign of such effects. They did, however, show less tolerance than most of their species for the low oxygen levels that sometimes occur in many lakes and rivers. Concluded Meyer and DiGiulio: These fish paid a price for evolving the ability to resist these toxic pollutants.

But back to the Hudson River tomcod. When they evolved resistance to PCBs, there may have been wider effects on the ecosystem, says Wirgin. Tomcod are a favorite snack for larger fish. When predators eat those tomcod, they now get a toxic bonus - some PCBs in every bite. Pollutants from the smaller fishes' bodies build up in larger fish. This process is known as bioaccumulation.

There is no research on how it affects tomcod-munching fish. But Wirgin says this points to how urban evolution could affect entire food webs.

City weeds and cliff swallows

Plants have also evolved to meet the challenges of city living. Pierre-Olivier Cheptou is an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Montpellier in France. He studied a common weed called Crepis sancta. It grows in small patches of soil around sidewalk trees in Montpellier. He compared city-dwelling members of this species to those in the surrounding countryside.

S. Popy

Those in the country tend to make lightweight seeds, they found. These easily travel with a breeze. But in the city, such seeds would probably fall onto concrete and die. So there, the city weeds produced compact seeds. Being relatively heavy, they drop close to the plant. That allows them to sprout in the surrounding soil. Cheptou published his team's study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This change will likely have an evolutionary cost for the plants, he says. If their seeds don't travel far, the weeds are unlikely to breed with those in other patches of soil. This means the population will develop less variation in its DNA. In other words, they will have little genetic diversity. Wildlife with little genetic diversity tend to be more vulnerable to disease.

Traits that help an organism survive in the short term, such as heavier seeds, "may lead to extinction in the longer term," worries Cheptou.

Still, there may be plants and animals that have evolved to handle city living without paying a price. Cliff swallows nesting under highway overpasses in Nebraska might be among them.

Charles Brown is an ecologist who works at University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. Since 1982, he and Mary Bomberger Brown have been studying cliff swallows. Mary is an ornithologist, or bird biologist. She works at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

The cliff swallows they study have been building their gourd-shaped mud nests under highway overpasses in southwestern Nebraska. Over 30 years, the two scientists saw a steady drop in the number of birds killed by cars and trucks. And this surprised them. After all, the bird colonies were growing and the traffic had not declined.

Mist nets are pieces of see-through mesh hung between two poles. Scientists use them to safely capture birds for study. The researchers set up such nets close to the bridge. And as they compared road-killed birds with those caught in nearby mist nets, they got another surprise. Birds in their mist nets had much shorter wings than those killed by the cars.

Charles Brown

The researchers now think shorter wings help birds dodge traffic better. That's why short-winged birds were more likely to end up alive in the nets, not dead on the street.

A change to a major physical trait, such as wing length, is almost certainly a result of a genetic change, says Charles Brown. Unlike the road-killed birds, these short-winged fliers have survived long enough to pass down their genes. The researchers published their results a few years ago in the journal Current Biology.

Brown says birds evolving shorter wings over a few decades really surprised him. He agrees with Wirgin and Cheptou that such evolution can sometimes make an animal or plant less able to deal with other types of stress. But he and Bomberger Brown did not find any harmful side effect in the birds they studied.

"It would appear to be a win-win situation for the swallows," he concludes.

Lonely mice

White-footed mice also may be evolutionary winners.

These mice once lived all over North America. But in New York City, they are now stuck mostly in city parks. Those in each park are separated from those elsewhere by roads and buildings. This means that those in one park can't breed with those in another. The mice in each park have therefore evolved genes that help them survive in their specific home turf.

Some populations have evolved a genetic variant that protects them from being poisoned by heavy metals such as lead and chromium. (Heavy metals can be part of a waste produced by some industries. Lead and chromium, for instance, can cause organ damage and probably also cancer.) The mice exposed to such heavy metals likely evolved the genetic variant because the soil in their parks has accumulated so much chromium or lead over the years.

Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA-3.0)

Other populations of park mice evolved genes that boost their ability to fight disease. That is probably because they are crowded into a particularly small area. Such tight quarters tend to make it easier for diseases to spread.

That's the conclusions that Jason Munshi-South came to, anyway. He's a biologist at Fordham University in New York City. He has been studying these mice. His team described its findings a few years ago in PLOS ONE.

A small number of mice were likely already carrying the genes that protect against heavy metals or infectious diseases. Mice with these variant genes lived long enough to have babies and pass down their genes. Eventually, more and more of them made up most of the population.

That's good news for the mice. But Munshi-South says that doesn't mean other animals can similarly evolve rapid changes to survive the challenges of city living. Indeed, he observes: "Most species do not do well in cities and no longer occur there."

Power Words
More About Power Words

adaptation (in biology) A process by which living things become better suited to their environment through inheritance. When a community of organisms does this over time, scientists refer to the change as evolution.

bioaccumulate A term for the body's process of picking up substances (usually from the environment) and then storing them within tissues (such as fat or bone) in ever-growing quantities.

biology The study of living things. The scientists who study them are known as biologists.

breed (verb) To produce offspring through reproduction.

cancer Any of more than 100 different diseases, each characterized by the rapid, uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells. The development and growth of cancers, also known as malignancies, can lead to tumors, pain and death.

chemical A substance formed from two or more atoms that unite (become bonded together) in a fixed proportion and structure. For example, water is a chemical made of two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom. Its chemical symbol is H ₂ O. Chemical can also be an adjective that describes properties of materials that are the result of various reactions between different compounds.

contaminant Pollutant; a chemical, biological or other substance that is unwanted or unnatural in an environment such as water, soil, air or food. Some contaminants may be harmful in the amounts at which they occur or if they are allowed to build up in the body over time.

DNA (short for deoxyribonucleic acid) A long, double-stranded and spiral-shaped molecule inside most living cells that carries genetic instructions. It is built on a backbone of phosphorus, oxygen, and carbon atoms. In all living things, from plants and animals to microbes, these instructions tell cells which molecules to make.

ecosystem A group of interacting living organisms - including microorganisms, plants and animals - and their physical environment within a particular climate. Examples include tropical reefs, rainforests, alpine meadows and polar tundra.

ecology A branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings. A scientist who works in this field is called an ecologist.

environment The sum of all of the things that exist around some organism or the process and the conditions that those things create for that organism or process. Environment may refer to the weather and ecosystem in which some animal lives, or, perhaps, the temperature, humidity and placement of components in some electronics system or product.

evolution (v. to evolve) A process by which species undergo changes over time, usually through genetic variation and natural selection. These changes usually result in a new type of organism better suited for its environment than the earlier type. The newer type is not necessarily more "advanced," just better adapted to the particular conditions in which it developed.

evolutionary ecologist Someone who studies the adaptive processes that have led to the diversity of ecosystems on Earth. These scientists can study many different subjects, including the microbiology and genetics of living organisms, how species that share the same community adapt to changing conditions over time, and the fossil record (to assess how various ancient communities of species might be related to each other and to modern-day relatives).

evolve (adj. evolving) To change gradually over a long period of time. In living organisms, evolution usually involves random changes to genes that will then be passed along to an individual's offspring. But the term may be applied more casually to point to things (such as an individual's brain development) that change in form or function, over time, in response to cues (such as developmental hormones).

extinction The permanent loss of a species, family or larger group of organisms.

food web (also known as a food chain) The network of relationships among organisms sharing an ecosystem. Member organisms depend on others within this network as a source of food.

gene (adj. genetic) A segment of DNA that codes, or holds instructions, for producing a protein. Offspring inherit genes from their parents. Genes influence how an organism looks and behaves.

genetic diversity The range of genes types - and traits - within a population.

habitat The area or natural environment in which an animal or plant normally lives, such as a desert, coral reef or freshwater lake. A habitat can be home to thousands of different species.

hydrocarbon Any of a range of large molecules containing chemically bound carbon and hydrogen atoms. Crude oil, for example, is a naturally occurring mix of many hydrocarbons.

Industrial Revolution A period of time around 1750 that was marked by new manufacturing processes and a switch from wood to coal and other fossil fuels as a main source of energy.

journal (in science) A publication in which scientists share their research findings with the public. Some journals publish papers from all fields of science, technology, engineering and math, while others are specific to a single subject. The best journals are peer-reviewed: They send out all submitted articles to outside experts to be read and critiqued. The goal, here, is to prevent the publication of mistakes, fraud or sloppy work.

lead A toxic heavy metal (abbreviated as Pb) that in the body moves to where calcium wants to go (such as bones and teeth). The metal is particularly toxic to the brain. In a child's developing brain, it can permanently impair IQ, even at relatively low levels.

mist net Fine mesh net used by biologists to capture - without harm - birds and bats for research.

mutation (v. mutate) Some change that occurs to a gene in an organism's DNA. Some mutations occur naturally. Others can be triggered by outside factors, such as pollution, radiation, medicines or something in the diet. A gene with this change is referred to as a mutant.

organ (in biology) Various parts of an organism that perform one or more particular functions. For instance, an ovary is an organ that makes eggs, the brain is an organ that makes sense of nerve signals and a plant's roots are organs that take in nutrients and moisture.

organism Any living thing, from elephants and plants to bacteria and other types of single-celled life.

ornithologist A scientist who studies birds, their behaviors and ecosystems.

pollutant A substance that taints something - such as the air, water, our bodies or products. Some pollutants are chemicals, such as pesticides. Others may be radiation, including excess heat or light. Even weeds and other invasive species can be considered a type of biological pollution.

polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (or PAHs) A family of hydrocarbons. Many form naturally as part of crude oil. Some are formed when materials burn incompletely. Most PAHs occur in groups of two or more. Some of these compounds can be quite toxic.

polychlorinated biphenyls (or PCBs) A family of 209 chlorine-based compounds with a similar chemical structure. They were used for many decades as a nonflammable fluid for insulating electrical transformers. Some companies also used them in making certain hydraulic fluids, lubricants and inks. Their production has been banned in North America and many countries throughout the world since around 1980.

population (in biology) A group of individuals from the same species that lives in the same area.

proteins Compounds made from one or more long chains of amino acids. Proteins are an essential part of all living organisms. They form the basis of living cells, muscle and tissues; they also do the work inside of cells. Among the better-known, stand-alone proteins are the hemoglobin (in blood) and the antibodies (also in blood) that attempt to fight infections. Medicines frequently work by latching onto proteins.

resistance The ability of an organism to fight off disease.

species A group of similar organisms capable of producing offspring that can survive and reproduce.

stress (in biology) A factor, such as unusual temperatures, moisture or pollution, that affects the health of a species or ecosystem.

toxic Poisonous or able to harm or kill cells, tissues or whole organisms. The measure of risk posed by such a poison is its toxicity.

trait A characteristic feature of something. (in genetics) A quality or characteristic that can be inherited.

urban Of or related to cities, especially densely populated ones or regions where lots of traffic and industrial activity occurs. The development or buildup of urban areas is a phenomenon known as urbanization.

variant (in genetics) A gene having a slight mutation that may have left its host species somewhat better adapted for its environment.

waste Any materials that are left over from biological or other systems that have no value, so they can be disposed of as trash or recycled for some new use.

Citations

Journal:S.E. Harris et al. Signatures of rapid evolution in urban and rural transcriptomes of white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus) in the New York metropolitan area. PLOS ONE. Vol. 8, August 28, 2013, p. e74938. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0074938.

Journal: C.R. Brown and M.B. Brown. Where has all the road kill gone? Current Biology. Vol. 23, March 18, 2013, p. R233. doi: 10.1016j.cub.2013.02.023.

Journal: I. Wirgin et al. Mechanistic basis of resistance to PCBs in Atlantic tomcod from the Hudson River. Science. Vol. 331, March 2011, p. 1322. doi: 10.1126/science.1197296.

Journal: P.O. Cheptou et al. Rapid evolution of seed dispersal in an urban environment in the weed Crepis sancta. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 105, March 11, 2008, p. 3796. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0708446105.

Journal: J. N. Meyer et al. Heritable adaptation and fitness costs in killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) inhabiting a polluted estuary. Ecological Applications. Vol. 13, April 1, 2003, p. 490. doi: 10.1890/1051-0761(2003)013[0490:HAAFCI]2.0.CO;2.
Questions for 'Cities drive animals and plants to evolve'
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Sharon Oosthoek is a freelance science journalist. She likes to write about animals and their habitats. Sharon also really likes chocolate. Her sons have learned to hide their Halloween candy.

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Cities drive animals and plants to evolve | Science News for Students

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Ever seen a raccoon unlatch a garbage can in search of leftovers? Or shimmy across power lines to get from one rooftop to another? If so, you've witnessed an animal adapting its behavior to city life. That's been going on since people started building cities thousands of years ago.

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Day 2 Step 3: Learn How to write a Plant ID Key

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Day 2 Step 3: Learn How to write a Plant ID Key

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Day 3 Step 1: Find the 3 trees native to your region in person. Take detailed photos.

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Day 3 Step 1: Find the 3 trees native to your region in person. Take detailed photos.

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I know some people who like to take sharp photographs. Because of this, their images tend to have a certain set of parameters to ensure that their images are crisp and clear from foreground to background.

Are you like that?

You don't like blurry edges framing your subject... You shoot in bright sunlight often, pointing away from the sun, or keeping the sun at a 30 degree angle... You're often not happy with your lens - it's never sharp enough...

Did you agree with me on at least two of these points? If you did, then you probably know some of these tips that I've got for you already. If not, you're in for a treat.

So, if you want to improve the sharpness of your photographs, what do you do? You'll find some clues to that answer in the lines above, but here are 12 more solid tips!

Simple Tips to Take Sharp Photographs Every Time

1. Focus Carefully - Today's cameras do a wonderful job of focusing automatically. But often enough, the autofocus point is not exactly where it should be, resulting in a slightly out-of-focus point of interest. This is especially apparent in photographs with a shallow depth of field where correct focusing is super-important. Double check your camera's focus point before you click.

2. Don't Stop-down Your Lens Fully - This means that you should set your camera to photograph with your highest aperture number (smallest aperture size) minus 2 stops. The small aperture size gives you great depth of field, yes? So why not just just use the smallest aperture?
Because of a phenomenon called diffraction - read the complex explanation here.

3. Don't Open-up Your Lens Fully - Don't use your lens's widest aperture unless it's a professional grade lens. Most lenses have a sweet-spot. A range of apertures that produce the best resolution images (in terms of edge sharpness, not number of pixels). In regular consumer grade lenses, these are usually NOT the smallest and largest apertures. The same rule applies to Pro lenses too, but even at the extreme apertures, they usually produce better images than regular lenses.

4. Use a Fast Shutter Speed - Often people find that their images are blurry even though they're using a small aperture. It's most likely that either their camera or subject is moving, causing the image to move on the sensor during the time that the shutter is open.
You can freeze your subject in the frame with a fast enough shutter speed. I like to use a simple reminder 1/'focal length of your lens X 2′. This means that if you're using an 100mm lens, you should set your shutter speed at anything faster than 1/200th of a second to avoid shake. Depending on your subject, you may have to go even faster.

5. Keep the Camera Still. Use a Tripod - If your subject is not moving and you have the leisure of arranging and framing your subject, why not use a tripod? This ensures that no vibration filters down to the sensor. As an added benefit, you get to retain the exact same composition from frame to frame and make minute adjustments that would be difficult or impossible with a hand-held camera.

6. Shoot in Sufficient Light - Small aperture + fast shutter speed means that you need to have enough light to correctly expose the image. Take photographs in bright sunlight, halogens or off-camera flash strobes to ensure that the camera's sensor gets enough light.

7. Do Not Use a High ISO - Depending on how you look at this, it may not make sense. I've been talking about high shutter speeds and small apertures, right? You need to use a high ISO to get there... right? The answer is: use as low an ISO as you can. Higher ISOs increase the level of noise that the sensor generates, degrading the quality and level of detail in the image as you go to higher ISOs. Stick to low numbers on this, and you'll always get smoother images with more image detail.

8. Light from an Angle - Angular lighting casts shadows, bringing out textures and giving the surface a more tactile quality. Most things look better when lit from an angle rather than straight-on.

9. Use the Largest Image Capturing Area Possible - with dSLR cameras, this means use a full-frame camera or medium format camera. If you're shooting film, it means use a medium or large format camera. More recording area automatically means that it can capture more detail. Think of the detail that can be seen in a miniature painting versus the detail in a 20ft giant of a painting.

10. Do not use a cheap lens - Expensive professional lenses cost an arm and then some... because the designers made sure they got it absolutely right. They picked the best materials, they combined these in the best way possible. They also picked the finest workers to build them. These do not come cheap. If you need a very high level of detail in your images you won't be using a cheap-ass lens. The same goes for a filter.

11. Use a Wide-Angle Lens - Lenses with a shorter focal length generally have greater depth of field. This means sharper photographs, because there is more of the image in focus. If you use a telephoto lens at the same aperture, you would have less of the image in focus (less depth of field).

12. Shoot RAW - When your goal is to output sharp photographs, the journey doesn't stop at capturing the images. It continues well into post-production. One of our readers left a comment to that effect and reminded me of this fact. Shoot RAW. Don't be shy about it. Storage media is cheap these days. Once you bring your images into Adobe Lightroom or your other favourite RAW photo editor, you can tweak the contrast, sharpness and clarity sliders to coax the most out of your images. Thanks for the tip, Adilson.

Do you have any more suggestions on how to get detail in your images or how to make them ? Do add them in the comments.

Photo Credit: Alex is Late [URL broken: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonicsd/3978196290/in/photostream/]

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I know some people who like to take sharp photographs. Because of this, their images tend to have a certain set of parameters to ensure that their images are crisp and clear from foreground to background. Are you like that? You don't like blurry edges framing your subject...

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