Green Group discussion

A nice study of the Venus flytrap and how it avoids eating pollinators. Seems blindingly obvious to me, but students love counting things.
https://www.ecowatch.com/venus-flytra...

Very interesting article.

Yes.
A common carnivorous plant in Irish bogs is the sundew, this has sticky leaves. Like the flytrap it hugs the ground.

Living in southeast NC, I've visited many of the flytrap's preserves. They grow within a 70 mile radius of my home and are associated with poscosins (E. Algonquin for swamp on a hill, or raised bog.) Often sundews and pitcher plants grow together with flytraps. The yellow pitcher plant pops up about the same time, and takes up the airspace, a couple of feet tall. Quite beautiful ecosystem.

The National Botanic Gardens in Dublin keeps the carnivores and the orchids in the same greenhouse as they both like humidity. The flying insects come in seeking the orchids and some get trapped. As all the plants are off the ground, the beetles seldom find their way in as far as I can see.

News that a new species of carnivorous plant has been discovered near Alicante, Spain. Very pretty.
https://www.costa-news.com/costa-blan...

Genetic studies have now turned to carnivorous plants. Three species share specific genes, carried by a last common ancestor, but have shed thousands of other genes. Looks like there is no easy way for the plants to return from this lifestyle.

https://phys.org/news/2020-05-carnivo...

I'm not familiar with the waterwheel plant, which captures prey underwater.

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-biologi...

And how its snapping mechanism works.

https://phys.org/news/2018-05-waterwh...

Here's a study of the Venus flytrap. This evolved from sundews.

https://phys.org/news/2009-08-snaring...

Snaps instead of stickiness let it catch bigger and faster prey. The waterwheel is the only other snapper, they evolved from the same source but use different mechanisms.
The other mechanism of course is the pitcher plant.

A Venus flytrap can have the trap affixed to a robot arm and be instructed to snap. Science thinks this will be useful in building better robots.

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-01-c...

More information: Wenlong Li et al. An on-demand plant-based actuator created using conformable electrodes, Nature Electronics (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-020-00530-4
Journal information: Nature Electronics

The Venus flytrap only snaps when prey triggers a second or third contact, because as you'll know if you've grown them, the leaf is then too damaged from the secretions inside it to be viable a second time, so one snap is all it's got. How does the leaf count?

"Mr. Hiraku Suda, the first author of the article says, "I tried so many experiments over two and a half years but all failed. The Venus flytrap was such an attractive system that I did not give up. I finally noticed that foreign DNA integrated with high efficiency into the Venus flytrap grown in the dark. It was a small but indispensable clue."

Using these transgenic Venus flytrap plants, the research team stimulated a single sensory hair with a needle and measured the changes in calcium levels within the leaf in detail.

Whereas the first stimulation increased the intracellular calcium concentration in the leaf blade, the second stimulus further raised the calcium ion concentration. These results revealed that the trap only closes when the intracellular calcium concentration exceeds a certain threshold."

https://phys.org/news/2020-10-probe-m...

More information: Calcium dynamics during trap closure visualized in transgenic Venus flytrap, Nature Plants (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41477-020-00773-1, www.nature.com/articles/s41477-020-00...
Journal information: Nature Plants
Provided by National Institutes of Natural Sciences

Another biomechanical analysis; warning for the nervous that there's a picture of the prey at the top.

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-biomech...

"The diet of the Venus flytrap consists mainly of crawling insects. When the animals touch the sensory hairs inside the trap twice within about 20 seconds it snaps shut. Aspects such as how the trap perceives its prey and how it differentiates potential prey from a raindrop falling into the trap were already well known to scientists. However the precise morphing process of the halves of the trap remained largely unknown.
...
Only the digital traps that were under prestress displayed the typical snapping. The team confirmed this observation with dehydration tests on real plants: only well-watered traps are able to snap shut quickly and correctly by releasing this prestress. Watering the plant changed the pressure in the cells and with it the behavior of the tissue. In order to close correctly, the traps also had to consist of three layers of tissue: an inner which constricts, an outer which expands, and a neutral middle layer."

More information: Renate Sachse et al. Snapping mechanics of the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2002707117
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Provided by Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg

Another carnivore has been recorded, this time in Alaska and similar climes. This has a tall sticky spike which attracts and catches passing insects. I am more familiar with this as a pollination mechanism.

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-carnivo...

"Triantha occidentalis makes its home in wetlands and bogs from Alaska to California and inland to Montana. In the summer, it shoots up tall flowering stems coated with sticky hairs that trap small insects like gnats and midges. The scientists discovered that the plant acquires more than half of its nitrogen by digesting these ensnared insects, a welcome treat in its nutrient-poor habitat.

This is the 12th known independent evolution of carnivory in the plant kingdom, and the first time the trait has been discovered in the Alismatales order, a group of largely aquatic flowering plants. It is also just the fourth established instance of carnivory in the monocots, one of the major groups of flowering plants.

"What's particularly unique about this carnivorous plant is that it traps insects near its insect-pollinated flowers," says lead author Qianshi Lin, who was a doctoral student at UBC at the time of the study. "On the surface, this seems like a conflict between carnivory and pollination because you don't want to kill the insects that are helping you reproduce.""

More information: A new carnivorous plant lineage with a unique sticky-inflorescence trap, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2022724118
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-reveal-...

"In the steaming jungles of Borneo, plants have evolved innumerable tricks to help them survive and outcompete their neighbors. The Slender Pitcher Plant, Nepenthes gracilis, is amongst the most ingenious: Its elaborate cup-shaped leaves are equipped with a canopy-like hanging lid that turns into a deadly springboard for ants when it is hit by a falling rain drop.

The findings, published today in Biology Letters, reveal for the first time how the lethal spring works."

More information: Pitcher geometry facilitates extrinsically powered 'springboard trapping' in carnivorous Nepenthes gracilis pitcher plants, Biology Letters (2022). royalsocietypublishing.org/doi … .1098/rsbl.2022.0106
Journal information: Biology Letters
Provided by University of Bristol

Carnivorous plants evolved independently ten times, according to this research.

https://www.sciencealert.com/carnivor...

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2023-09-11-...

"The mechanism by which pitcher plants capture prey is well known: each pitcher has a slippery rim at the top, called a peristome, covered in ridges that collect a film of water. This causes the prey to skid and fall into a pool of digestive juices at the bottom of the pitcher, similar to a car aquaplaning on water. But although this process is common to all pitcher plants, the shape of the rim ranges from simple cylinders, to highly ornate, fluted, or toothed structures. The more lavish the rim, the greater the cost to produce it: so why don’t all pitcher plants just produce a simple structure?

To address this question, the team applied mathematical models to pitcher plants grown at the Botanic Garden, to see what effect the rim’s shape has on prey capture. Shapes were classified into four groups that exist in nature and could be easily compared using mathematical reconstructions. Hypothetical capture efficiencies were measured for each shape using a ‘point mass’ – the equivalent of an insect sliding into the trap. The energetic cost of producing the rim was then calculated by examining the relative area and steepness of the different structures."

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-borneo-...

"The researchers found what they were looking for on the third day of their arrival to the region, which they note is little more than a pile of igneous boulders. The site seemed suitable for a plant that captures rainwater because there is no other running water in the area.

The research team noted that the plant had unique leaves, and its pitcher was covered with long red hair, nearly the same color as the orangutans that live in the same area. For that reason, they named the new species Nepenthes pongoides. They also explained that it was very large. Upon return to their lab, subsequent research showed the plant to be the largest pitcher ever identified.

The researchers wound up making two expeditions to the region, and in so doing, found 39 of the plants, which were useful for research purposes, but also demonstrated the uniqueness of the plant and its vulnerability. They note that poachers have already caught wind of the findings and have been harvesting them."

More information: Alviana Damit et al, Sabah's hidden giant: Nepenthes pongoides (Nepenthaceae), a micro-endemic tropical pitcher plant from northern Borneo, Australian Journal of Botany (2024).
https://www.publish.csiro.au/BT/BT24050