"Little Shop of Horrors" Source: A Carnivorous Plant Has Been Hiding in Plain Sight in North America In the boglands of the northwestern United States and Canada, an unassuming plant has been trapping and eating insects, totally unbeknownst to science. Today, researchers report that Triantha occidentalis is now the 12th known independent evolution of carnivory—the consumption of animal flesh—in the plant kingdom. Different families of plants developed a taste for meat separately, and T. occidentalis, in the order Alismatales, now adds its name to the 630-odd plant species that eat animals, usually because their local soils are nutrient-poor, particularly lacking nitrogen and phosphorous, important nutrients for carrying out photosynthesis. This plant was targeted because a previous genetic analysis showed it lacked a gene that is often missing in carnivorous plants, tipping off the researchers that T. occidentalis may be more than it seemed. Always wonder about how science finds new things. In this case, genetic analysis. Bob Wilson
Even carnivorous plants that don't sing are popular. Three structural types are known. Flytraps (that close), pitchers (with dangerous juices and hard-to-climb walls) and 'flypaper' sticky traps, like sundews and this new one. There are probably other stickies yet to be recognized for their animal nutrition. They will probably be found out as this one was, with nitrogen-15 isotope. Nitrogen stable isotope 14 predominates, with 0.4% of nitrogen-15 isotope. The latter one buys for $80 to $50 per gram, depending on purchase size. Next you grow some fruit flies with food including your expensive N15. Result is expensive fruit flies, that you offer to whatever plant species. Fine mesh bug nets, good experimental design with positive and negative controls, just figure it all out. Next it's 'checkbook' time again. Send properly prepared plant samples to a mass spec lab. They will tell you how much fruit-fly N is your 'Audrey' candidates. Looks like about $50 per analysis. == I'm happy that Lin et al. decided to test an unrecognized killer plant. It has been doable for decades, but people just did not look I guess. Another sticky trapper has underground leaves and eats nematodes, found in 2010. We might suspect there are many others.
Aquatic bladderworts probably fall in the fly trap category, but they also create a low pressure within the bladder that sucks the prey when the trap door opens. Another interesting bit about them is that they fill the bladders with gas during blooming season to get to the surface for flower making.
Another pred with cred. Thanks. I happen to enjoy soil fungi that lasso nematodes. Some well known edible fungi do that. This could grow into another time-waster topic. God knows we need more of that
Being in the PNW, I'll have to watch for these 'new' carnivorous plants. Thread drift, keying off critters lassoing others: Snake-eating spiders are surprisingly common Spiders from at least 11 different families feed on serpents many times their size
