Squish squish is the sound of our
waders as we attempt to pick up our sinking boots while trail-blazing deeper
through the dense sphagnum of Bear Lake Bog. The day is hot and we can clearly hear the flies swarming around our ears. Each step poses the question
of whether or not our feet will be able to be extracted from the deep seeded
vegetation. Everyone is desperate for
new orders of insects and throwing ourselves in futile attempts to catch dragonflies.
Meanwhile, I spot an unusual looking plant and creep closer to peer into the
tropical and foreign looking petals. Simultaneously, an innocent fly also
approaches the enticing flower. As it perches on the exotic petals, it falls
in and in an instant, is swallowed by the plant. I waited several seconds to
see if the fly would re-emerge but my waiting was in vain. I began searching for
answers about this strange vegetation in Bear Lake Bog.
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https://ustgreenhouse.wordpress.com/pitcher-plant/
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Pitcher’s plants, from the family Nepenthaceae,
are carnivorous plants that prey upon flying and crawling insects typically
from dipteran, coleopteran, and hymenopteran orders. Occasionally, the plant is
referred to as “monkey cup” due to the occasional instance where a monkey uses the
cup-shaped petals to sip water. The mechanism of the predation is such that the
insect is attracted to the cup-shaped petals by means of a promising bribe of
nectar or visual attractants such as anthocyanin pigments. Once attracted to the petal, the peristome, or the rim of the flower,
is wetted with nectar and condensation so that the insect immediately falls into
the intricate web of cuticular folds, waxy scales, and upturned hair follicles
in order to ensure the insect’s capture (Krol, Plachno, Adamec, Stolarz,
Dziubinska, and Trebacz, 2011). Following the capture, the Pitcher Plant then
digests the prey with natural proteases referred to as nepenthesin I and II and neprosin, a prolyl endoprotease. The
enzymes work together to degrade the pray by breaking the compositional peptide
linkages (Rood, 2017). In addition, alkaloid secretions are expelled from
the Pitcher Plant in order to anesthetize the prey. Often, the smell of the
decaying prey is strategically used by the plant to then attract future
prey. Unfortunately, the carnivorous functions of the Pitcher Plant is also taxing
on other plant functions such as light harvesting associated with
photosynthetic efficiency. In addition, it has been observed that some Pitcher
Plants, such as Nepenthes,
have sacrificed a significant amount of their root mediated nutrition for their
carnivorous adaptations. This observation can be confirmed by examining stable
isotope studies of the Pitcher Plant, Nepenthes mirabilis.
During this study, one can observe a developmental shift from root-derived N
uptake to prey derived N uptake as the plant matures (Behav, 2010).
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| https://parkseed.com |
Interestingly, there are a few species
of the order Diptera and family chloropidae located in the bogs of North
America that have adapted to live communally with Pitcher Plants such as Aphanotrigonum darlingtoniae and Tricimba wheeleri. These unusual species
are commonly referred to as Chloropid flies and typically
live on or in the Pitcher Plant (Mlynarek & Wheeler, 2018). Other instances
of co-habitation with the pitcher plant can occur when terrestrial
predators use the lid of the plant to hide under and occasionally, frogs may
live near the plant and attempt to steal the plant’s prey.
Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3001552/
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