Dont Get Too Close

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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.  
 https://ustgreenhouse.wordpress.com/pitcher-plant/


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).
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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