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Triantha occidentalis produces flowering stems with sticky hairs that can trap insects. New research confirms that the plant can digest these trapped prey. Credit: Danilo Lima
Botanists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of British Columbia have discovered a new carnivorous plant in western North America.
western triantha has made its home in wetlands and peatlands from Alaska to California and inland to Montana. In summer, it grows tall flowering stems covered with sticky hairs that trap small insects like midges and midges. Scientists have found that the plant acquires more than half of its nitrogen by digesting these trapped insects, a welcome treat in its nutrient-poor habitat.
This is the 12th known independent evolution of the carnivore in the plant kingdom, and the first time the trait has been discovered in the order Alismatales, a group of largely aquatic flowering plants. It is also only the fourth established case of a carnivore in 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 in time of study. “At first glance, it looks like a conflict between carnivore and pollination because you don’t want to kill the bugs that help you reproduce. “
However, the plant appears to be able to separate the friend from the food.
“We believe this western triantha is able to do this because its glandular hairs are not very sticky and can only trap midges and other small insects, so the much bigger and stronger bees and butterflies that act like its pollinators are not captured, ”says Tom Givnish, a UW-Madison professor of botany and co-author of the report.
The discovery was led by Lin and Sean Graham of UBC, who collaborated with Givnish and Cecile Ané, professor of botany and statistics at UW-Madison. The researchers reported on their findings on August 9, 2021, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Graham had previously conducted an analysis of Alismatales genomes when his team noticed that Triantha had lost a gene often absent in carnivores. Combined with its penchant for trapping insects and its proximity to other known carnivorous plants, Triantha looked like a great candidate to be the next carnivore in the plant kingdom.
TrianthaThe environment of ‘s also seemed conducive to the carnivore. The carnivorous way of life is so energy intensive for plants that a lot of water and light seem necessary to allow it to evolve.
“It is only in habitats where nutrients and nutrients alone are limiting that you would expect the carnivore to be an advantage,” says Givnish, who has previously studied the conditions that give rise to the carnivore and found ” other carnivorous plants unrelated to Triantha. Insects can be excellent sources of nutrients that the soil lacks, especially nitrogen and phosphorus.
In field experiments, Lin fed Triantha with fruit flies labeled with the stable isotope nitrogen-15, which allowed it to track the nutrient as it entered the plant. Ané helped Lin analyze the results of the experiments.
Using models developed by Givnish, the researchers calculated that the plant acquired up to 64% of its nitrogen from insects, similar to known carnivorous plants and well above the level accidentally taken up by non-carnivorous plants.
Lin also discovered that Triantha belongs to the group of carnivorous plants capable of directly digesting their prey. It produces an enzyme called phosphatase, which can break down nutrients containing phosphorus in its prey. Instead, some carnivores rely on microbes to initially digest their prey in puddles before the plant can absorb the remains.
Others Triantha cash, including Triantha glutinosa in Wisconsin, also have sticky hairs that trap insects, while others do not. In the future, the researchers plan to study more species to see how widespread the carnivore could be among the Triantha kind.
“It seems likely that there are other members of this group who will turn out to be carnivorous,” Givnish explains.
The fact that by Triantha The carnivorous lifestyle has eluded attention for so long despite the plant’s abundance, and its growth near major cities suggests that more carnivorous plants are waiting to be discovered off the beaten track.
Reference: “A new line of carnivorous plants (Triantha) with a unique sticky-inflorescence trap ”by Qianshi Lin, Cécile Ané, Thomas J. Givnish and Sean W. Graham, August 9, 2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DOI: 10.1073 / pnas.2022724118
This work was funded in part by the National Science Foundation (Grant DEB 1557906).
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