Comments on: Flesh-eating plant traps worms with sticky underground leaves

By: Ryan Kitko

Ryan Kitko — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:30:06 +0000

I think the research gets us a little closer to calling these carnivorous plants, especially the evidence that they do produce phosphatases. But the logical leap I can’t make with the authors of the study is that the plant alone was responsible for digestion. I’m not all that impressed by foliar absorption of the nitrogen-15 since foliar absorption of mineralized nutrients is common. What strikes me is that they left the nematodes on the leaf for 48 hr where surface bacteria would have more than enough time to mineralize nutrients. Their data only suggests that the plant’s enzymes were the ones largely responsible, and it’s an easy jump to make. The criticism that was laid at the feet of other studies suggesting plants such as Stylidium were carnivorous is the same here: it wasn’t a sterile environment (e.g. tissue culture), so how can we know digestion was primarily the plant’s doing? I’m also looking forward to the author’s promised data on photosynthetic rates to explicitly show whether the plants are deriving a benefit from the nematodes.

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:02:00 +0000

There was already an abundance of evidence that the plants were probably eating nematodes, including repeated field observations of nematodes stuck to its leaves. The nitrogen experiment confirms that they have means of breaking down the nematodes stuck to their leaves and absorbing the resulting nutrients.

By: Druhim

Druhim — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:00:06 +0000

The whole point of the article is that it wasn’t yet clear that this plant can actually trap and eat prey. You can’t just “feed” nematodes to a tomato plant because tomato plants don’t have a mechanism for trapping and digesting them. Therefore the isotope nitrogen-15 wouldn’t show up in the tomato plant in any significant amount.

By: Old Geezer

Old Geezer — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:38:33 +0000

I’m having trouble following the premise to the conclusion. If I fed you an abundance of nothing but Cadbury Chocolates, would you not have a stomach full of chocolate when I peeked inside you? This does not prove that you live on chocolate even if I have seen you eat one or two in the past. How was the experiment set up to show that the mechanism he used would be what the plant would experience in its natural setting?