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Pitcher Plants' Red Colors Don't Attract Prey
ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2009) — Pitcher plants have distinctive adaptations for living in nutrient-poor soils: These carnivorous plants produce a pitcher-shaped structure with a pool of water in it. When insects investigate, they slide into the pitcher and meet a watery demise. The plant then dissolves the insect and uses it for food.
See also:
Plants & Animals
* Endangered Plants
* Beer and Wine
* Nature
Earth & Climate
* Grassland
* Rainforests
* Sustainability
Reference
* Pitcher plant
* Wildlife gardening
* Seed predation
* Deciduous
Biologists have long assumed that in addition to their nectar-producing glands that attract prey to a potential food source, the plants' bright colors – mostly shades of red and green – help to attract insects. Like bees that are attracted to flowers there's a general idea that insects like bright colors, especially reds and yellows. But thus far there is little evidence that these colorful patterns attract prey to pitcher plants.
Aaron Ellison of Harvard University and his coauthor Katherine Bennett, a fifth grade teacher working under a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Teachers grant, placed painted tubes mimicking pitcher plants' natural color spectrum of redness into the plants' habitat. They found that red coloration didn't affect the number of ants – the pitchers' primary prey – that were captured.
These results are not surprising, says Ellison. Seventy percent of pitcher plants' prey are ants, which see the color red as grey. Since grey probably only weakly contrasts with the green base color of the pitcher, it's probable that the ants can't differentiate between mostly red and mostly green plants.
Ellison thinks this work is a good example of why biological concepts need to be tested and not simply assumed.
"There's no evidence that the coloration in pitcher plants is of any adaptive value for capturing prey," he says. "We don't need to assume that it has an adaptive value, or that it has anything to do with prey."
Animals and plants communicate with one another in a variety of ways: behavior, body patterns, and even chemistry. In a series of talks at the Ecological Society of America's annual meeting, to be held August 3-7 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, ecologists explore the myriad adaptations for exchanging information among living things.
Adapted from materials provided by Ecological Society of America, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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Pitcher plant (Nepenthes). Pitcher plants have distinctive adaptations for living in nutrient-poor soils: These carnivorous plants produce a pitcher-shaped structure with a pool of water in it. When insects investigate, they slide into the pitcher and meet a watery demise. The plant then dissolves the insect and uses it for food. (Credit: iStockphoto/Chi Man Yung)
Related Stories
Secret Of The Carnivorous Pitcher Plant's Slurp -- Solved At Last (Feb. 2, 2008) — Splash! Ooch! Yum! And so another unsuspecting insect victim of Nepenthes alata (N. alata), commonly known as the carnivorous pitcher plant, falls victim to the digestive fluids at the bottom of the ... > read more
Carnivorous Plants Use Pitchers Of 'Slimy Saliva' To Catch Their Prey (Nov. 24, 2007) — Carnivorous plants supplement the meager diet available from the nutrient-poor soils in which they grow by trapping and digesting insects and other small arthropods. Pitcher plants of the genus ... > read more
Anti-adhesive Layers Leave No Hope For Insects (Jan. 17, 2006) — Plants are able, using organic substances, to achieve effects that we otherwise mostly know only from technical materials. One example of this is the carnivorous pitcher plant, as researchers from ... > read more
Predicting Species Abundance In The Face Of Habitat Loss (Sep. 28, 2006) — Manipulating habitat volume and the presence of top trophic levels of an aquatic community reveals that trophic structure can determine species abundance despite habitat loss, according to a study ... > read more
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Science News
Share Blog Cite
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Pitcher Plants' Red Colors Don't Attract Prey
ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2009) — Pitcher plants have distinctive adaptations for living in nutrient-poor soils: These carnivorous plants produce a pitcher-shaped structure with a pool of water in it. When insects investigate, they slide into the pitcher and meet a watery demise. The plant then dissolves the insect and uses it for food.
See also:
Plants & Animals
* Endangered Plants
* Beer and Wine
* Nature
Earth & Climate
* Grassland
* Rainforests
* Sustainability
Reference
* Pitcher plant
* Wildlife gardening
* Seed predation
* Deciduous
Biologists have long assumed that in addition to their nectar-producing glands that attract prey to a potential food source, the plants' bright colors – mostly shades of red and green – help to attract insects. Like bees that are attracted to flowers there's a general idea that insects like bright colors, especially reds and yellows. But thus far there is little evidence that these colorful patterns attract prey to pitcher plants.
Aaron Ellison of Harvard University and his coauthor Katherine Bennett, a fifth grade teacher working under a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Teachers grant, placed painted tubes mimicking pitcher plants' natural color spectrum of redness into the plants' habitat. They found that red coloration didn't affect the number of ants – the pitchers' primary prey – that were captured.
These results are not surprising, says Ellison. Seventy percent of pitcher plants' prey are ants, which see the color red as grey. Since grey probably only weakly contrasts with the green base color of the pitcher, it's probable that the ants can't differentiate between mostly red and mostly green plants.
Ellison thinks this work is a good example of why biological concepts need to be tested and not simply assumed.
"There's no evidence that the coloration in pitcher plants is of any adaptive value for capturing prey," he says. "We don't need to assume that it has an adaptive value, or that it has anything to do with prey."
Animals and plants communicate with one another in a variety of ways: behavior, body patterns, and even chemistry. In a series of talks at the Ecological Society of America's annual meeting, to be held August 3-7 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, ecologists explore the myriad adaptations for exchanging information among living things.
Adapted from materials provided by Ecological Society of America, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Email or share this story:
| More
Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats:
APA
MLA
enlarge
Pitcher plant (Nepenthes). Pitcher plants have distinctive adaptations for living in nutrient-poor soils: These carnivorous plants produce a pitcher-shaped structure with a pool of water in it. When insects investigate, they slide into the pitcher and meet a watery demise. The plant then dissolves the insect and uses it for food. (Credit: iStockphoto/Chi Man Yung)
Related Stories
Secret Of The Carnivorous Pitcher Plant's Slurp -- Solved At Last (Feb. 2, 2008) — Splash! Ooch! Yum! And so another unsuspecting insect victim of Nepenthes alata (N. alata), commonly known as the carnivorous pitcher plant, falls victim to the digestive fluids at the bottom of the ... > read more
Carnivorous Plants Use Pitchers Of 'Slimy Saliva' To Catch Their Prey (Nov. 24, 2007) — Carnivorous plants supplement the meager diet available from the nutrient-poor soils in which they grow by trapping and digesting insects and other small arthropods. Pitcher plants of the genus ... > read more
Anti-adhesive Layers Leave No Hope For Insects (Jan. 17, 2006) — Plants are able, using organic substances, to achieve effects that we otherwise mostly know only from technical materials. One example of this is the carnivorous pitcher plant, as researchers from ... > read more
Predicting Species Abundance In The Face Of Habitat Loss (Sep. 28, 2006) — Manipulating habitat volume and the presence of top trophic levels of an aquatic community reveals that trophic structure can determine species abundance despite habitat loss, according to a study ... > read more
Search ScienceDaily
Number of stories in archives: 44,032
Find with keyword(s):
Enter a keyword or phrase to search ScienceDaily's archives for related news topics,
the latest news stories, reference articles, science videos, images, and books.
Just In:
Lightning's Mirror Image ... Only Much Bigger
Using Light To Teach Magnets New Tricks
Microchip Does 1,000 Chemical Reactions At Once
Naming Evolution's Winners And Losers
Inner 'Fingerprint' For Personal Medical Care
Why Sleep? To Boost Efficiency, Minimize Risk
Ultrathin LEDs: New Class Of Displays
Oxycholesterol: Greatest Heart Disease Risk?
Science Video News
Plants Under Attack
Plant biologists have identified the strategy used by plants to recognize an attack. When insects ingest parts of a plant digestion turns proteins. ... > full story
* Interactive Telecommunications Researchers Develop A Device For Plants To Send Text Messages
* Physicist Explains Benefits Of Carbon Dioxide
* Botanists Develop 'Antifreeze' Spray for Plants
* more science videos
Breaking News
... from NewsDaily.com
* S.Korea seeks 4-year prison term for stem cell fraud
* Encyclopedia of Life grows; clues on ageing, pests
* Satellites put into orbit for Japan and Australia
* Scientists make "sugar bug" drug for bowel disease
* Gene swap experiment makes altering bugs easier
* more science news
In Other News ...
* Netanyahu sees talks with Palestinians in 2 months
* Storm Bill loses steam in North Atlantic
* Fires near Athens recede after 3-day inferno
* Malaysian state to cane woman after Ramadan
* Justice Dept advises pursuing CIA abuses: report
* Suspect in U.S. model murder found dead in Canada
* Facebook to boost staff by 50% in 2009: report
* U.S. presses sanctions to end N.Korea atomic plans
* more top news
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