Glowing Skin Attracts Pests: Not Just for Women

              In the article “Carnivorous Plants Glow to Attract Prey” by Mollie Bloudoff-Indelicato in Weird & Wild in National Geographic, posted on February 25, 2013, she talks about a recent discovery about glowing carnivorous plants. This article can be found at http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/25/carnivorous-plants-glow/.This article was based off a study performed by Sabulal Baby. The actual study can be found at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1438-8677.2012.00709.x/abstract.

              Carnivorous plants such as pitfall traps, flypaper traps, snap traps, and bladder traps have evolved to be able to catch live insects, and arthropods to supplement their poor diets due to nutrient deficient soil that they live in. They use bright colors, sweet nectars, and appetizing smells to attract their prey.

               According to scientist study author Sabulal Baby, a plant biologist at the Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute in India, they have also evolved to make cells that help them generate an ultraviolet hue. Mr. Baby says “The fluorescents are a very important attractant of insects, arthropods, and small animals,” The ultraviolet light give off the same frequencies that the insects and arthropods associate with food sources, and as a result, more insects and arthropods are attracted to the plant.

            Small animals such as tree shrews and rats can also to the blue, ultraviolet light, so they go to drink the sweet nectar out of the plants. The animals then create fecal matter, which serves as extra nutrients for the plant.

            These glowing cells can be used for much scientific advancement. They could be used to track to spread of cancer cells, which could lead to a cure. They could definitely be used to attract insects to bug zappers, for pest control.

Clearly, the place where the most cells giving off the ultraviolet light are around the “mouth” of the plant. Naturally, this is where the plant wants the most insects and arthropods to be attracted too.

The relationship between the carnivorous plant and insects/arthropods is very odd in regards to the food chain. Normally, the plants are at the bottom of the food chain and the primary consumers are on the second level, just above the producers. Now, the producers are eating the primary consumers. This flip-flops things.

               Carnivorous plants don’t make a huge impact on the overall population of insects and arthropods. If everyone starts to use the glowing cells for pest control, the food web will be upset by the decrease of insect/arthropod population.

                These plants could be a safe, environment friendly way for insect control as opposed to pesticides. Pesticides can kill beneficial soil bacteria, earthworms, snails, frogs, birds, fish, honeybees, and other valuable species. They can “mess up” a food web as well. While the glowing pest control could harm the insect and arthropod population, pesticides can directly disrupt many more levels of the food web in an ecosystem.

Image source: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2013/02/1_Nepenthes-khasiana-pitcher-in-white-light-as-Smart-Object-1.jpg

Actual Study Sourcing

“Fluorescent prey traps in carnivorous plants”, Rajani Kurup, Anil J. Johnson, Sreethu Sankar, Abdul A. Hussain, Chellappan Sathish Kumar and Sabulal Baby, Plant Biology, early view article, February 2013