Earth is home to some pretty gnarly carnivorous plants that will use sticky digestive juices to eat bugs and other plants that will even trick flies into mating with them. New research into the plant genus Arisaema points to an unusual evolutionary process within the plant kingdom. The relationship between a species of the carnivorous Arisaema plant genus may have a more nuanced relationship with its insect prey. The gnats that end up escaping from Arisaema’s waxy flowers may help by eating some of its decaying flowers. The findings are described in a study published February 19 in the journal Plants People Planet.
[Related: Two newly discovered Andes Mountain plant species have an appetite for insects.]
Luring pollinators to their deaths
Many plants rely on animals like bees, butterflies, and moths for pollination. Most also offer some kind of reward like nectar for their reproductive services. However, some plants like species in the genus Arisaema deceive their pollinators.
“It is famous as the only plant that achieves pollination at the expense of the pollinator’s life,” Kenji Suetsugu, a study co-author and biologist at Kobe University in Japan, said in a statement.
These plants use a musky odor to lure the fungus gnats that typically feed and lay their eggs on mushrooms into their cup-shaped flowers. The fungus gnats can escape from male Arisaema flowers, but only after being covered in the plant’s pollen. Females provide no means of escape. Once the insects are in a female Arisaema flower, the gnats will struggle to find an exit since they can’t get a hold of the wavy interior. This kills the gnats and ensures that the flower will be pollinated.
Looking beyond an ‘antagonistic’ relationship
Suetsugu’s team sought to challenge traditional views in pollination biology and designed experiments to look for more nuanced interactions between Arisaema plants and their prey. In the study, they collected male…
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