Counting Plant

Venus flytrap “counts” to ramp up digestion.

16:48 25 January 2016

German scientists have found that Venus flytraps “count” the number of times a struggling insect touches their hairs to increase the production of hormones or to produce digestive enzymes.

 

A previous research has already shown that two touches causes the trap to shut down to keep the plant from wasting energy snapping at raindrops or other false alarms.   

 

The new study, which was published in Current Biology, reveals how the flytrap responds to subsequent touches, ramping up digestive processes once a catch is confirmed and boosting them further if the kill seems to be a big one.

 

"The number of action potentials informs [the plant] about the size and nutrient content of the struggling prey," said senior author Rainer Hedrich, from the University of Würzburg.

 

"This allows the Venus flytrap to balance the cost and benefit of hunting."

 

Rebecca Hilgenhof, a botanical horticulturalist, was fascinated with the findings. She said: "For me, the interesting thing is that there needs to be something that tells the plant... to do certain things [after] a certain amount of touching, and a certain amount of time."