Fairly bad pitcher traps triumph in the end
Fumbles pay off in pitcher plants’ lax ant hunting strategy
By Susan Milius
Incompetent, says who? Carnivorous pitcher plant traps rarely catch much, but their lackadaisical hunting turns out not to be so lame after all. Ask the ecologist who set up hospital IV drips to test Nepenthes rafflesiana traps in the shrubbery of Brunei.
Biologists have observed that pitcher plants “have pretty lousy traps,” says Ulrike Bauer of the University of Bristol in England. Captured nutrients give them the edge in difficult environments, but “most of the time when you look into a trap, there’s hardly anything there.”