By Susan Milius
Ecologist Nick Gotelli walks on water, and he appears to have every confidence that his two visitors soon will too. A man who speaks and moves with precision, he sounds plausible. It’s easy to overlook slightly alarming details about the field trip that he’s leading for his two visitors, an ecologist from Spain and a reporter.
He’s taking his guests to see his study subjects: meat-eating pitcher plants. They absorb nutrients from ants or other little animals that slip into their pitcher-shaped leaves and drown in the liquid at the bottom. The plants that Gotelli studies spend their lives, some longer than 50 years, rooted in mats of sphagnum moss that float on wetlands like soggy, giant sponges. The moss mats can build up to such a cushy, buoyant thickness that, Gotelli says, a person can walk out onto them and admire the plants at will.