Snap and Capture Mechanism of Sundew Plant Traps Insects

Generally restricted to sunny, wet environment the carnivorous plants are distributed worldwide. They display a complex mechanism in order to survive in habitats that are poor in nutrients. Trapping systems help them to attract, kill, and digest small prey animals.

The Plant Biomechanics Group of the Botanic Garden Freiburg, led by Prof. Thomas Speck are investigating the traps termed as 'active'.

For the first time the researchers project the trapping action of the particular sundew Drosera Glanduligera, The capture movement has been investigated biophysically and the details have been published in the journal PLOS ONE.  

Sundews,  the largest genera of carnivorous plants, are commonly known for their trap leafs being covered with sticky tentacles to which small prey animals stick to and become wrapped within minutes. Australian Drosera glanduligera features non-sticky snap-tentacles that bend towards the trap centre within 75 milliseconds after mechanical stimulation, which is faster than the snap-trapping action of the famous Venus Flytrap. 

Till date there was no proper evidence about the function of these tentacles.  It could be shown that the snap-tentacles catapult recklessly prey animals onto the sticky trap leaf, and that this sundew hence possesses a combined catapult-flypaper-trap.

"Such plants are of particular interest to plant biologists because of their sophisticated and complex structural and mechanical adaptations to carnivore", says Thomas Speck, lead author on the study.