Pity the salamanders.
At just a few months old, many emerge from water in Algonquin Provincial Park only to end up trapped in a pool of rainwater and digestive enzymes inside the bell-shaped leaves of a carnivorous pitcher plant. There, they can survive almost three weeks before they finally die, decompose and become plant food.
University of Toronto and University of Guelph researchers searched the contents of pitcher plants in a lake bog in a western section of the park, discovering they consumed vertebrate prey “with a striking frequency,” contrary to accepted wisdom. They published their findings this month in Ecology. Surveys in the late summer of 2018 revealed nearly 20 per cent of the plants contained salamanders, including those still alive and those in various stages of decay.
Co-lead author Patrick Moldowan, a PhD candidate in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology in U of T's Faculty of Arts & Science, investigated the plants on a hunch that they snacked on salamanders more often than people think. Researchers had assumed that the pitcher plant’s diet was made up almost exclusively of insects.
Continue reading at University of Toronto.
Image via Patrick Moldowan.