{"id":163,"date":"2007-12-07T00:26:30","date_gmt":"2007-12-07T05:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=163"},"modified":"2007-12-07T00:27:15","modified_gmt":"2007-12-07T05:27:15","slug":"the-viscoelastic-flytrap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=163","title":{"rendered":"The viscoelastic flytrap"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fly<\/a><\/p>\n

Nepenthes<\/em> are cruel carnivorous plants from the Asian tropics that eat any crittur unlucky enough to fall into the digestive juices they secret inside their bowl-shaped petals. It’s a slow sticky death in which the insect slowly dissolves while a-strugglin’ and a-scramblin’ to get out.<\/p>\n

But exactly how the plants trap their prey has puzzled biobods. Many species of Nepenthes <\/em>have slippery surfaces which prevents insects from getting any purchase as they fight their way out. But other plants lack this adaptation and yet still trap their prey.<\/p>\n

Now Laurence Gaume\u00a0 and Yoel Forterre at the Universite de Provence in Marseille, reckon they’ve hit on the answer. They say that the digestive juices themselves play a crucial role. They worked it out by studying the\u00a0 species N. rafflesiana <\/em>and\u00a0 <\/em>“…by comparing retention of insects thrown into glass vials filled with water or pure digestive fluid. “<\/em><\/p>\n

After measuring the properties of the liquid such as its viscosity, elasticity surface tension etc they say:\u00a0 “our study unveils the peculiar viscoelastic properties of the digestive fluid of N. rafflesiana and its crucial role in prey capture.”<\/em><\/p>\n

In other words the digestive juices are so sticky and stretchy that insects cannot climb out, something that nobody has noticed before, apparently.<\/p>\n

The pair suggest that the juices could be used a new type of pest control in which the liquid both traps and kills insects. Who woulda thought?
\nRef: arxiv.org\/abs\/0711.4724<\/a>: A Viscoelastic Deadly Fluid in Carnivorous Pitcher Plants<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nepenthes are cruel carnivorous plants from the Asian tropics that eat any crittur unlucky enough to fall into the digestive juices they secret inside their bowl-shaped petals. It’s a slow sticky death in which the insect slowly dissolves while a-strugglin’ and a-scramblin’ to get out. But exactly how the plants trap their prey has puzzled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-slimey-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}