Carnivorous plants have a taste for salamanders, scientists find

Source: The Guardian

Carnivorous plants have a taste for salamanders, scientists find

The northern pitcher plants, also known as turtle socks, devour juvenile spotted salamanders

Leyland Cecco in Toronto
Wed 12 Jun 2019 17.30 BST Last modified on Thu 13 Jun 2019 12.19 BST

Biologists have discovered evidence that carnivorous plants in Canada feast on young salamanders, in what is believed to be the first instance of vertebrate consumption by plants in North America.

In study published in the journal Ecology, a pair of biologists in the province of Ontario found that northern pitcher plants – also known as turtle socks – devour juvenile spotted salamanders.

M Alex Smith, a professor of biology at Guelph University first discovered a salamander in a pitcher plant accidentally: he was leading a group of university students on a field course in Ontario’s Algonquin Park. But the sighting of the small amphibian in the plant felt like a “WTF moment”, Smith told the Guardian in an email.

After consulting with the park’s resident salamander expert, Patrick Moldowan, a PhD student at the University of Toronto, the two suspected Smith’s discovery might have been more than a chance sighting. After surveying pitcher plants in Algonquin, Moldowa found that 20% of plants had at least one juvenile spotted salamander in them. “The second WTF moment,” said Smith.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/12/canada-carnivorous-plants-eat-salamanders

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Related: Nature's pitfall trap: Salamanders as rich prey for carnivorous plants in a nutrient‐poor northern bog ecosystem (Ecology)