(Image source from: Carnivorous Plants changing life style - Turning Vegetarians})

According to the study conducted by researchers of University of Vienna, some carnivorous plants are turning to vegetarian life style. The bladderwort (Utricularia) is a carnivorous plant found in freshwater and wet soil as terrestrial or aquatic species across every Continent except Antarctica.

Carnivorous plants intake only small prey living organisms like fleas, larvae, tadpole, small fish, insects and other small aquatic organisms by using bladder- like traps (Highly sophisticated suction traps). However the recent studies have been explaining that carnivorous plants are feasting on algae and pollen grains when prey animals are hard to find, with this type of feeding these plants are gaining nutrients like nitrogen and some proteins.

Marianne Koller Peroutka and Wolfram Adlassnig of The University of Vienna’s Core Facility Cell Imaging and Ultra Structure Research and Colleagues from the Silver-Stable Isotope lab and the Gregor Mendal Institute of Molecular Plant Biology studied the Utricularia lifestyle and observed that they are tending to feed on available resources like algae and pollen grains rather than prey animals. They have studied over 2,000 objects in traps of bladder worts and found that just 10 percent constitutes animals and about 50% is algae and nearly one third of the traps consisted of pollen grains.

Koller and Wolfram said that the bladderwort habituation towards the vegetarian life style is really dramatic change and can lead to minimize the prey animals’ killings for feeding so that the digestive system of the Utricularia family adopts vegetarian style in coming years.

AW: Kannamsai