Ultra-fast underwater suction traps
Carnivorous aquatic Utricularia species catch small prey animals using millimetre-sized underwater suction traps, which have fascinated scientists since Darwin's early work on carnivorous plants. Suction takes place after mechanical triggering and is owing to a release of stored elastic energy...
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Published in | Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Vol. 278; no. 1720; pp. 2909 - 2914 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
England
Royal Society
07.10.2011
The Royal Society Royal Society, The |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Carnivorous aquatic Utricularia species catch small prey animals using millimetre-sized underwater suction traps, which have fascinated scientists since Darwin's early work on carnivorous plants. Suction takes place after mechanical triggering and is owing to a release of stored elastic energy in the trap body accompanied by a very fast opening and closing of a trapdoor, which otherwise closes the trap entrance watertight. The exceptional trapping speed—far above human visual perception—impeded profound investigations until now. Using high-speed video imaging and special microscopy techniques, we obtained fully time-resolved recordings of the door movement. We found that this unique trapping mechanism conducts suction in less than a millisecond and therefore ranks among the fastest plant movements known. Fluid acceleration reaches very high values, leaving little chance for prey animals to escape. We discovered that the door deformation is morphologically predetermined, and actually performs a buckling/unbuckling process, including a complete trapdoor curvature inversion. This process, which we predict using dynamical simulations and simple theoretical models, is highly reproducible: the traps are autonomously repetitive as they fire spontaneously after 5–20 h and reset actively to their ready-to-catch condition. |
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Bibliography: | istex:128F4114C454CF2C3D54D42F549186CA6A540D92 href:rspb20102292.pdf ark:/67375/V84-G0KT5JQ9-Q ArticleID:rspb20102292 ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0962-8452 1471-2954 |
DOI: | 10.1098/rspb.2010.2292 |