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New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest
- scardycat 5y agoWhat an interesting find! The biodiversity of our home planet is amazing. If you enjoy learning more about carnivorous plants, I highly recommend 'Plants Behaving Badly' on PBS[1]. 1. https://www.pbs.org/show/plants-behaving-badly/ https://www.pbs.org/show/plants-behaving-badly/
- dekhn 5y agoI used to work in a building with a drosophila fly lab. From time to time, I'd visit the lab, use CO2 gas to knock a fly out, and then place it in my venus fly trap (you have to flick the little hairs in the trap a couple times to get it to close). The fly wakes up, and since it's alive and jiggling, the trap stays shut. About a month little the trap opens again, and a little husk of dessicated fly drops out. Afterwars, the plant grows nicely
- h2odragon 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Against_the_Chtorr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Against_the_Chtorr
- dado3212 5y ago> "I suspect," says Graham, "that there might be more carnivorous plants out there than we think" This is a pretty interesting closing idea. From the article it seems they were originally flagged to this by a genomic commonality with other carnivorous plants. What percentage of plant genomes are sequenced that could be searched for this similar deletion?
- ineedasername 5y agoMaybe I've just seen "Little Shop of Horrors" too many times but "interesting" seems a less accurate attitude for me towards these discoveries than kill it with fire! Though as long as insects are the primary target I'm prepared to entertain the option of a cautious cold war rather than all-out destruction.
- tomcam 5y agoSigh. Duly upvoted. If only our friends on HN were a little bit more alert to humor.
- thatguy0900 5y agoIf what you want to read is a reddit kill it with fire joke thread you can just go to reddit. There's nothing wrong with wanting that, but there's no need to wish for it or encourage it here.
- dylan604 5y agoThis clearly wasn't a reddit "Kill it with fire!!!" post. There was a whole 2nd graph talking about consideration of how a kill-it-with-fire decision would affect other living things, non-human even. Clearly more thought than a reddit post would have given. Seeing how reddit is deem such low class on this esteemed and high class board.
- ineedasername 5y agoVery true. We must never deviate from strict adherence to strict seriousness at all times on HN to avoid any appearance that we're a community of human beings that occasionally enjoy humour or meme-ish content. It's the only way to maximize our useless internet points.
- tomcam 5y agoMan, don’t be that guy… wait, never mind
- dylan604 5y agoHowever, the Andromeda Strain should also teach to not so quickly use fire.
- ineedasername 5y agoWow, yes. It's been too long since I've read that book. It was very formative for me when I read it in school long ago, and at least twice more since, but it has to have been nearly 20 years. Have you happened to read the recent sequel, and if so how was it? I was kind of put off of Crichton by his later works after the original Jurassic Park (as usual, better than the movie) I know the sequel was not completely Crighton's own work, but I did mostly enjoy Robopocalypse, so I'm wondering if it's worth my time ( and money: I mostly do audiobooks these days, which are a lot more expensive)
- dshpala 5y agoNow we just need to bio-engineer them to grow larger stems, so that they could catch larger flies. And voila - natural (and pretty) fly paper!
- hahamrfunnyguy 5y agoThe fly paper angle is interesting, larger stems could probably be done with traditional breeding methods. Hard predict how well it would work though.
- bakul 5y agowhat could go wrong, right?
- mindcrime 5y ago"I suspect that there might be more carnivorous plants out there than we think." Now we just need to bio-engineer them to ... Somehow I'm sensing the onset of something that might have once been the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster.... or an episode of Doctor Who.
- newsyyswen 5y agoWe might be seeing less of that subgenre these days because the general public is starting to realize that genetic engineering is sort of like AI/ML. It takes a lot of effort and expense to achieve mildly promising results, and any given project is much more likely to break out in tumors or be outcompeted by existing strains than it is to evolve into something unexpectedly fit. Yes, poorly-engineered plants can grow tumors...or at least odd growths that sap their energy and nutrients.
- marconey 5y agoread the title as Coronavirus Plant
- pharrington 5y ago"Nobody would be looking at a flower stalk as the primary mode of carnivory" This is probably exactly what the plant is betting on. It's a nice perceptive check on our own individual intelligence as humans.
- failwhaleshark 5y agoNature is a hacker and finds a way. I'll think twice whenever I encounter a sticky plant part from now on. Edit - obligatory: Feed me, Seymour. Feed me all night long.
- vmception 5y ago> betting > intelligence thats not how natural selection works some mutant blew its load into the wind and the mutant spawns survived, thats the whole story until we find a communication or same generation reaction mechanism that leads to different future adaptations
- Jerrrry 5y ago> not how natural selection works > mutant spawn survived >leads to different future adaptations
- phito 5y agoYeahhh that quote is BS. We already have the genus Stylidium which is suspected to have a carnivorous flower stalk for years if not decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylidium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylidium
- _ph_ 5y agoFaszinating! :) Having looked into carnivorous plants for a while, I am so glad they never grew significantly bigger...
- dumpsterdiver 5y ago> Having looked into carnivorous plants for a while, I am so glad they never grew significantly bigger... Considering that we believe prehistoric times were incredibly lush with vegetation you may be right. The plants of your nightmares are likely to thrive in the future though when we have depleted the nutrients from our soil. As someone else mentioned, nature finds a way. It’s easy to forget that being at the top of the food chain puts us at the mercy of everything beneath… and when it comes time for Mother Nature to choose, she will likely begin culling from the top.
- xnx 5y agoWhen you think of climate change, think of all the habitats that are being altered and how that might lead to extinction of plants with unique and unknown characteristics.
- ineedasername 5y agoOne again showing that the Plants vs. Zombie developers were very prescient. The question we must ask ourselves is who were the true heros of those games? The plants that had developed to the point of nearly nuclear destructive capabilities? Or humanity, which may have had few options except for adopting the resilience of the undead to have any chance at survival against the Green Menace?
- badwolf 5y agoAs a canivorous plant enthusiast, this news today excites me! What a fascinating plant, maintaining a balance between consuming and allowing pollinators to move along.
- ajross 5y agoHeadline is a bit spun. The plant is known and has been attested since the 19th century. That it was carnivorous is the new discovery. It has a sticky stem, and is (somehow, though it seems like they didn't identify a mechanism) digesting insects that get stuck to it.
- libria 5y ago"Spun" is a little harsh. It's not easy to say concisely and the shorter version wouldn't capture significantly more audience that the longer version (IMO). "New carnivorous attribute of known plant discovered in Pacific Northwest", perhaps?
- bopbeepboop 5y ago“Plant discovered to be carnivorous” I don’t understand why not just say it — it sounds pretty exciting to me.
- gweinberg 5y agoI actually think it's more exciting this way. Think about it if it wasn't just eating bugs. Which is more exciting: "We've discovered a new species of plant, and it's a man-eater" or "this well-known plant has secretly been eating people all along"?
- nicoburns 5y ago"Plant in Pacific Northwest newly discovered to be carnivorous" if you wanted to be accurate, but I think the original title is fine.
- grawprog 5y agoI've got a specimen of one of these preserved in a photoalbum from a school project from 10 years ago or so. There was no idea at the time these were in any way carnivorous. For all our knowledge, there really is so much about all the other life around us we just don't understand.
- srcreigh 5y agoAgree. We tend to believe that most of the important stuff has already been discovered. What if it's the opposite? Hasn't it always been the opposite - Why should it be different now?
- daddylongstroke 5y ago>For all our knowledge, there really is so much about all the other life around us we just don't understand. Based on us routinely finding new organs within the human body, I would say there is a ton about our own biology that we just don't understand. I would go further and just accept that humans know or understand very few things indeed.
- Quikinterp 5y agoI like the technique of testing if it was carnivorous. For the lazy people, they put a nitrogen isotope inside fruitflies and then tested the plant later to see if it was absorbing the nitrogen, and it was.
- tantalor 5y agoThis sounds like an incomplete test. What was the control? Did they try sticking fruit flies to the stems of known non-carnivore plant?
- maxerickson 5y agoWhat's the test for a "known non-carnivore plant"? If it absorbs half it's nitrogen from insects that get stuck to the stem…
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y agoThen it could be a (weird) symbiote, or pick stuff up on contact
- neurostimulant 5y agoWell, terrestrial plants don't normally absorb nutrients from flower stalks, right?
- phito 5y agoThey definitely do absorb nutrients from leaves (check out foliar feeding), so it's not far stretched to imagine that they also could do the same from flower stalks
- madaxe_again 5y agoBy this definition (nutrient uptake from an animal the plant has killed), brambles should be counted as carnivorous. Their spines all point towards the base of the plant, where, in a mature specimen, there’s usually a hollow without thorns. Thing is, if you’re a furry or woolly animal, like a sheep, and you get caught in the thorns, your struggles bring you into the centre of the plant, where you’re thoroughly trapped, and you die of exhaustion. Then you decompose, and the bramble gets fed. I’ve seen this happen to sheep, and here, while clearing huge swathes of giant brambles, it’s not uncommon to find a skull or a few bits of bone around the bottom of a plant.
- immmmmm 5y agodownvote this one at will: to be extinct in a decade because no one is taking fresh IPCC report, AR6 WP1, seriously. and not giving long to endemic plants in this context.
- gautamcgoel 5y agoThe article mentioned that they began to suspect the plant was carnivorous when they noticed it was missing a specific gene. I'd be curious to know what that gene is, and why it's linked to carnivorous plants.
- ogwh 5y agoJust speculating but it might have something to do with nutrient absorption. Much in the same way we lost the ability to synthesise vitamin C and now take it in from our diet, these plants may gain a nutrient from their prey that they no longer need to produce themselves.
- IntrepidWorm 5y agoNot a geneticist or a botanist here, but I would assume that because it is carnivorous, it gains a particular set of nutrients from the fruit flies and thus does not need to absorb these compounds through the root system. The gene or set of genes responsible for processing nutrients through the root would thus not be needed and would eventually be deactivated or disappear entirely over the evolution of the species.
- iammisc 5y agoCarnivorous plants turn carnivorous because they can't get enough nitrogen from the soil usually. Thus, in these populations, it's likely that the additional genes favoring carnivory evolved first and then, with that in place, the genes for nitrogen absorption would not confer any advantage or disadvantage so would be slowly lost by genetic drift.
- mmaunder 5y agoInteresting that they started with data. Some of the most interesting discoveries I've made have started with me saying "that's weird" while looking at data. From the article: "Graham's team was doing an unrelated project on plant genetics and noticed that the western false asphodel had a genetic deletion that's sometimes seen in carnivorous plants. The researchers started to think about the fact that this flower grew in the kind of environment that's home to various other insect-eating plants. "And then they have these sticky stems," Graham says. "So, you know, it was kind of like, hmm, I wonder if this could be a sign that this might be carnivorous."
- ajkjk 5y agoI've long felt that the American school system's version of the scientific method (formulate hypothesis, run experiment, collect data, draw conclusions) is totally wrong and turns people off of science. The real procedure that we should teach kids is: collect data, ask questions about it, hypothesize some answers, and only then do a experiment to test your theory. The question formulation, based on observational evidence, is where all of the interesting science really happens.
- icelancer 5y agoBoth lead to common biases - the former in fraudulent experimentation, the latter (your suggestion) in fraudulent data snooping and anecdotal case-finding. Both have their merits done correctly, however, but the latter is only possible because of the former - the data has to come from somewhere, and experimentation was how it was historically done... since there wasn't a global database upon instantiation of the planet.
- diegs 5y agoIANAPOSE (I am not a philosophy of science expert) but I think a happy medium is to observe, collect data, and look for things that are interesting, and then perform properly formulate experiments to test those hypotheses. I think that focusing on either side alone can lead to biases and problematic science, and focusing on both is actually the most "fun"
- a-dub 5y agodid anybody ask the plant if it was okay with its genes being sequenced?! isn't this, like, what we all have feared regarding genomic data falling into the government's hands? people paid by the government stole this poor innocent plant's genomes and then ran it through their fancy machines that claimed dubious statistical similarity with the genes of murderers, then... people paid by the government then showed up, radioinfused some fruitflies, stuck them on this poor innocent plant, denied it food and water, waited for the flies to die and decompose, dug up traces in the plant and then declared it a MURDERER for fame and fortune. this is way scarier than apple checking hashes of images to see if they're evidence of exploitation of children in their icloud photo uploader... wake up sheeple!!! VEGETABLE RIGHTS AND PEACE
- kgc 5y agoI initially read that as "new coronavirus plant" ... Whew!
- nvr219 5y agoI thought this said "new coronavirus plant". Get vaccinated y'all
- hwayne 5y ago> "We had no idea it was carnivorous," says Sean Graham, a botanist with the University of British Columbia. "This was not found in some exotic tropical location, but really right on our doorstep in Vancouver. You could literally walk out from Vancouver to this field site." Fun fact: Venus fly traps are native to the Carolinas. Carnivorous plants are everywhere!
- thaumasiotes 5y agoI like how the article goes straight from this: > "We had no idea it was carnivorous," says Sean Graham, a botanist with the University of British Columbia. "This was not found in some exotic tropical location, but really right on our doorstep in Vancouver. You could literally walk out from Vancouver to this field site." to this: > Fewer than 1,000 plant species are carnivorous
- bugzz 5y agoI don't see the contradiction here?
- blueclue78 5y agoHow do they know there's fewer than 1000 if they barely noticed this one in front of them?
- pvaldes 5y ago> How do they know there's fewer than 1000 if they barely noticed this one in front of them? 4000 years of Botanical research since egyptians, duh...
- ratmice 5y agoIt seems strange not a mention of Darlingtonia californica (cobra lily), which also grows in the PNW albeit further south, but still not exotic and tropical.
- 404mm 5y agoI think that about half of us read this as “New Coronavirus plant discovered…”. My first thought was “Sure, why f!ing not…”
- aetherspawn 5y agoYeah me too ... had to double-take.
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- cheaprentalyeti 5y agoIn the Pacific Northwest? So I guess that explains what happened to all the Tree Octopi.
- joelbondurant 5y agoPlease don't post Science worship materials that aren't ordained by the official USA Fact-Check algorithm.
- peter303 5y agoFEED ME! -Audry II
- MauroIksem 5y agoDid anyone else read coronavirus?
- detaro 5y agoyes, you are the 4th person to make that comment.
- e19293001 5y agoSimilar post on reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27876588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27876588 Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
- pvaldes 5y agoIs stranger than that. Would be the only carnivoronus monocot known by now, (the only that I'm aware at least), so from an evolutionary point of view is a totally new type of creature. Would be like finding a monkey with wings. Evolving to a partially carnivorous diet in plants is a very rare event even among dicots. Only a few lamiales can do that. So I would say that I'm a little skeptical, but hopeful. The deletion in the genome could have other parallel causes also (adaptation to the same very acid soils were carnivorous plants live would be my first candidate). Very interesting idea in any case.
- pwdisswordfish8 5y agoNon-cookiewalled version: https://text.npr.org/1026091196 https://text.npr.org/1026091196
- OJFord 5y agoThanks. 'Your choices' doesn't seem to give any 'disagree'/opt-out choices? Nor does it claim they're only using required, functional cookies & data.
- pwdisswordfish8 5y agoThere used to be a ‘decline’ link that dumps you to the main page of text.npr.org, but at least you could have taken a guess which news item it is from the title and ID in the other link. Apparently they considered that design insufficiently user-hostile and changed it. I expect they’re eventually going to disable the text.npr.org domain.
- amar-laksh 5y agoI really wanna know how many people (somehow)instinctively read it coronavirus?
- nothrowaways 5y agoI read it as "new coronavirus..." LoL
- spikej 5y agoWonder how these would do as companion plants in vegetable gardens