Response of a carnivorous plant to simulated herbivory

Abstract

Studies addressing the impact of herbivory in carnivorous plants are scarce, despite loss of tissue being expected to be costly, as leaves are involved in both energy and nutrient acquisition. We evaluated the effect of simulated herbivory in a population of the carnivorous plant Pinguicula moranensis. We predicted an overall negative impact of herbivory by reducing growth, flowering probability and survivorship. Specifically, we expected that the increase in the negative effect should be related to the amount of leaf area removed.• We performed simulated herbivory in plants growing in situ (2015) and ex situ (greenhouse, 2016) using a paper punch (herbivory ranging from 0 to 50%). In the ex-situ experiment, we also tested the effect of availability of resources by implementing a prey addition trial where half of the plants were supplemented with prey (one fruit fly per week).• In both experiments, our hypothesis was not supported, as growth, flowering probability and survivorship were not influenced by herbivory treatments. Plants subjected to prey addition did not show higher performance than plants deprived of prey, contradicting our prediction that availability of resources could ameliorate the effect of herbivory.• Overall, the lack of differences in performance between undamaged (control) and damaged plants indicate an unexpected short-term ability of P. moranensis to tolerate herbivory, even at high levels of damage.

A survey of pesticide use in horticulturally-grown carnivorous plants, with a review of arthropod pests

“…in Mexico are eaten by pyrgomorphid grasshoppers (species not reported) and terrestrial mollusks. Most plants (74.3%) had low-levels of herbivore damage (0.5-3% of total leaf area), although some individual plants lost up to 40% of the total leaf area (Alcalá et al 2010;Ortuño-Mendieta et al 2021). Chewing herbivores have not been reported from wild butterworts elsewhere in the world, although slugs are reported to feed on cultivated butterworts in popular literature (Hewitt-Cooper 2016).…”

“…Carnivorous plants are well known for their ability to consume insects and other arthropods and most popular and scientific literature about them focuses on this phenomenon (Ortuño-Mendieta et al 2021;Mithöfer 2022). However, carnivorous plants can also be attacked by herbivorous arthropods.…”