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Figure 5 in Carnivorous Nepenthes pitcher plants are a rich food source for a diverse vertebrate community

Figure 5. (a, b) lesser tree shrew (Tupaia minor) collecting nectar from the lower lid surface of Nepenthes gracilis pitchers in Tutong site II.

Figure 4 in Carnivorous Nepenthes pitcher plants are a rich food source for a diverse vertebrate community

Figure 4. Sunbirds foraging on Nepenthes nectar in Tutong site II. (a) Female olive-backed sunbird (Cinnyris jugularis) and (b) male brown-throated sunbird (Anthreptes malacensis) drinking nectar from the peristomes of N. rafflesiana pitchers. (c, d) Male brown-throated sunbird (A. malacensis) harvesting nectar from the underside of the pitcher lid of N. gracilis.

Figure 3 in Carnivorous Nepenthes pitcher plants are a rich food source for a diverse vertebrate community

Figure 3. Experimental setup to measure nectar production. Pitchers were enclosed in gauze bags to exclude visitors, and roofed with custom-made plastic umbrellas to prevent the nectar from being washed off by rain.

Figure 2 in Carnivorous Nepenthes pitcher plants are a rich food source for a diverse vertebrate community

Figure 2. (a) Typical habitat (Tutong site I) where we observed sunbirds and a tree shrew foraging on nectar of Nepenthes rafflesiana and N. gracilis pitchers. (b) Temperature and humidity measurements from the same site. The peak foraging times coincided with the times of high relative humidity from sunrise to about 10:30, and from about 17:00 until sunset. (c) The Belait site was less open, and surrounded by mature forest. We never observed vertebrates foraging on pitcher nectar in this site.

Figure 1 in Carnivorous Nepenthes pitcher plants are a rich food source for a diverse vertebrate community

Figure 1. (a) A typical Nepenthes trap (here N. rafflesiana) consists of a fluid-filled pitcher body (B), a collar-shaped peristome (P) and a roof-like lid (L). Insects are attracted by nectar secreted onto the peristome, and fall into the trap where they drown and are digested by the plant. This 'standard' trap design has been considerably modified in species that engage in mutualistic relationships with mammals: the pitchers of N. hemsleyana (b) are elongated and contain only very little fluid, making them a preferred daytime roost for woolly bats. (c) N. lowii attracts tree shrews (Tupaia montana) that harvest nectar from the inside of the pitcher lid. The lid is bent backwards to allow the tree shrew to access the nectar while sitting on top of the large and sturdy pitcher. The wide-open funnel shape of the pitcher ensures that the shrew droppings end up in the trap. (d) N. rajah pitchers show similar adaptations and have been shown to be visited by tree shrews and nocturnal rats.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →

Data from: Interacting livestock and fire may both threaten and increase viability of a fire-adapted Mediterranean carnivorous plant

1. Quantifying interactive effects of environmental drivers on population dynamics can be critical for a robust analysis of population viability. Fire regimes, among the most widespread disturbances driving population dynamics, are increasingly modified by and interact with human activities. However, viability of fire-adapted species is typically assessed overlooking disturbance interactions, potentially resulting in suboptimal management actions. 2. We investigated whether increasing human disturbances in fire-prone ecosystems may pose a threat or an opportunity to improve population viability, using demographic data of the carnivorous, post-fire recruiting plant Drosophyllum lusitanicum, endemic to heathlands in the southwestern Mediterranean Basin. We built integral projection models and simulated population dynamics under different combinations of two key disturbance types affecting populations: fire and livestock browsing and trampling. We used perturbation analyses to determine potential long-term consequences of maintaining fundamentally different disturbance types. 3. Despite most populations inhabiting browsed habitats, simulations showed a greater extinction risk in populations under high livestock pressure compared with ones under low or moderate pressures. Extinction risk decreased when fire return intervals shortened in populations under low or moderate livestock pressure; however, the opposite pattern emerged in heavily browsed populations, where short intervals between fires increased extinction. 4. Elasticity analyses showed that decreases in viability under frequent disturbance interactions (heavy browsing and frequent fire) may be explained by selection against seed dormancy in populations with frequent browsing and trampling. This may potentially cause populations to collapse when fires kill above-ground plants without populations being able to recover from a seed bank. 5. Synthesis and applications: Incorporating disturbance interactions can result in a different assessment of viability of a fire-adapted species than considering fire regimes alone. In Mediterranean ecosystems, fire management may be more effective when integrating moderate human activities. However, replacing fires by human disturbances, a currently widespread strategy in many fire-prone ecosystems, is not recommended since it may fundamentally alter population dynamics and selection pressures and decrease viability of fire-adapted species.

opencc-zeroDec 2012View details →

Data from: The carnivorous plant described as Sarracenia alata contains two cryptic species

Modern methods for species delimitation provide biologists with the power to detect cryptic diversity in nearly any system. To illustrate the application of such methods, we collected data (21 sequence loci) from a carnivorous plant in southeastern North America and applied several recently developed methods (Gaussian clustering, Structurama, BPP, spedeSTEM). The pale pitcher plant Sarracenia alata inhabits the southeastern USA along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Sarracenia alata populations are separated by the Mississippi River and Atchafalaya Basin, a known biogeographical barrier in this region, but the cohesiveness of S. alata as currently classified has not been tested rigorously. Multiple analytical approaches (including allelic clustering and species trees methods) suggest that S. alata comprises two cryptic lineages that correspond to the eastern and western portions of the plant's distribution. That such clear genetic evidence for cryptic diversity exists within S. alata and is in conflict with other sources of data (e.g. morphology, environmental differentiation) illustrates a conundrum faced by those who investigate species boundaries: genetic data are often the first type of data to accumulate evidence of differentiation, but most existing taxonomic treatments are based on nongenetic data. Our results suggest that S. alata as currently described contains two cryptic species, and we recommend the elevation of the western populations to species status.

opencc-zeroDec 2015View details →

Data from: Mutualists or parasites? Context-dependent influence of symbiotic fly larvae on carnivorous investment in the Albany pitcher plant

Carnivorous plants allocate more resources to carnivorous structures under nutrient-limited conditions, and relative investment can also be influenced by animals (infauna) that live in association with these plants and feed on their prey. We investigated these effects within a population of the pitcher plant Cephalotus follicularis containing varying densities of larvae of the fly Badisis ambulans. For plants with a relatively high proportion of adult pitchers, increasing larval density was associated with lower relative leaf allocation to new pitcher buds. For plants with relatively few adult pitchers, however, there was greater relative leaf allocation to pitcher buds with increasing larval density. In a field experiment, there was no significant effect of experimental larval presence or absence on the change in carbon-to-nitrogen (C/N) ratio of plants. Although the direction of the correlation between B. ambulans larvae and relative investment in carnivorous and non-carnivorous structures depends on the relative number of mature structures, whether the larvae enhance or reduce nutrient stress under different conditions remains unclear. The change in C/N was, however, less variable for pitchers that contained larvae, suggesting a stabilizing effect. Eighteen of 52 experimental pitchers were damaged by an unknown species, causing the pitcher fluid to drain. These pitchers were significantly more likely to survive if they contained larvae. These results suggest that the relationship between infauna and host varies with the initial resource status and environmental context of the host plant.

publicJan 2018View details →

Data from: Interacting livestock and fire may both threaten and increase viability of a fire-adapted Mediterranean carnivorous plant

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publicApr 2013View details →

Data from: The carnivorous plant described as Sarracenia alata contains two cryptic species

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