Carnivorous Plants Glow/Fluoresce under UV Blacklight

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In this video I use a UV flashlight on some carnivorous plants to see if they glow. The Cephalotus, Nepenthes, Heliamphora and Venus Flytraps all seem to fluoresce, while the Roridula, Pinguicula and Sundews didn't. I currently don't own any other genus of carnivorous plants but hopefully I can get some Sarracenia, Darlingtonia, or Bromeliads to test in the future.
Here's the paper detailing fluorescence under a 366nm light: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/a...
The paper shows that removing the fluorescent effect reduced prey capture so the fluorescence is likely an adaptation for carnivory. The paper also mentions that some carnivorous plants don't fluoresce: "Drosera, Pinguicula and Utricularia prey traps showed only red chlorophyll emissions at 366 nm."
On the flip side, the paper has criticisms like in this German article which points out flaws in the previous paper's methodology:
www.hartmeyer.de/ArtikelundBer...
Here's a paper about fluorescence in Heliamphora:
cpn.carnivorousplants.org/art...
The flashlight I used was this one: Alonefire SV003 10W 365nm
www.aliexpress.com/item/33026...
The 395nm one I also have didn't cause any fluorescence.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro/Disclaimer
6:52 395nm non-working light
7:56 Cephs, Helis, Drosera
12:19 Neps, Helis
15:38 Pinguicula
16:15 Cephs
17:44 Drosera, Pinguicula
18:55 Helis, Cephs closeup
22:16 Non-carnivorous plants
22:42 Venus Flytraps
25:29 H. sarracenioides
26:18 Conclusion

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21 июл 2024

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Комментарии : 7

@sethkarma2072 Год назад

Thankyou for making this, this is so freaking cool.

@phreakwars 2 года назад

You have inspired me. Gave me a great idea.

@ravingcyclist624 2 года назад

Excellent. My B52's traps and new growth fluoresce a rose color. The moss new growth fluoresces slightly. 365nm light.

@ADAD-hi3vh 2 года назад

Woah I didn't even know Cephs could fluoresce!

@marcfruchtman9473 2 года назад

Interesting. Yea, it sounds to me like the better way to pursue that experiment would be a simple gene knockout, to remove the ability of the gene to produce the fluorescence. (Not perfect, but it should help reduce a lot of the problems).

@ZongyiYang 2 года назад

Thinking over it a bit more, I think an alternate experiment is to have a plant that's not very fluorescent, then paint it with some fluorescent pigment, then measure visitation rates compared to a control. The paint might affect capture since it might make it less slippery, so it needs to be visitation instead of just pure capture. Knocking out genes might also lead to some interesting experiments, but I think the fluorescence is entwined with fundamental plant stuff like nectar or wax generation that it might mess the traps up even more.

@Muonium1 Год назад

Don't think fluorescence! Think absorbance! Fluorescence is only dramatic and beautiful to us humans because we can see the rich saturated colors of the re-radiated visible light, but we can't see the UV light! The insects often can see the UV light and so may care much less about the visible light. In order to see what the insects are seeing and make inferences about the plants' evolutionary adaptations with respect to the insect behavior, you need to BLOCK the visible light from getting in the camera and use a UV pass filter to see only 365nm radiation. Many of the fluorescent parts of the plant then should look suspiciously BLACK, because they're anomalously absorbing more UV than they otherwise could due to their ability to harmlessly radiate that energy away again via fluorescence in visible light. The fluorescence of visible light is probably just an irrelevant side effect, it is probably only the absorbance of UV that is doing the relevant insect attracting 'work'.