The mechanical basis for snapping of the Venus flytrap, Darwin’s ‘most wonderful plant in the world’

The carnivorous Venus flytrap catches prey by an ingenious snapping mechanism. Based on work over the past 190 years, it has become generally accepted that two touches of the trap’s sensory hairs within 30 seconds, each one generating an action potential, are required to trigger closure of the trap. We developed an electromechanical model which, however, suggests that under certain circumstances one touch is sufficient to generate two action potentials. Using a force-sensing microrobotics system, we precisely quantified the sensory hair deflection parameters necessary to trigger trap closure, and correlated them with the elicited action potentials in vivo. Our results confirm the model’s predictions, suggesting that the Venus flytrap may be adapted to a wider range of prey movement than previously assumed.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  bioRxiv

• Publication date

  2019-07-10

• Fields of study

  Biology, Physics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1101/697797
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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