Carnivorous Plants Unique Underwater TrapBladderworts, carnivorous plants in the genus Utricularia, use a suction trapping mechanism that takes less than a millisecond, making them one of the fastest among known plants, according to a study published online in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B on Feb. 16.

Researchers from the University of Freiburg in Germany and the University of Grenoble in France teamed up to reveal the bladderwort’s unique mechanism, using high-speed video imaging and special microscopy techniques.

These underwater plants tend to live in nutrient-poor environments and use millimeter-sized suction traps to catch their prey, including mosquito larvae and small crustaceans, which are then broken down with digestive enzymes.

The team looked at three species of bladderworts and, using various models, revealed a repetitive buckling mechanism that involves trigger hairs. The plants buckle and unbuckle their trapdoors to create a suction swirl. Fluid acceleration is high, reaching up to 600 times that of gravity, according to a press release.

“This kind of change of shape is very abrupt,” said physicist Philippe Marmottant from the University of Grenoble, according to Wired.com.

The traps are autonomously repetitive as they fire spontaneously for 5 to 20 hours and reset actively to their ready-to-catch condition, according to the study. This remarkable valve mechanism has a great variety of biometric applications, for example in “microfluidic devices.”

“Bladderworts act like a small pipette,” Marmottant said. “This could be used in miniature devices.”

Read the research paper at http://bit.ly/ePpTl5