New ‘Crime Scene Investigation’ Might Save Endangered Carnivorous Plants

Researchers have joined macro photography with DNA metabarcoding to create a brand-new botanical “CSI” device that might hold the key to safeguarding the future of Australia’s critically endangered carnivorous plants.

The brand-new technology– developed by researchers from Curtin University, the Botanical and Zoological Natural History Collections in Munich, and the University of Munich– enables specialists to take a sophisticated look inside the stomachs of carnivorous plants, overcoming an obstacle that had previously baffled entomologists.

Researchers set off on a 6,000 kilometers journey to Western Australia’s remote Kimberley region to test the new technique, recording macro photographs of carnivorous plants of the genus Drosera, known by sundews.

Lead author Mr. Thilo Krueger, a Ph.D. senior from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said understanding how many and what sort of insects carnivorous plants ate was critical to their survival.

“Western Australia has– without a doubt– the greatest number of carnivorous plant types in the world, and many of them are critically endangered, endangered by habitat damage, environmental pollution, and climate change,” Mr. Krueger said.

Quite often, several carnivorous plant types are found in one habitat. The question arises if different types may rely upon different food sources. To build up conservation plans that protect their future, it is necessary to recognize their biology, which includes what they consume– their natural prey ranges.

“Examining the target ranges of carnivorous plants has previously been hampered by the fact that digested insect prey is often hard to recognize, even by qualified entomologists. Soft-bodied insects such as midgets often turn into unlocated crumbs during digestion on the leaves.”

Co-author Dr. Adam Cross, a Botanist and Restoration Ecologist from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said the new technique joined macro photography of the captured insects with DNA metabarcoding, a cutting-edge insect identification tool.

“Any kind of insect that is captured by a carnivorous plant will certainly have traces of its genetic material or DNA, also after digestion by the plant. This DNA can be detected and compared to DNA libraries of recognized insects, thus identifying the prey,” Dr. Cross said.

“Because DNA metabarcoding is prone to contaminations and does not permit us to estimate the amount of prey, we carefully controlled our data utilizing macro photographs of the prey items to achieve an unprecedented completeness of prey ranges data.”

Senior author Dr. Andreas Fleischmann, from the Botanical Natural History Collection and the University of Munich, said this brand-new method of DNA metabarcoding was so delicate that it even identified small quantities of insect DNA that were not evident to researchers from area examination and macro photographs.

“Hence, our study of carnivorous prey spectra utilizing genetic DNA fingerprints from the captured insects appeared like reconstructing a crime scene– except our crime scene inquiry was about puzzle out what a set of carnivorous plants had for lunch,” Dr. Fleischmann said.

Journal Reference:

Thilo Krueger, Adam T. Cross, Jeremy Hübner, Jérôme Morinière, Axel Hausmann, Andreas Fleischmann. A novel approach for reliable qualitative and quantitative prey spectra identification of carnivorous plants combining DNA metabarcoding and macro photography. Scientific Reports, 2022; 12 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-08580-8

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