In an unusual symbiotic relationship, an insect-eating pitcher plant called Nepenthes bicalcarata has been shown to team up with a diving ant that only lives in this breed of plant to prevent fly larvae from stealing the its nutrients, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The Nepenthes bicalcarata has slippery walls, any insect that walks on the lip of the plant will slide down into a pool of fluids. The fluids are fairly weak but do eventually break down the insects for nutrients.
While most insects would drown inside the plant, the Camponotus schmitzi ant has feet built to maneuver the slippery goo on the plant's walls and can dive to the bottom of the pitcher to retrieve other dead bugs for food.
It's clear the benefits that the ants gets from the deal, but it has now been discovered that the Nepenthes bicalcarat enjoys benefits as well.
A study done in a journal, PLOS One, explained the ants improve the health of the plants by keeping the their surface clean, but the most important part is that they eat fly and mosquito larvae that can harm the Nepenthes bicalcarata by sucking up important nutrients.
When the ants eat the larvae they help the plant not only by getting rid of them, but by actually giving the plant more nutrients with their waste.
To test this theory, scientists placed ants and larvae together in the pitcher fluid and watched what happened. The ants attacked the larvae, and even dragged them out of the fluid to finish consuming them.
"Kneeling down in the swamp amidst huge pitcher plants in a Bornean rainforest, it was a truly jaw-dropping experience when we first noticed how very aggressive and skilled the Camponotus schmitziants were in underwater hunting," wrote lead author Mathias Scharmann, an insect biomechanics student at the University of Cambridge. "It was a mosquito massacre!"
