Carnivorous plants change their diet: traps as toilet bowls

In tropical mountains, the number of insects declines with increasing altitude. This intensifies in high altitudes competition between plant species that specialize in catching insects as an important source of nutrients. How creatively some of these plant species have reacted to this situation is shown by an international research team with Prof. Dr. Gerhard Gebauer from the University of Bayreuth in the "Annals of Botany". In mountain regions on Borneo, some species of the pitcher plant Nepenthes have changed their diet: With their traps, which originally served to capture insects, they catch the excrement of mammals and are thus even better supplied with nutrients than before.