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Breeding Drosera for Speed?

Jefforever

A yellow M&M
I was just thinking that one of the most important traits of D. capensis is its ability to move once an insect is caught.

What if a number of plants were tested for different speeds and the faster ones are crossed?

Does the age of the leaf effect the speed?

Since capensis flower so often, it wouldn't take nearly as long to reach some desired traits as it would for other species/genuses.

Any comments?

Thanks,
 
Just a thought, but wouldn't the faster the movements mean the more energy consumed by the plant? A faster plant would mean a more vulnerable plant (ex. a twig gets stuck on the leaf, leaf wraps around stick and consumes energy for nothing).

It would be cool to see the cape leaf start wrapping around a fly a minute or so after it landing there.
 
That sounds like a cool idea. I would want a capensis that closes as fast as a VFT! lol
 
I have capensis and burmannii any idea if they can be crossed?
 
nope. too distant.

i dont think itll work. speed isnt an inherited trait. as a group all dews close in tentacles and wrap around the prey at the same speed. this excludes the specialized tentacles on burmanni, pauciflora and several of the pygmies. those are different and are a means of holding down the prey. but you give say capensis and aliciae a large live fly that are the same size. the capensis may be more dramatic. but the tentacles move the same speed.

Alex
 
Speed is influenced partly by temperature and the age of the leaf. Old leaves curl less and slower.

Dionaea leaves have been clocked at closing around 100 milliseconds (1/10th of a second). The "snap tentacles" of Drosera glanduligera have also been clocked at around the same speed.

Dionaea owe their speed to the double curved design of the leaves through an action called "snap buckling" as described in the Jan 27, 2008 issue of the journal "Nature".

The snap tentacles of Drosera glanduligera owe their speed to the "hinge" structure on the snap tentacles.

Incidentally the structure of the trigger hairs of Dionaea have been shown to be quite similar to the lamina (tentacles) of Drosera. Dionaea trigger hairs also have a "hinge" structure. The glands at the end of Drosera lamina and the inside of Dionaea traps are also nearly identical. This further reinforces the hypothesis that Dionaea evolved from Drosera. Taxonomists have placed Drosera and Dionaea in the the same family Droseraceae along with Aldrovanda.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if the D. glanduligera snap tentacle hinge uses some form of "snap buckling".

Leaf curling in Drosera and the phase II closure of Dionaea traps I would hazard to guess use the same mechanism.

So nature has beaten you to the punch. Dionaea and Aldrovanda are faster Drosera.
 
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