This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Biologists have discovered evidence that carnivorous plants in Canada feast on young salamanders, in what is believed to be the first instance of vertebrate consumption by plants in North America.

In study published in the journal Ecology, a pair of biologists in the province of Ontario found that northern pitcher plants – also known as turtle socks – devour juvenile spotted salamanders.

M Alex Smith, a professor of biology at Guelph University first discovered a salamander in a pitcher plant accidentally: he was leading a group of university students on a field course in Ontario’s Algonquin Park. But the sighting of the small amphibian in the plant felt like a “WTF moment”, Smith told the Guardian in an email.

After consulting with the park’s resident salamander expert, Patrick Moldowan, a PhD student at the University of Toronto, the two suspected Smith’s discovery might have been more than a chance sighting. After surveying pitcher plants in Algonquin, Moldowa found that 20% of plants had at least one juvenile spotted salamander in them. “The second WTF moment,” said Smith.

Carnivorous plants: so you thought the triffids were make-believe… Read more

The pitcher plant is one of nearly 600 carnivorous plants found throughout the world. Inhabiting much of Canada and the eastern United States, the pitcher thrives in low-nutrient areas, such as bogs.

The plant is well known for its appetite of invertebrates, like spiders and other small insects – but the discovery of decomposing salamanders significantly expands the scope of what plants may be consuming – and raises numerous questions.

“Are plants a significant form of mortality for the salamanders? Are the salamanders a significant form of nutrition for the plants? Are the salamanders, in fact, not a good thing for the plants?” said Smith.

What makes the research especially tantalizing, said Smith, is that while the plants and salamanders are relatively common sightings in the park, researchers didn’t realize the deadly relationship between the two.

The remote Wildlife Research Station in Algonquin park – the province’s oldest protected area – has been active for the last 70 years.

“This crazy discovery of previously unknown carnivory of a plant upon a vertebrate happened in a relatively well-studied area on relatively well-studied plants and animals!” said Smith.

The team is testing multiple hypotheses about what lures the young salamanders into the fatal grip of the pitcher plant. One suspicion is that the salamanders accidentally fall into the plants and drown. The plants might also have a digestive enzyme that speeds up the process: researchers observed it took less than two weeks for the salamanders to decompose.

“I hope and imagine that one day the general public’s interpretive pamphlet for the bog will one day say, “Stay on the board walk and watch your children – here be plants that eat vertebrates!!” said Smith.

• This article was amended on 13 June 2019 because salamanders are amphibians, not reptiles as an earlier version said. This has been corrected.