Open Your Trap

What am I looking at?

These images show the entrance leading into the trap, or bladder (1), of the aquatic bladderwort plant. You can see several long bristles encircling the trap (2); these bristles guide food into the trap. The hairlike structures, or trichomes (3), in the middle of the trap’s entryway, or valve, serve as a trigger to spring the trap whenever an aquatic invertebrate touches them. The colors in these images are a combination of autofluorescence (colors generated when a laser light interacts with certain molecules within a sample, which is a key step in confocal microscopy), and a red and white stain applied to the plant.

Biology in the background

The trap of an aquatic bladderwort is considered the most complex trapping organ in the plant kingdom. Bladderworts prefer waters with low nitrogen content, and they obtain this necessary nutrient by catching and digesting aquatic microfauna – water fleas, mosquito larvae, cyclops, etc.

The plant sets its bladder trap by pumping water out of the bladder, a job performed by specialized cells called quadrifid glands. Then, when an organism like a mosquito larva gets close enough to trigger the small hairs growing from the trap’s entryway, or valve, it buckles inward. The energy stored in the trap’s walls is released, and the prey is sucked in within 1/35th of a second.

The bladder pictured here is only about 1.5 to 2 millimeters long, or roughly 20 to 25 times as thick as a human hair.

Technique

This image was created using confocal microscopy.