Date of Award
Fall 12-15-2011
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science (BS)
Department
Biology
College
College of Science
First Advisor
John J. Hutchens, Jr.
Abstract/Description
Venus fly traps (Dionaea muscipula Ellis) are carnivorous plants that live in nutrient poor soils and must digest insects to supplement their diets. When a Venus fly trap captures an insect, the plant's traps do not fully close for several minutes, which may allow small prey to escape. It would be beneficial for the plant to consume a large, nutrient-rich prey item as opposed to a small prey item. We tested the hypothesis that Venus fly traps select larger prey by offering plants small and large crickets. A Kruskal-Wallis test and Wilcoxon signed rank test were used to test significance of the results. These tests showed that the plants did not select prey based on size and instead captured and digested prey opportunistically.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Humenik, Jessica, "Selectivity of Prey Capture Based on Prey Size in the Venus Fly Trap (Dionaea muscipula Ellis)" (2011). Honors Theses. 101.
https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/honors-theses/101