[HN Gopher] New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest
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New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest
Author : bryan0
Score : 157 points
Date : 2021-08-09 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| marconey wrote:
| read the title as Coronavirus Plant
| badwolf wrote:
| As a canivorous plant enthusiast, this news today excites me!
| What a fascinating plant, maintaining a balance between consuming
| and allowing pollinators to move along.
| a-dub wrote:
| did anybody ask the plant if it was okay with its genes being
| sequenced?!
|
| isn't this, like, what we all have feared regarding genomic data
| falling into the government's hands?
|
| people paid by the government stole this poor innocent plant's
| genomes and then ran it through their fancy machines that claimed
| dubious statistical similarity with the genes of murderers,
| then...
|
| people paid by the government then showed up, radioinfused some
| fruitflies, stuck them on this poor innocent plant, denied it
| food and water, waited for the flies to die and decompose, dug up
| traces in the plant and then declared it a MURDERER for fame and
| fortune.
|
| this is way scarier than apple checking hashes of images to see
| if they're evidence of exploitation of children in their icloud
| photo uploader... wake up sheeple!!!
|
| VEGETABLE RIGHTS AND PEACE
| pharrington wrote:
| "Nobody would be looking at a flower stalk as the primary mode of
| carnivory"
|
| This is probably exactly what the plant is betting on. It's a
| nice perceptive check on our own individual intelligence as
| humans.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Nature is a hacker and finds a way.
|
| I'll think twice whenever I encounter a sticky plant part from
| now on.
|
| Edit - obligatory:
|
| _Feed me, Seymour. Feed me all night long._
| vmception wrote:
| > betting
|
| > intelligence
|
| thats not how natural selection works
|
| some mutant blew its load into the wind and the mutant spawns
| survived, thats the whole story until we find a communication
| or same generation reaction mechanism that leads to different
| future adaptations
| _ph_ wrote:
| Faszinating! :)
|
| Having looked into carnivorous plants for a while, I am so glad
| they never grew significantly bigger...
| xnx wrote:
| When you think of climate change, think of all the habitats that
| are being altered and how that might lead to extinction of plants
| with unique and unknown characteristics.
| ajross wrote:
| Headline is a bit spun. The plant is known and has been attested
| since the 19th century. That it was carnivorous is the new
| discovery. It has a sticky stem, and is (somehow, though it seems
| like they didn't identify a mechanism) digesting insects that get
| stuck to it.
| libria wrote:
| "Spun" is a little harsh. It's not easy to say concisely and
| the shorter version wouldn't capture significantly more
| audience that the longer version (IMO).
|
| "New carnivorous attribute of known plant discovered in Pacific
| Northwest", perhaps?
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| "Plant discovered to be carnivorous"
|
| I don't understand why not just say it -- it sounds pretty
| exciting to me.
| gweinberg wrote:
| I actually think it's more exciting this way. Think about
| it if it wasn't just eating bugs. Which is more exciting:
| "We've discovered a new species of plant, and it's a man-
| eater" or "this well-known plant has secretly been eating
| people all along"?
| nicoburns wrote:
| "Plant in Pacific Northwest newly discovered to be
| carnivorous" if you wanted to be accurate, but I think the
| original title is fine.
| Quikinterp wrote:
| I like the technique of testing if it was carnivorous. For the
| lazy people, they put a nitrogen isotope inside fruitflies and
| then tested the plant later to see if it was absorbing the
| nitrogen, and it was.
| grawprog wrote:
| I've got a specimen of one of these preserved in a photoalbum
| from a school project from 10 years ago or so. There was no idea
| at the time these were in any way carnivorous.
|
| For all our knowledge, there really is so much about all the
| other life around us we just don't understand.
| kgc wrote:
| I initially read that as "new coronavirus plant" ... Whew!
| scardycat wrote:
| What an interesting find! The biodiversity of our home planet is
| amazing.
|
| If you enjoy learning more about carnivorous plants, I highly
| recommend 'Plants Behaving Badly' on PBS[1].
|
| 1. https://www.pbs.org/show/plants-behaving-badly/
| immmmmm wrote:
| downvote this one at will:
|
| to be extinct in a decade because no one is taking fresh IPCC
| report, AR6 WP1, seriously. and not giving long to endemic plants
| in this context.
| ineedasername wrote:
| One again showing that the _Plants vs. Zombie_ developers were
| very prescient.
|
| The question we must ask ourselves is who were the true heros of
| those games? The plants that had developed to the point of nearly
| nuclear destructive capabilities? Or humanity, which may have had
| few options except for adopting the resilience of the undead to
| have any chance at survival against the Green Menace?
| h2odragon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Against_the_Chtorr
| dado3212 wrote:
| > "I suspect," says Graham, "that there might be more carnivorous
| plants out there than we think"
|
| This is a pretty interesting closing idea. From the article it
| seems they were originally flagged to this by a genomic
| commonality with other carnivorous plants. What percentage of
| plant genomes are sequenced that could be searched for this
| similar deletion?
| ineedasername wrote:
| Maybe I've just seen _" Little Shop of Horrors"_ too many times
| but "interesting" seems a less accurate attitude for me towards
| these discoveries than _kill it with fire!_
|
| Though as long as insects are the primary target I'm prepared
| to entertain the option of a cautious cold war rather than all-
| out destruction.
| tomcam wrote:
| Sigh. Duly upvoted. If only our friends on HN were a little
| bit more alert to humor.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| If what you want to read is a reddit kill it with fire joke
| thread you can just go to reddit. There's nothing wrong
| with wanting that, but there's no need to wish for it or
| encourage it here.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This clearly wasn't a reddit "Kill it with fire!!!" post.
|
| There was a whole 2nd graph talking about consideration
| of how a kill-it-with-fire decision would affect other
| living things, non-human even. Clearly more thought than
| a reddit post would have given. Seeing how reddit is deem
| such low class on this esteemed and high class board.
| dylan604 wrote:
| However, the Andromeda Strain should also teach to not so
| quickly use fire.
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| The article mentioned that they began to suspect the plant was
| carnivorous when they noticed it was missing a specific gene. I'd
| be curious to know what that gene is, and why it's linked to
| carnivorous plants.
| IntrepidWorm wrote:
| Not a geneticist or a botanist here, but I would assume that
| because it is carnivorous, it gains a particular set of
| nutrients from the fruit flies and thus does not need to absorb
| these compounds through the root system. The gene or set of
| genes responsible for processing nutrients through the root
| would thus not be needed and would eventually be deactivated or
| disappear entirely over the evolution of the species.
| ogwh wrote:
| Just speculating but it might have something to do with
| nutrient absorption. Much in the same way we lost the ability
| to synthesise vitamin C and now take it in from our diet, these
| plants may gain a nutrient from their prey that they no longer
| need to produce themselves.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Interesting that they started with data. Some of the most
| interesting discoveries I've made have started with me saying
| "that's weird" while looking at data. From the article:
|
| "Graham's team was doing an unrelated project on plant genetics
| and noticed that the western false asphodel had a genetic
| deletion that's sometimes seen in carnivorous plants. The
| researchers started to think about the fact that this flower grew
| in the kind of environment that's home to various other insect-
| eating plants.
|
| "And then they have these sticky stems," Graham says. "So, you
| know, it was kind of like, hmm, I wonder if this could be a sign
| that this might be carnivorous."
| ajkjk wrote:
| I've long felt that the American school system's version of the
| scientific method (formulate hypothesis, run experiment,
| collect data, draw conclusions) is totally wrong and turns
| people off of science.
|
| The real procedure that we should teach kids is: collect data,
| ask questions about it, hypothesize some answers, and only then
| do a experiment to test your theory. The question formulation,
| based on observational evidence, is where all of the
| interesting science really happens.
| icelancer wrote:
| Both lead to common biases - the former in fraudulent
| experimentation, the latter (your suggestion) in fraudulent
| data snooping and anecdotal case-finding. Both have their
| merits done correctly, however, but the latter is only
| possible because of the former - the data has to come from
| somewhere, and experimentation was how it was historically
| done... since there wasn't a global database upon
| instantiation of the planet.
| diegs wrote:
| IANAPOSE (I am not a philosophy of science expert) but I
| think a happy medium is to observe, collect data, and look
| for things that are interesting, and then perform properly
| formulate experiments to test those hypotheses.
|
| I think that focusing on either side alone can lead to
| biases and problematic science, and focusing on both is
| actually the most "fun"
| floatingatoll wrote:
| This model is especially valuable when paired with a teacher
| who can mentor the students in expanding the horizons of kids
| during the "ask questions about it" step, because you'll end
| up with a class full of people who reflexively cross-
| pollinate problems and solutions across multiple domains.
| dshpala wrote:
| Now we just need to bio-engineer them to grow larger stems, so
| that they could catch larger flies. And voila - natural (and
| pretty) fly paper!
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| The fly paper angle is interesting, larger stems could probably
| be done with traditional breeding methods. Hard predict how
| well it would work though.
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