Scientists Discover First Pitcher Plant With Underground Traps [Watch]

Pitcher plants are known for capturing their prey in their traps or pitchers, but a team of researchers has discovered a rather unique species that keeps its traps concealed underground.

Many people are already familiar with pitcher plants. These are the carnivorous plants that use their pitchers to trap their prey. But in the paper, published in the journal PhytoKeys, a team of researchers described their discovery of a pitcher plant in Borneo that actually captures its prey underground.

As the researchers explained, most other carnivorous plants form their traps above the ground or in water. Even though there are already three carnivorous plants known to trap their prey underground, they use "different trapping mechanisms." Furthermore, all the others are known to capture only "minuscule organisms."

The one they discovered, however, is said to be the first pitcher plant known to trap and "dine on subterranean prey," Pensoft Publishers noted.

"In fact, this species places its up-to-11-cm-long pitchers underground, where they are formed in cavities or directly in the soil and trap animals living underground, usually ants, mites and beetles," the study's lead author, Martin Dančák of Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic, said, as per Pensoft.

One can see how the species look in this picture, as well as in the video shared by Pensoft, courtesy of Dančák.

The discovery actually dates back to 2012.

"(W)e noted plants which were undoubtedly Nepenthes but produced no pitchers. After a careful search, we found a couple of aerial pitchers, a few juvenile terrestrial ones, and one deformed pitcher protruding from the soil," one of the study authors and a member of the research team, Ľuboš Majeský of Palacký University Olomouc, said, according to Pensoft. "At first, we thought it was an accidentally buried pitcher and that local environmental conditions had caused the lack of other pitchers."

But eventually, the team discovered that the plants had maroon-colored underground pitchers. In it, they found organisms such as nematodes and even a worm that was later found to be a new species as well, one of the study authors, Václav Čermák of the Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic, said, as per Pensoft.

"The subterranean growth habit of Nepenthes pudica was consistently observed across the five studied sites but was not shared by the sympatric Nepenthes species, demonstrating that it was not simply the result of unusual local conditions," the researchers wrote.

The name Nepenthes pudica is derived from the Latin pudicus, meaning shy or bashful, owing to the plant's trait of having a concealed pitcher.

It's possible that the species evolved to keep its traps underground because the environment there is more stable and perhaps has more prey during dry periods, according to another study author, Michal Golos of the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.

The species is endemic to Borneo. However, the researchers did not specify its exact location to protect it from the threat of poaching.

In terms of its conservation status, all the areas where the plant was found were outside a national park, making it "legally unprotected." Based on its small population, "restricted distribution" and the threats of possible habitat loss, the researchers believe it could qualify as "critically endangered" under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

The authors hope that its discovery could help protect the rainforests where it exists.

"Its discovery underlines the natural richness of Borneo's rainforest and the necessity to preserve this important ecosystem with its enormous and still undiscovered biodiversity," the researchers wrote.