The slippery zone in pitchers of the carnivorous plant Nepenthes alata bears scattered prominent lunate cells and displays continuous epicuticular crystalline wax coverage. The aim of this study was to examine the influence of the surface anisotropy, caused by the shape of lunate cells, on insect attachment ability. Traction tests with ladybird beetles Coccinella septempunctata were performed i...

Major League Baseball uses statistics to determine awards every season. The batting champion is given to the player with the highest batting average. The Cy Young Award is given to the top pitcher which is determined by many different statistics including earned run average (ERA). Batting average and ERA have been used for many years and are major statistics in baseball. Neither batting average...

The northern pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea) receives some of its nutrients from the decomposition of prey that fall into its pitcher-shaped leaves. The majority of prey consists of ants, beetles, spiders, and slugs, and in rare cases, frogs and lizards. Here we report on the unusual occurrence of 22 Red-spotted Newt larvae (Notophthalmus viridescens viridescens) trapped within northern pit...

Our objective was to study physical characteristics of the purple pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea) in northern Michigan to determine an effect on the amount (biomass) and richness of insect prey capture. We examined pitcher density, amount of red venation, and pitcher size (length, mouth diameter, and keel width) of 40 pitchers. The catch contained individuals from eleven different insect Or...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Nepenthes pitchers are sophisticated traps that employ a variety of mechanisms to attract, capture and retain prey. The underlying morphological structures and physiological processes are subject to change over the lifetime of a pitcher. Here an investigation was carried out on how pitcher properties and capture efficiency change over the first 2 weeks after pitcher opening....

The rotation of starting pitchers is a strategic issue which has a significant impact on the performance of a professional team. Choosing an optimal starting pitcher from among many alternatives is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. In this study, a model using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is ...

Pitcher plant, Nepenthes spp., is one of the carnivorous plants, which produces unique pitcher structure from the tip of leaf tendril for trapping and digestion of insect prey to acquire nutrients at habitats that are deprived of nitrogen. Nepenthes ampullaria is special when compared with other pitcher plants as it has evolved a detritivore habit for the acquisition of nutrients from leaf litt...

The community of organisms inhabiting the water-filled leaves of the carnivorous pitcher-plant Sarracenia purpurea includes arthropods, protozoa and bacteria, and serves as a model system for studies of food web dynamics. Despite the wealth of data collected by ecologists and zoologists on this food web, very little is known about the bacterial assemblage in this microecosystem. We used termina...

Spiders are often found as residents in association with Sarracenia purpurea (Purple Pitcher Plant). Many spiders choose web locations based on environmental cues such as vegetation structure and composition, prey density, temperature, and humidity. To determine if spiders use cues from the Purple Pitcher Plant to build their webs, we conducted a field study using variants of the plant that sep...