Enzymatic Liquid Digests Insects

close up photography of a bug trapped in a green and red plant

Biological Strategy

Green pitcher plant

AskNature Team

Image: Beatriz Moisset / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY SA - Creative Commons Attribution + ShareAlike

Chemically Break Down Organic Compounds

The vast majority of biochemical assembly and breakdown processes–even by the most complex organisms–occur within cells. In fact, cells are able to perform hundreds, even thousands of chemical transformations at the same time under life-friendly conditions (ambient temperature and pressure in an aqueous environment). Part of the reason that decomposition reactions (chemical breakdown) can occur under such mild conditions is because most often, they occur in a stepwise, enzyme-mediated fashion, sipping or releasing small amounts of energy at each step. For example, the breakdown of glucose to pyruvate–and the release of energy–occurs in the 10-step enzyme catalyzed process of glycolysis.

Search this Function

Flowering Plants

Clade Angiosperms (“receptacle seed”): Dandelions, oaks, grasses, cacti, apples

With 416 families containing some 300,000 known species, angiosperms are the most diverse group of plants, and they can be found around the globe in a wide variety of habitats. They are characterized by seeds that grow enclosed in ovaries, which are enclosed in flowers. The floral organs then develop into fruits of myriad kinds and dimensions, from simple seed casings on maples to elaborate fleshy growths like papayas. The oldest flower known from fossils, Montsechia vidalii, appeared during the Jurassic Period 130 million years ago. They are the primary food source for herbivorous animals, which in turn makes them the indirect food source for carnivores as well.

Search this Living System

Liquid found in trumpet pitcherplants digests insects enzymatically.

“In the southern part of the United States, another member of the same family, the trumpet pitcher, has elaborated this simple structure. The hood at the top is much bigger and so vividly coloured that it might be mistaken at first sight for a flower…Nectar glands cover these hoods so densely that they glisten. Additional glands are scattered rather more thinly all over the outer surface of the trumpet itself. And the liquid within is more potent than the Venezuelan marsh pitchers, for it is quite capable by itself of digesting insects without any help from bacteria.” (Attenborough 1995:74-76)