The moths are ready

The moths have developed into adult moths. I met back up with Rob and we, well mainly he, grabbed a moth with some tweezers and put it in to one of the traps. The problem was that the moths were quite strong relative to the flytrap and held on to the tweezers so they didn't get trapped.

Here is a video showing the attempts made to put the moths in. In the first attempt the moth escaped, in the second if wasn't trapped by the fly trap. For the third attempt we had to kill the moth first and Rob dropped it into one of the traps. We couldn't keep trying because there were only a few traps that we would be able to scan as they have to be on long stems.

Thank you very much to Rob, who organise the moths for me, and Josh who filmed the video.

Now the moth is in the trap I will wait a few hours and pass it on to Sharif to scan it.

The fly trap is growing - part 3

Here is my second attempt at showing a time lapse of the Venous fly trap growing. Unfortunately the camera got moved so I've had to cut it short. You can see several shoots growing and a couple of the traps open at the back. At the bottom of the video you can see one the the traps turning black as it dies. The plant obviously doesn't need this one any more!

I also found this cool video by Manu Prakash from Cornell University on Youtube. It shows how they imaged how a fly feeds.

The flytrap is growing! - part 2

Here is the time lapse video I made of the Venus flytrap growing.

As you can see, it didn't really work. The stem that I focused on did nothing interesting and the shoots that did grow, grew towards the camera so didn't stay in focus! There are some interesting things happening, like the traps opening at the back and the shoots that grow upward together and then spring apart.

I have moved the camera to focus on another area of the plant. I hope this will make a better video.

How do we catch a fly - alive?

If I couldn't catch a fly I had to think of an alternative. Some people suggested I bought some maggots from a fishing shop and raised them to be flies, but I wasn't sure what sort of flies they would grow into or how I would catch them.

The solution was given to me by my friend Tom, who knew Robert who was working with moth larvae here at the University. I emailed him asking if they had any insects in their department that I would be able to use. We met up and Robert showed me some fruit flies that someone was using, which I thought would be too small and the moths that grew from his larvae, which looked about the right size. Here is a picture of one of the moths taken by Robert.

We must now wait until a larva grows into a moth and then we can feed it to the Venus flytrap!

The flytrap is growing!

A found on the flytrap that there was a new shoot growing! I have set up a webcam to take a picture every 48 minutes. I hope to make a time lapse of the shoot growing. Watch this space!

I also noticed that there are some very small traps and much bigger traps. In this picture you can see a small trap in the centre at the bottom and a much larger trap behind it. These traps could belong to separate plants.