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.

How to keep the flytrap alive during the experiment?

In it's original pot the flytrap was too tall for the x-ray machine so we couldn't put the whole plant in. To solve this problem, I transferred the plant into a much shallower dish. I dug the plant out of the original pot by running a dinner knife around the edge. I carefully tipped the pot sideways until the plant began to slide out of the pot. The moss around the plant helped to hold the soil and plant together. The roots of the flytrap were very short and did not reach very far into the pot. I tipped the remaining soil from the terracotta pot into the shallow dish and then placed the flytrap on top. I gently patted the soil in around the plant.

Once the plant was in the new dish I carefully watered it. I have to add the water gradually now because the dish is so shallow it is very easy to pour on too much and then it flows over the edge of the dish making a lot of mess!

I hope the plant will survive the transfer to it's new home.

I cut a short piece from a drinking straw and placed it around one of the stems. This was quite a fiddly job. I had to be very careful not to damage the plant. I accidentally touched some of the traps near the base and they closed. They should open again in a few days when they realise they have been tricked! The drinking straw holds the stem up, keeping it vertical. This is not natural for the Venus flytrap but it will make it easier to x-ray an individual trap.

What settings should be used on the x-ray machine?

The flytrap that Julia gave me had some traps that were already closed. Sharif and I decided to carry out a test scan with one of these to find out what settings the x-ray machine needed and what we would be able to see.

In the x-ray machine you have to place the sample, the thing you want to x-ray, on a stage. Our first problem was that the pot containing the flytrap was too tall. The stage could not be lowered enough to get the leaves the flytrap in front of the x-ray source (this is where the x-rays are shot out from towards the sample).

As a solution, I cut off a trap that had caught a fly. We could see one of the wings sticking out of the top! Sharif placed the stem inside a short piece of a drinking straw and carefully packed in some oasis. Oasis is a foam which holds water, it is used by flower arrangers. It would help to keep the stem still while it was being x-rayed.

Sharif placed the straw in a sample holder and put it in the machine. It was now the right height. Sharif set up the machine and scanned the sample. Although this will give us an image to look at, the trap I cut off will die, so we won't be able to use it again.

Now we have to wait for the results. We also have to work out how we can put the whole plant in the scanner so we don't have to cut off a stem to put it in the x-ray machine and keep it alive so we can scan it multiple times.