Last night I saw a program about the Tepuis on the Discovery
Channel. Apparently it was made by Germans, though all the guys in the
video were probably Venezuelans (or Germans who spoke perfect Spanish at
least). They climbed up Mt.Roraima and then took a helicopter over to
Mt.Cuquenam. Anyways, it showed some beautiful scenery and one block was
dedicated to CPs! It showed a Venezuelan called Jorge who was studying
the insects caught by Heliamphora pitchers. I believe the Heliamphora
species in that area is H.nutans, right Jan?
Also shown were flowers of U.humboldtii, a few D.roraimae, and
B.reducta. They didn't really explain much how each worked and only
showed them quickly. There was an explanation as to why the CPs were
CPs and thus could survive on the barren tepuis were. As usual there were
also a few moments when I was taken by involuntary muscle spasms like
when they said that the Heliamphora "flowers" were shaped into pitchers
(the Spanish translation was "petals"). They also showed some mosquito
larvae swimming in the fluid and marveled at how they could survive in
the "corrosive enzyme pool", which by what we CP'ers have been told is
just plain rainwater containing common decomposers.
On a similar subject, yesterday I saw an article in 'Oecologia'
mentioning how they've just discovered in Spain a new subspecies of a
mite which lives on the leaves of Pinguicula longifolia. It's apparently
small enough to walk between and under the glandular hairs (they
compared with P.alpina and P.vulgaris which had shorter, more densely
packed glandular hairs) and feeds on the remains of the prey. They don't
seem to compete with the plants like the assasin bugs in Australia. The
pool of digestive enzymes around the prey keeps the mites aways until
after digestion is complete, thus the mites only eat what the plant
doesn't. The mites' intestines were analyzed and it was found that they
also ate fungi and it was suggested that the mites were probably helpful
to the plants, removing fungi which could be harmful and which would
easily proliferate on the dead insect carcasses. All life cycle stages of
the mite were found on the ping's leaves, suggesting that it probably is
'endemic' to P.longifolia.
Fernando Rivadavia
Sao Paulo, Brasil