Three species of the carnivorous bladderwort Utricularia (U. uliginosa, U. uniflora and U. gibba) were studied in the field to determine the fauna content or prey, within their bladder-traps. The immediate soil/water environment was also sampled to determine the fauna present, in order to enable comparison between the prey fauna and the surrounding fauna. Comparison of the trap fauna with the soil/water fauna revealed evidence of selectivity in trapping: the trap fauna were not simply a random sample of the soil/water fauna. A glasshouse experiment was designed to determine whether the terrestrial bladderwort species U. uliginosa gained any growth advantage from carnivory. Three organism treatments were factorially combined with three Nitrogen levels. The advantage to plants of trapping meiofauna was apparent at the two lower N-levels, but not at the highest N-level. The nitrogen treatments did not confer any significant advantage on plant growth for leaf and trap numbers or stolon length. Nitrogen level did however have a significant effect on leaf area at harvest 2, with plants in the middle nitrogen level having more leaf area than plants in the lower and higher nitrogen levels / Master of Science (Hons)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/235692 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Jobson, Richard W., University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, Faculty of Science and Technology, School of Science |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Source | THESIS_FST_SS_Jobson_R.xml |
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