March 17, 2020
Spring is here. The flowers are in bloom and new pitchers are growing. The first pitcher to open this season is a large bugbat. I always like to see what it looks like on “opening day” Last year I was surprised to find that the mites had already colonized the pitcher. (The mites got there before the ants.) I spotted a few blobby mites, but not as many as before. Last year, there were a dozen wandering around the lip of the pitcher. I didn’t spot any on the lip of this pitcher. I did see a few mites inside. There were also a lot of “water droplets” inside as well. (not sure whether the droplets are from condensation or they are produced by the plant.) At around 3:54 I blob can be seen inside one of these droplets. Also, a few poorly focused mites can be seen just to the left of the mite in the water droplet. (I didn’t spot them til I was writing this post. They are very easy to miss)
The way the mites show up on opening day still raises many questions. How did they know a new pitcher was opening? I had previously speculated that they were “called” by the plant. That the new pitcher emitted a chemical attractant to invite them in. Perhaps it's the same nectar that attracts prey, but you would expect ants to be there opening day and I haven’t seen any. Perhaps the newly opened pitcher has a specific pheromone for the mites. Where is an analytical chemist when you need one?
Check out the same pitcher, a couple of weeks later. It's captured flies, roaches and a ton of ants. An army of blobby mites are busy eating. It looks like it has a fully matured ecosystem inside.
More opening day stuff https://drmayhem12.wixsite.com/insidepitcherplants/blog/categories/opening-day