Marc Milne publishes research in Ecosphere

Marc Milne, assistant professor of biology, published new research in Ecosphere, an online Ecology journal. Deborah Waller of Old Dominion University was co-author. Read the paper here.

The publication is titled, “Carnivorous plants eat a diet of certain spiders, regardless of what’s on the menu.” The research attempted to determine how specific the purple pitcher plant is in its diet of spiders over a variety of locations.

“We found that this carnivorous plant does not just eat a random subset of spiders found in an area; it eats a specific taxonomic group of spiders. This diet was so specific that even pitcher plant populations that were hundreds of miles apart ate similar groups of spiders, even if the abundances of spiders in the environment changed,” Milne said.