Study
Venus flytrap: how an excitable, carnivorous plant works
Hedrich, Rainer; Neher, Erwin
Trends in Plant Science, 2018
A synthesis of the electrophysiology, hormone signalling and gene-expression work on the flytrap, tracing the sequence from a bent trigger hair through action potentials to enzyme secretion and nutrient uptake.
- Studied in
- Dionaea muscipula
- Sample size
- synthesis of electrophysiology, hormone and transcriptome work
The trap runs a graded programme rather than a switch. Two action potentials close it; three raise jasmonate signalling; around five turn on digestive enzyme genes and a sodium transporter, and secretion scales with continued stimulation, so a larger struggling insect is digested harder than a small one.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
The flytrap is an excitable tissue that counts stimuli and scales its response to the size of the prey, using signalling machinery shared with ordinary plant defence.
How NatureHQ reads it
The framing worth carrying away is that nothing here is unique to carnivory. Action potentials, jasmonate signalling and enzyme induction are standard plant equipment used for wounding and herbivore defence; the flytrap has repurposed a defence pathway to eat the herbivore instead. That is a better story than a plant inventing a nervous system, and it is why "the plant decides" should be read as shorthand for a chemical threshold rather than as deliberation.
- A review, and the field is dominated by one species and a small number of laboratories.
- Counts are typical rather than fixed; thresholds vary with trap age, temperature and nutrition.
- Jasmonate signalling is shared with defence, so attributing a step to carnivory specifically is not always clean.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Cell PressPublished in a Cell Press journal.
doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2017.12.004
This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref on 2026-08-11.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-10.