MEATY snacks: they’re not just for Venus flytraps. Almost any plant can be a carnivore with the help of fungi that kill insects and carry the nutrients into the plant’s roots.
Most plants cannot take nitrogen directly out of the air or soil, so they rely on fungi and bacteria to capture it from, for instance, decaying organic matter in the soil. Among the most ubiquitous of these fungi are Metarhizium. The fungi release enzymes to eat through an insect’s shell, then slowly take over the host and kill it from the inside.
A team led by Michael Bidochka…
