Â鶹ֱ²¥ researchers have discovered a new population of a critically endangered aquatic carnivorous plant in Western Australia\u2019s remote Kimberley, following a 10-year search of the region.<\/p>\n
During a recent botanical expedition to the northern Kimberley, several thousand \u2018aquatic venus flytrap\u2019 plants, Aldrovanda vesiculosa,<\/em> were found growing in a billabong on Theda Station, located east of the Mitchell Plateau, supported by Dunkeld Pastoral.<\/p>\n Dr Adam Cross and Honours student Thilo Krueger, from the ARC Centre for Mine Site Restoration in Curtin\u2019s School of Molecular and Life Sciences, have each spent almost a decade searching swamps and billabongs throughout northern Australia for the critically endangered species and other carnivorous plants.<\/p>\n Dr Cross, who wrote a book about the plant in 2012, said the discovery of a new population in WA\u2019s remote Kimberley region was a dream come true.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I first saw it, I thought it was just another common species that has similar whorls of leaves, but when I got closer and saw the traps at the end of the leaves, I couldn’t believe my eyes,\u201d Dr Cross said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the first time this species has been found in the Kimberley for more than 20 years. The only other known population from Western Australia is more than 2,000 kilometres away near Esperance in the State\u2019s south, where a small population of only a few dozen plants was discovered in 2007.<\/p>\n \u201cThis new location in the remote northern Kimberley is one of the largest populations ever discovered in Australia, in an area where habitat is still relatively pristine. This discovery gives us hope that northern Australia is still a stronghold for the species in the face of its continuing global decline.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Krueger, who has moved from Germany to study at Â鶹ֱ²¥ in Western Australia, said he was ecstatic the pair\u2019s decade-long search had resulted in a new discovery.<\/p>\n \u201cAdam was just looking at me with this look of complete amazement and I immediately knew he had found something very, very exciting,\u201d Mr Krueger said.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough it was once widespread around the world, it is now considered critically endangered. Habitat loss and changes to water quality have seen the species become extinct in up to 30 countries, so the fact that we have found several thousand plants in Western Australia is significant.\u201d<\/p>\n The species produces unique underwater snapping traps\u00a0to capture and digest small insect prey, which explains its description as an \u2018aquatic venus flytrap\u2019.<\/p>\n A critically endangered species, Aldrovanda vesiculosa<\/em> is currently only located in less than 20 known locations spread across four continents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Â鶹ֱ²¥ researchers have discovered a new population of a critically endangered aquatic carnivorous plant in Western Australia\u2019s remote Kimberley, following a 10-year search of the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4307,"featured_media":11582,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,41,4,40],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-19246","media-release","type-media-release","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-and-global-community","category-environment","category-research","category-technology"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":false,"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/adam-hands-aquatic-carnivorous-plant-792x420-1.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Lucien","last_name":"Wilkinson","display_name":"Lucien Wilkinson"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/19246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/media-release"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/19246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19246"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=19246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}