What's on the menu: Drosera rotundifolia diet determination using DNA data

The round-leaved sundew, Drosera rotundifolia, is a carnivorous plant species. On Lundy it is found in the nutrient-poor bog environments of Pondsbury and the northernmost quarry, where it supplements its diet with invertebrate prey. To gain insight into the diet of these two sundew populations a metabarcoding approach was trialled. This is, to our knowledge, the first study to use DNA barcodes to identify Drosera prey. At each site, a 0.25m2 quadrat was placed in a representative Drosera patch and two days’ worth of prey were collected. To identify prey items, Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COX1) sequences were obtained and compared to the Barcode of Life database. This revealed that Lundy sundews have a mixed diet. In total at least 20 different prey taxa were detected in the two 0.25m2 areas sampled. Sixteen taxa could be identified to species, indicating that metabarcoding permits accurate species level identification of sundew prey items. The majority of prey taxa were dipterans (two-winged flies), of which several have previously been reported on Lundy. Most prey taxa were detected in only one of the two quadrats examined (Jaccard’s index of Similarity=0.01; ‘dissimilar’). This might indicate that the two Drosera populations feed on distinct prey communities, but more research is needed to confirm this.

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