Also known as the pitcher plant, Nepenthes hemsleyana can attract bats their way in order to consume their feces.
According to Live Science, authors of a study published in the journal Current Biology detailed how the plant uses bats' echolocation to broadcast their position. The bats, Kerivoula hardwickii in particular, look for the N. hemsleyana to roost.
"With these structures, the plants are able to acoustically stand out from their environments so that bats can easily find them," study co-first-author Michael Schöner, of Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University of Greifswald in Germany, said in a press release. "Moreover, the bats are clearly able to distinguish their plant partner from other plants that are similar in shape but lack the conspicuous reflector."
Schöner also served as a co-author on another study, which detailed how the bats and the plants benefit from each other.
"One-third of the nitrogen which is gained by the pitcher plants is arriving from the bat species," he told Live Science. "When these bats are flying in this dense vegetation and trying to find the pitchers, they will get echoes from every single leaf that is present.
"At the moment, we cannot say for sure that the plants have evolved the structure for the bats."
N. hemsleyana lives in Borneo's peat forests and has a close relative that catches a lot of insects for sustenance.
"Carnivorous plants in general have already solved the problem of nutrient deficiency in a very unusual way by reversing the 'normal system' of animals feeding on plants," Schöner said in the release. "It is even more astonishing that in the case of N. hemsleyana the system is taking a new turn. While N. hemsleyana reduced many insect-attracting traits, it obviously exhibits some traits that are highly attractive for a species that provides the plants with nutrients without being digested by the plant itself."
