Back in February, many of you may remember the distinctive paper
in Plant Biology titled “Fluorescent prey traps in carnivorous
plants” and the subsequent popular science reportage. As can be
expected, this opened up a whole new series of questions as how
carnivores attract insect prey, with the biggest limitation
being the ability to study the phenomenon. The situation is
aggravated by the wild variability of consumer-grade ultraviolet
light sources, particularly ones that produce the correct
frequency of UV to fluoresce carnivore structures. While many UV
LED arrangements, such as the flashlights used for viewing UV
ink stamps at nightclubs, will fluoresce these structures, they
also tend to emit enough visible light to wash out the effect.
In trying to study this further, the problem lay with finding a
UV source that produced the correct wavelength, cut back on the
amount of visible light being emitted, and kept the cost of the
final arrangement to a reasonable amount. The last immediately
removed shortwav