Researchers have found that a unique way is adopted by pitchers plants that feed on bat poop to lure their meal tickets. The peat forests of Borneo are home to the pitcher plant Nepenthes hemsleyana. The plant is a common roost for bats species Kerivoula hardwickii.

A mutually beneficial relationship has been previously discovered by the researchers between bats and the pitcher plants. Bats get a comfortable roost from the plants along with a few parasites and an ideal microclimate. And the plants in rerun get the bat poop guano, which is rich in nitrogen, a crucial plant nutrient.

The discovery has helped researchers understand how N. hemsleyana manage to survive, id Michael Schöner of Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University of Greifswald in Germany.

The researchers had faced difficulties in finding in the dense forests of Borneo, and they were not able to understand how the bats managed.

“One-third of the nitrogen which is gained by the pitcher plants is arriving from the bat species. 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”, said Schöner.

An artificial bat head and microphone were used by the researchers to play echolocation calls at pitcher plants and measure the reflected echoes. This helped them figure out if the plants were particularly reflective of echoes.

The researchers said that chances are high that the plants evolved to develop sound reflectors. The discovery is a first to show that plants have a bat-attracting feature for a purpose other than pollination.