Inference of mechanical forces through 3D reconstruction of the closing motion in venus flytrap leaves

Abstract

Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) leaves exhibit an exceptionally rapid closing motion that occurs within one second. The rapid closure of outwardly curved leaves is thought to be driven by snap-buckling instability-a rapid transition of an elastic system from one state to another. However, the ability of leaves that do not curve outward to also close suggests that the mechanics of leaf closure are complex and need to be understood using three-dimensional (3D) kinematics. We therefore developed a 3D reconstruction method to quantify the curvatures and displacements of leaf blades using two high-speed cameras. We then reconstructed a 3D surface mesh of the leaf, which revealed that the changes in curvature are spatiotemporally heterogeneous. We inferred the stretching and curvature elastic energies of the reconstructed surface, determining that the mechanical forces associated with in-plane deformation become significant in the peripheral regions of the leaf. This was true among different samples; however, the components of the energy profiles varied for each sample. The novelty of this study is that we could infer the elastic energy and the corresponding mechanical forces during closing motion. Our mechanical inference method will be useful for examining the deformation processes of various curved plant structures.

Plant phenotyping relevance

植物葉の3D画像再構成により、曲率・変位・弾性エネルギーを定量化する手法を開発しており、植物形態・運動の表現型取得が研究の中心である。

Code and data availability

The supplied blocks describe a 3D DLT reconstruction and elastic-energy analysis of Venus flytrap leaf closure, with supplementary movies/figures referenced, but no public phenotype dataset, image/sensor data deposit, or author analysis code with an explicit availability statement and public URL is provided. The only '

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