Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) are an unfortunate fact of post-COVID life in Australia. But here's a nerdy use for the LED torch that comes with the test kits - you can make your Nepenthes and Sarracenia pitchers glow brilliantly under the UV torch light!
Here's what my Nepenthes maxima x alata looks like under UV light:
We are still figuring out what this means from a biological perspective. An excellent paper published in the ICPS journal a few years back notes that UV fluorescence is not the same a UV visibility. Fluorescence is instead where the wavelength of UV light is altered, moving it into the visible spectrum. The biological significance of fluorescence vs. reflectance of UV light is still uncertain and much research is needed in this area.
Its worthy to note that a paper that does use actual UV photography (i.e. photography through a filter that excludes anything but UV wavelengths) does resolve the glowing peristome - something that the authors appear to have overlooked at the time...
