Venus Flytraps Under Stress (Electrophysiology Measurements)

Venus Flytrap electrophysiology measurements under burn stress compared to tridtional trigger hair deflection. Extracellular bioelectric activity was recorded using a dual-channel Plant SpikerBox amplifier (Backyard Brains, Ann Arbor, MI) through the ‘SpikeRecorder’ software set to ‘plant’ according to manufacturer instructions. A single stainless steel recording electrode was fixed to the outer target trap lobe, using the standard configurations and coated with (SignaGel, Parker Laboratories) optimized for surface biopotential detection in model flora (Madariaga et al., 2024). All measurements were grounded using the associated pin wire applied to the pot substrate. Signal acquisition was captured as uncompressed 16-bit mono PCM waveforms (.wav) at a 44,100 Hz sampling rate. Raw signal amplitude is expressed in arbitrary units (A.U.) linearly proportional to transmembrane voltage (Backyard Brains, personal communication). All amplitude-dependent comparative metrics are expressed as dimensionless internal ratios, canceling out the instrument's uncalibrated absolute voltage constant and validating multi-plant statistical integration (Madariaga et al., 2024).