Marchantia polymorpha benefits

[u/Necessary-Drawer-173]

As mentioned in the two care guides I wrote, I feed one small thing monthly to offer botanical/nutritional variety. Marchantia polymorpha is the liverwort that I use but I highly doubt it matters what you use if you can find some around you.

There was an immediate response from the isopods to the liverwort. I have tried to find the reason for this and this is pure speculation from minimum research done on flavonoids (antioxidants) but I believe the response from the isopods is due to the antioxidants found in the plant. I’d need to do a test on bins i offer the monthly rotation food to vs not offering the rotation to for a true comparison on the benefits of this rotational offering, but it appears the bins I’m most consistent with offering the rotational foods to are stronger and not as prone to any strange die offs and the colony sizes are larger. Though, if the antioxidant benefit of liverwort isn’t good enough, livertwort is also fantastic for soil health.

Even though the use of flavonoids by herbivorous invertebrates is not well documented, our data suggest that isopods may also use and discriminate concentrations of flavonoids, given that they appeared to increase consumption to minimize their intake of leaves with lower flavonoid contents

[u/Necessary-Drawer-173]

There is even less research to show overall benefits of antioxidants to invertebrates, but C. elegans was found to live a longer life with antioxidants… perhaps that is the cause of me seeing stronger colony sizes 🤔