Carnivory in Plants

Comments

• stray@pawb.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Genetic evidence suggests that carnivory developed by co-opting and repurposing existing genes which had established functions in flowering plants

  en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivorous_plant

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  • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    All the interesting botany questions have been answered

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• shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Because the flowers attract food in the form of insects. I must be missing something here.

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  • drolex@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Carnivorous plants need to attract insects to feed AND to reproduce. Of course they don’t want to eat the pollinators so they usually have flowers with long stems

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  • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Pitcher plants use sugary secretions to attract prey not flowers

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    • zedgeist@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Why would they want to attract flowers?

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• Baaahb@feddit.nl ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Flowering plants use life to spread genetics. No reason to be carnivorous if there’s no reason for animals to crawl all over you

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• whimsy@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Since when has carnivory been a word, what the hell

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• Derpenheim@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Carnivory in plants is ALWAYS the secondary option, usually as a result of poor soil quality. Typical pollination via flowering bodies is the go to.

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• PanaX@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  While all of these answers are mostly true, you have to go back in time. Darwin called it the abomniable mystery. Flowering plants and insects co-evolved rapidly roughly 150 MYA. So prior to flowering plants, there were few plants and insects and they were mostly generalists. The rapid expansion and explosion of insect diversity is deeply entangled with the explosion of diversity in angiosperms.

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• xia@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I remember watching this farmer make a case otherwise, that ordinary bramble (?) is specialized to ensnare and trap fluffy sheep, providing chemical nutrients to the bush.

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• Zerush@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Image

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• Redfox8@mander.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Because they live in environments lacking in the nutrients that can be gained from invertebrates (e.g. in highly acidic soil). This allows them to compete better against other plants. I guess non-flowering plants don’t need the same nutrients so can go without. Only a beginnner+ at ecological botany so someone here can surely explain better knowing lemmy!

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• henfredemars@infosec.pub ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Could it be because most plants are flowering plants?

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  • zagaberoo@beehaw.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Sex is a hell of a drug when it comes to diversity.

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• ZWQbpkzl@hexbear.net ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  This seems obvious: Non flowering plants haven’t evolved ways to attract pollinators prey. What non-flowering plants deliberately attract animals?

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• BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  If you go out in a bog and look around, most of the plants there are angiosperms. The non-angiosperms are mainly mosses (capable of surviving on atmospheric deposition, not really producing the sorts of complex structures that can be adapted for carnivory like leaves and roots), ferns, and horsetails. “Why no carnivorous ferns?” seems like an interesting question but it’s also kinda like “Why no flowering ferns?” Because you need structures (leaves, glandular trichomes, or roots) that can be exapted for a new purpose and flowering plants seem to have the most plasticity.

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