Carnivores Infused With Plants

Transcription

1 Carnivores Infused With Plants A short summary of the Structure and development of the Carnivorous plant Nepenthes Alata Spencer Easton Bio Lab 1615 Monday 4pm class

2 Carnivorous plants vary in shape and size, tactics and methods. These plants have been an influence in the world of not only science but in entertainment's as well. Super Mario and other cartoons have taken the idea of the carnivorous plant and run wild with it. While there are some carnivorous plants with purely animal like behaviors (i.e. Dionaea muscipula), there is a whole spectrum of plants that look just like flowers and have just a sticky surface and ensnare small insects like fly paper. But why would plants need to catch insects, and is that a replacement for photosynthesis? Can plants only digest insects or are there bigger and worse plants that could eat mammals? T. Page Owen and Kristen A. Lennon published a study that shows the structures and development of carnivorous plants. How they function with their metabolism and life cycle. Most plant motion is either quite slow like the sunflower, or driven by external factors the wind on the daffodil. Plants have neither nerves nor muscles, nor do they have other obvious mechanisms for generating force rapidly explained Owens & Lennon. Despite the lack of muscle, several plants have independently evolved some capacity for rapid movement. The Venus flytrap slams two halves of a leaf shut on nutritious insects and releases enzymes that digests their nutrients. This forms a temporary stomach for the plant to feed from. While "meat-eating" pitcher plants were first described by science in the time of Carl Linnaeus, (the father of modern taxonomy and ecology) these plants are great examples of familiar phrase "survival of the fittest.". Carnivorous animals like ourselves use the protein and the fat in meat to build muscles and store energy. Carnivorous plants take the nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients they cannot get from their environment. In conditions of poor soil we find plants adapting and finding the nutrients they need through bugs and animals. They also photosynthesize but they do a lousy job of it. Carnivorous plants turn out to be very inefficient at converting sunlight into plant tissue.. Because these plants have such a unique

3 way to gather nutrients, photosynthesis is used to produce the initial catching and luring mechanisms so that more nutrients can be harvested. A pitcher or a flytrap cannot carry out much photosynthesis because, unlike plants with ordinary leaves, they do not have flat solar panels that can grab lots of sunlight. Only under special conditions do the benefits of carnivory outweigh the costs. The poor soil of bogs, for example, offers little nitrogen and phosphorus, so carnivorous plants enjoy an advantage there over plants that obtain these nutrients by more conventional means. Bogs are also flooded with sunshine, so even an inefficient carnivorous plant can carry out enough photosynthesis to survive. Pitcher plants for example are the biggest of carnivorous plant family, and the most infamous would be Nepenthes attenboroughii. They are known for eating the largest of prey for any carnivores plants including frogs large spiders and even small rodents such as rats. It is the largest carnivorous plant ever discovered to date. The giant N. attenboroughii is a vertebrate specialist.the plant lures in rats with the promise of sweet nectar. When the rat leans into the plant to drink the saccharine liquid, it slips on the pitcher's waxy interior, and gets stuck in the gooey sap. Once it is trapped, acid based digestive enzymes break down the still-living rodent. Another common carnivorous plant is the venus flytrap which features heart-shaped capture leaves, each fringed with trigger hairs, jaw structure, and teeth. Any insect unwary enough to bend a single trigger hair is in for a bad day. The two halves of the leaf snap shut along its fold in just 100 milliseconds, swiftly enveloping the animal. The trigger hairs become

4 the bars of a prison. In the ensuing few hours the trap seals itself airtight, and digestive glands in the leaf secrete enzymes that reduce the insect to a dry husk.. The three big types of catching mechanisms are Flytraps, pitcher plants and Sundews (sticky tentacles or leaves to catch and digest the prey) show the different adaptations to different food sources. Flytraps focus on catching swift bugs that can fly mostly. While the pitcher plants can eat anything that falls into its trap. The Sundew does have a knack for crawling insects that are looking for sweet nectar, and catches them with a very sticky substance and digests them in the open. Where in acidic soils like bogs or swamp lands where the soil has a lack of nutrients these plants thrive and grow in abundance. Comparing the DNA of carnivorous plants with other species, Owens and Lennon found that they evolved independently on at least six separate occasions, Owens and Lennon explained. Some carnivorous plants that look nearly identical turn out to be distantly related. Both kinds of pitcher plants the tropical genus Nepenthes and the North American Sarracenia grow deep pitcher-shaped leaves and employ the same strategy for capturing prey. Yet they evolved from different ancestors. Venus flytraps, for example, share an ancestor with Portuguese sundews, which only make passive flypaper glands on their stems. They share a more recent ancestor with Drosera sundews, which not only make flypaper glands but can also curl their leaves over their prey. Venus flytraps appear to have evolved an even more elaborate version of this kind of trap, complete with jaw like leaves. Using both photosynthesis and digestion to gain needed chemical nutrients to stay alive and reproduce. They are the middle ground between these two types of consumption. They are highly innovative and wonder of this world. Carnivorous plants are one of mother natures great natural phenomenons still being studied and understood.

5 Work Cited Owen, T. Page & Lennon, Kristen A. "Structure and development of the Carnivorous plant Nepenthes Alata."American Journal of Botany (1999):