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Mount Usu / Sarobetsu post-mined peatland
From left: Crater basin in 1986 and 2006. Cottongrass / Daylily
HOME > Lecture catalog / Research summary > Glossary > Carnivorous plant
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Plants that derive, more or less, their nutrients (but not energy) from absorbing nutrients from animals represented by insects (Darwin 1875)
Adaptation to grow in nutrient-poor habitats, such as bogs and serpentine rocks Organs for carnivore (形態)insectivorous leaf (trap leaf, 捕虫葉): functioning as a trap that catches insects that it will digest for nutrientsinsectivorous sac (捕虫嚢): a specific type of the insectivorous leaves that forms sac Route: [sensitive hair (感毛/感覚毛) →] trap (罠) → digestive organs, such as utricle and stomach Methods (how to trap)pitfall traps (落穴式)pitchers - pitcher plants |
flypaper traps lobster-pots or eel traps bladder traps, using bladders or vesicula+ complex traps |
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Table 1. Insectivrous plants in the world (ca 550 species, 18 genera, and 9 families). Number of species in Japan is shown in parentheses. Genera without asterisks mean that all species in these genera are insectivorous.
Family
Genus (species) |
Notes: Nepenthes rafflesiana Jack (ウツボカズラ): insectivorous sac developing on the top of leaves. Poisonous plant. Native short shrubs in Malacca, Kalimantan (Borneo), Sumatra, etc. Genlisea: mostly in tropical wetlands in the South America and Africa Serracenia (サラセニア) |
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Carnivory evolved more than or equal to eight times in the angiosperms
trap designs, e.g., pitcher and flypaper, are analogous rather than homologous |
Molecular analysis→ supported onvergent evolutionOrigin of digestive enzymes protease and RNAse, normally using in plant roots, are expressed in carnivorous leaves existing genes used by rewiring the gene‑expression switches - low cost |