Carnivory in Plants
from fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz on 24 Jun 18:46
https://mander.xyz/post/32743898

#science_memes

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Baaahb@feddit.nl on 24 Jun 19:03 next collapse

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

shalafi@lemmy.world on 24 Jun 19:16 next collapse

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

drolex@sopuli.xyz on 24 Jun 19:20 next collapse

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

shalafi@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 03:35 collapse

Yep! The pitcher plants around here have high flowers and Venus Fly Traps have hilariously high flowers.

Ledericas@lemm.ee on 25 Jun 06:31 collapse

sundews too, and sarrencenia, aquatic plants. also we found out some pitchers attract mammals for thier nutrient rich poop"poop in thier pitchers" to get all that nitrogen.

DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social on 24 Jun 20:12 collapse

Pitcher plants and flytraps use sugary secretions to attract prey not flowers.

zedgeist@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 01:37 next collapse

Why would they want to attract flowers?

DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social on 25 Jun 06:07 collapse

Because they’re pretty, duh

shalafi@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 03:34 collapse

Both use flowers with long stems to keep the pollinators out of harm’s way. I grow both, seen it IRL.

Ioughttamow@fedia.io on 24 Jun 19:32 next collapse

Because they have fallen to the corruption of slaanesh

Railcar8095@lemm.ee on 24 Jun 21:09 next collapse

Ah, I See You’re a Man of Deneracy As Well

Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee on 25 Jun 04:38 collapse

Stupid sexy flowering Slaanesh!

henfredemars@infosec.pub on 24 Jun 20:06 next collapse

Could it be because most plant species are flowering plants?

zagaberoo@beehaw.org on 24 Jun 23:45 collapse

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

Redfox8@mander.xyz on 24 Jun 20:22 next collapse

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!

Derpenheim@lemmy.zip on 24 Jun 20:31 next collapse

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.

ZWQbpkzl@hexbear.net on 24 Jun 20:47 next collapse

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

Ledericas@lemm.ee on 25 Jun 06:36 collapse

i think because non-flowering plants, like ferns, gymnosperms, bryophytes dont need to attract animals. thier sperm, eggs are usually close by to each other so no need animals. and gymnosperm uses wind pollination. carnivory is probably repurposed flower-attracted pollination.

PanaX@lemmy.world on 24 Jun 21:21 next collapse

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.

Ledericas@lemm.ee on 25 Jun 06:37 collapse

the oldest pollinators, prior to bees,butterflies and other insects. were beetles, as evidence of magnolias one of the oldest lineage of flowers, use only beetles.

stray@pawb.social on 24 Jun 21:53 next collapse

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

AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works on 24 Jun 22:57 collapse

All the interesting botany questions have been answered

Hadriscus@jlai.lu on 25 Jun 06:19 collapse

why tree big ??

AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works on 25 Jun 07:36 collapse

So giraffe can reach

Hadriscus@jlai.lu on 25 Jun 07:38 collapse

ofc

BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net on 24 Jun 22:36 next collapse

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.

Ledericas@lemm.ee on 25 Jun 06:38 collapse

you forgot gymnosperms, aka conifers, gingkos, cycads.

BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net on 26 Jun 05:19 collapse

Not really seeing the niche overlap there, as most carnivores are small, shallow rooted, and herbaceous. Gingkos are relicts, conifers tend to be woody, deep-rooted, and can’t grow in pure peat, so there’s probably less pressure to solve nitrogen deficiency. That leaves cycads, which do grow in swampy soils, but they haven’t changed a whole lot in tens of millions of years.

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 24 Jun 22:55 next collapse

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/315cd52a-277e-4591-b842-acddb9cc775f.png">

Kolanaki@pawb.social on 25 Jun 03:16 collapse

Audrey II was a literal alien. It might not even technically be a plant, it just resembles one. 🤷🏻‍♂️

ouRKaoS@lemmy.today on 25 Jun 05:46 next collapse

Ok, so prove all the other plants aren’t aliens?

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 25 Jun 06:52 collapse

A human has 46 chromosomes, a potato 48, this also explains some things.

whoisearth@lemmy.ca on 25 Jun 16:31 collapse

People with Downs Syndrome are the missing link between humans and potatoes?

whimsy@lemmy.zip on 24 Jun 23:02 next collapse

Since when has carnivory been a word, what the hell

nanoswarm9k@lemmus.org on 25 Jun 04:53 next collapse

probably used casually in a kink. would you like a map of the internet? (earnest)

match@pawb.social on 25 Jun 06:46 collapse

i would like a map of the Internet

whimsy@lemmy.zip on 25 Jun 07:55 collapse

Yeah, deploy the map!

princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 25 Jun 07:10 collapse

Since as long as carnivore has been a word, probably. Carnivory is the noun for the act of eating meat, carnivore is the noun for a creature that eats meat and carnivorous is the adjective to describe a creature that eats meat.

xia@lemmy.sdf.org on 25 Jun 00:18 next collapse

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.

Zagorath@aussie.zone on 25 Jun 03:09 next collapse

An interesting theory, but there are good reasons to doubt the claim, including the fact that woolly sheep are a recent product of human breeding, and that wild sheep are not even native to the same areas blackberries grow.

Redfox8@mander.xyz on 25 Jun 07:52 collapse

There’s tonnes of blackthorn and a lot of sheep in the UK and I’ve never heard it to be problematic. Sheep ate pretty dim, but bramble is definitely not thorny/spiney enough to get caught bar the odd occasion. I’m sure I heard about a shrub (African maybe) that sheep can get completely ensnared in and die, but can’t find it!

TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee on 25 Jun 03:50 next collapse

I’m sorry but who says that all of the good botany questions have been answered??

FooBarrington@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 04:58 collapse

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

drolex@sopuli.xyz on 25 Jun 06:33 collapse

He’s a disgrace. Still classifying Rhinantus minor in the Scrophulariaceae instead of Orobanchaceae after APGIII. Smh.

Ledericas@lemm.ee on 25 Jun 06:55 collapse

funfact, orobacnacaeae is a parasitic group of plants also are called BROOMRAPES.

PapaStevesy@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 04:07 next collapse

We just haven’t found the carnivorous trees yet. Those poor, poor squirrels…

Ledericas@lemm.ee on 25 Jun 06:40 collapse

there are trees armed to the teeth or extremely poisonous, many in euphorbiacae family. dynamite tree, machineel

PapaStevesy@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 06:49 next collapse

Armed to the teeth or armed with teeth…that they chew live animals with? Because I’m only interested in the latter.

Ledericas@lemm.ee on 25 Jun 06:54 next collapse

if you considered spines all along the trunk as teeth, and exploding fruit.

Redfox8@mander.xyz on 25 Jun 07:48 collapse

Feeed mee Seymour

Eagle0110@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 07:25 collapse

Well there’s a fundamental difference between a carnivorous plant and a murderous plant who just kills.

There are many plants who kill large number of animals all the time, as defense measures for example. But a carnivorous plant specifically kills the prey in order extract nutrients from it and use it to benefit itself, and it does so using specialized adaptations specific for that purpose and not just accidentally (like a broken tree branch falling down killing somebody down below doesn’t make the tree carnivorous)

So a carnivorous plant needs to have ALL of these traits:

  1. capturing or trapping prey in specialized, usually attractive, traps;
  2. killing the captured prey;
  3. digesting the prey;
  4. absorption of metabolites (nutrients) from the killed and digested prey;
  5. use of these metabolites for plant growth and development.

…in order to be considered a carnivorous plant.

Source: Carnivorous Plants: Physiology, Ecology, and Evolution from Oxford University Press

(HIGHLY recommend if you’re interested in this topic, it’s an extremely good book and the best comprehensive overview on carnivorous plants at the moment, with fairly up to date information from this rapidly developing field of study!

PapaStevesy@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 07:01 next collapse

Ultimately it’s more about trapping and consuming live animals, I don’t really care if they actually chew.

squaresinger@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 09:14 next collapse

Is it vegan if you eat carnivorous plants?

Zoomboingding@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 14:25 collapse

Vegan enough for package labelling, not vegan enough for the psychic powers

Nasan@sopuli.xyz on 25 Jun 16:17 collapse

You get three strikes though, I think that’s pretty lenient

rizzothesmall@sh.itjust.works on 25 Jun 17:55 next collapse

Flowers already attracted insects. The evolution of flower into carnivorous flower is a smaller leap than a tuba or leaf into carnivory as they would also have to evolve to attract the prey.

ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world on 26 Jun 07:45 collapse

Where are my plants that impregnate human females through their vines used as tentacles, as promised by hentai?