The Evolution of Carnivorous Plants

Some of the most bizarre and fascinating plants in the natural world are undoubtedly carnivorous plants. Carnivory, defined as the consumption of animal tissue, is often only associated with the animal kingdom. However the existence of carnivory is widespread and diverse in the plant and fungi kingdoms as well. Specifically carnivorous plants, which originally descended from exclusively photosynthetic plants, have evolved elaborate, efficient, and diverse methods to capture, digest, and metabolize passing insects and microorganisms. Since Darwin’s landmark work Insectivorous plants, observers of carnivorous plants have tried to answer fundamental questions regarding their nature. Why would an exclusively photosynthetic plant expend valuable developmental resources to form structures for carnivory? How do these plants capture prey and why do they do it? This paper will explore characteristics, nature, and physiology of carnivorous plants as well as several possible reasons and methods for the evolution of carnivory in plants.
Carnivorous plants are members of the in the angiosperm family (flowering plants). As the most diverse division of land plants, angiosperms have developed full carnivory six times in their phylogeny. There are approximately 600 species of carnivorous plants, representing eleven families and nineteen genera of angiosperms (Huebl et al., 2006). Carnivorous plants are widely distributed across the globe and can be found on all continents except for Antarctica. They are generally found in bog and fen conditions or any other habitat where the soil is very low in nutrients, slightly acidic, and or hypoxic (Academac, 1997). The most basic definition of carnivory in plants is the ability to absorb the products of decomposed organisms, either directly on the leaves or through roots in the soil, to increase nutrient absorption which ultimately increases seed production and overall fitness. While this definition includes most exclusively