Carnivorous Plants
Authors: Lönnig Wolf‐Ekkehard 
Published: April 2016

Abstract

Carnivorous plants include some 800 plant species of various angiosperm orders and families that – by enormously different and ingenious trap mechanisms – catch small animals and subsequently digest them (insects, ants, spiders, fish fry and many others). The trap types are commonly classified by the physical characteristics of the trapping mechanisms: adhesive, pitcher, eel, snap and suction traps. Digestion takes place by a range of different enzymes (see text). Although there has been an immense progress in almost all branches of carnivorous plant research in recent years (form, function, molecular genetics, geographical distribution and fossil evidence), still there are many open problems to be solved and new ones have arisen. In addition, discussion of hypotheses sometimes diametrically opposed to each other on the origin of carnivorous plants like
Utricularia
has continued for more than a century now. Some species such as
Pinguicula
,
Dionaea
(the Venus flytrap),
Drosera
and
Nepenthes
are viewed to be economically and horticulturally important.
Drosera
has a long history in western herbal medicine.

Key Concepts

The history of carnivorous plant research paradigmatically demonstrates the difficulty that a radically new discovery can meet in science (plants eat animals) until eventually unanimously accepted – in the present case only after a delay of several hundred years.

Although the habitats of carnivorous plants are generally characterized to be low nutrient acid soils and/or correspondingly aqueous environments, there seem to be many more exceptions to this rule than usually hold true on the premise of carnivory as an absolutely necessary adaptation to ecosystems devoid of or low in minerals/nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorous.

Thus, quite unexpectedly on the strict adaptational premise, several populations and species are growing in high nutrient environments (soil and water) and occur even in alkaline areas.

Hundreds of noncarnivorous plant species coexist with carnivorous ones worldwide in the same areas and in the same circumstances, clearly demonstrating that carnivory in virtually all of their different environments is only one option among many others.

Because multiple independent origins of anatomically and physiologically very similar but complex structures appeared to be intrinsically unlikely to several authors, they tried to avoid convergence as far as possible. Nevertheless, molecular investigations have substantiated at least nine independent origins of such traits.

The question for the origin of the most complex and fastest of all carnivorous plant traps, that of
Utricularia
, has so far proved to be an ‘intractable problem for evolution’. Thus, it appears readily comprehensible why so many contradictory hypotheses have been forwarded on this topic until now (for the details, see text).

Further research will decide whether Behe's concept of ‘irreducible complexity’ (identifying ‘a single system composed of several well‐matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning’) can be applied to the core system of the
Utricularia
trap.

There seems to be a never‐ending interest by the public in species such as
Dionaea
,
Pinguicula
and
Nepenthes
, so that hardly any larger garden centre can afford not to offer them. Hence, they are horticulturally important.

Carnivorous plants continue to present several of the most captivating problems for systematics and evolution.