Wonder! Plants that eat animals

While plants plants derive their nutrients from the soul, some others derive theirs from animals and insects.

Known as canovirous plants, these

plants traps, squeeze and digest their preys with precision.

One would wonder how this can be explained but it’s just natural.

Specialised multicellular secretion glands produce digestive fluid that smother, kill, and digest prey as well as make a solution to assimilate released nutrients.

Saccharides are often found in plants that have adhesive traps or plants that use viscous secretion to retain captured prey. The digestion fluid is often nutrient poor and has ions K+, Na+, Ca2+ and Mg2+ (for species in the Nepenthes genera for example), along with numerous proteins which vary across genera.

Peroxidases are also involved for some species. The body of the prey is decomposed by a cocktail of hydrolytic enzymes which are stored in sub-cellular compartments or synthesized over and over as needed.

Proteins of digestive fluid include proteases, chitinases (partly destroy exoskeleton of insects), phosphatases, and nucleases.

Approximately half of the plant species assessed by the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are considered threatened (vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered).

Common threats are habitat loss as a result of agriculture, collection of wild plants, pollution, invasive species, residential and commercial development, energy production, mining, transportation services, geologic events, climate change, severe weather, and many other anthropogenic activities.

Species in the same genus were proven to face similar threats. Threat by continent is deemed highly variable, with threats found for 19 species in North America, 15 species in Asia, seven species in Europe, six species in South America, two species in Africa, and one species in Australia Indicator species’ such as Sarracenia reveal positive associations with regard to thesed threats. Certain threats are also positively correlated themselves, with residential and commercial development, natural systems modifications, invasive species, and pollution having positive associations.

Conservation research is aiming to further quantify the effects of threats, such as pollution, on carnivorous plants, as well as to quantify the extinction risks. Only 17% of species had been assessed as of 2011, according to the IUCN.

Carnivorous plant conservation will help maintain important ecosystems and prevent secondary extinctions of specialist species that rely on them such as foundation species which may seek refuge or rely on certain plants for their existence.

Research suggests a holistic approach, targeted at the habitat-level of carnivorous plants, may be required for successful conservation.

True carnivory is believed to have evolved independently at least 12 times in five different orders of flowering plants, and is represented by more than a dozen genera. This classification includes at least 583 species that attract, trap, and kill prey, absorbing the resulting available nutrients.

Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), pitcher plant (Cephalotus follicularis), and bladderwort (Utricularia gibba) can be seen as exemplars of key traits genetically associated with carnivory: trap leaf development, prey digestion, and nutrient absorption.

The number of known species has increased by approximately three species per year since the year 2000.

Additionally, over 300 protocarnivorous plant species in several genera show some but not all of these characteristics.

A 2020 assessment has found that roughly one quarter are threatened with extinction from human actions.

Source:Wikipedia