AMADA44, WIKIMEDIA The Australian pitcher plant, Cephalotus follicularis, waits patiently for its prey to land on its mouth-like leaves, fall into its slippery pouch, and drown in a cocktail of digestive enzymes. These carnivorous plants may have evolved in similar ways to other, unrelated meat-eating plants around the globe, according to a February 6 study in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Previous investigations had revealed that Australian pitcher plants are more closely related to the non-carnivorous starfruit, Averrhoa carambola, than pitcher plants from other continents. This suggested that carnivory evolved repeatedly in plants, likely to cope with nutrient-scarce soils, Victor Albert, a plant-genome scientist at the University of Buffalo told Nature. “What they’re trying to do is capture nitrogen and phosphorus from their prey,” he added.
Albert and colleagues sequenced the Australian pitcher plant’s genome and compared the DNA in the plant’s carnivorous and non-carnivorous photosynthetic leaves. Their analyses revealed genetic changes associated with prey capture and digestion. “According to the results, leaves that catch insects have gained new enzymatic functions,” Julio Rozas, a study co-author and professor at the University of Barcelona, said in a ...
