Abstract Detail

Evolution, Ecology, Development, And Genomics Of Carnivorous Plants

Renner, Tanya [1], Naczi, Robert [2], Givnish, Thomas J [3].

Evolution, ecology, development, and conservation of carnivorous plants.

Ever since Darwin, carnivorous plants have attracted extraordinary interest from both scientists and broad swaths of the general public. Most plant species are consumed, in whole or part, by animals acting as herbivores, pollinators, or seed dispersers, but carnivorous plants have turned the ecological tables and consume animals as prey. They have evolved remarkable traps to attract, capture, and/or digest prey, gaining the ability to survive and compete successfully in nutrient-poor habitats, but apparently at the expense of reduced competitive ability elsewhere. Carnivorous plants thus raise many fundamental questions: How frequently have they evolved independently, when, and under what circumstances? What are the physiological and ecological tradeoffs that restrict such plants to some nutrient-poor environments but not others, like epiphytic perches, and how do the advantages of carnivory differ from those of other unusual mechanisms of capturing nutrients? What fraction of the nutrient budget do carnivorous plants obtain from prey, and how does that affect their ability to photosynthesize? How do traps develop, what shifts in trap structure have evolved within lineages, and how are they related to species ecology? What kinds of genomic changes are associated with the evolution of botanical carnivory? Speakers in this two-session symposium will provide expert reports on our current state of knowledge, recent insights, ongoing research, and gaps in knowledge about carnivorous plants, and cover a wide range of topics in phylogenetics, biogeography, ecology, physiology, development, genomics, and conservation. All speakers have contributed to the just published Carnivorous Plants: Physiology, Ecology, and Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2018), which provides the first global review of the biology of carnivorous plants in nearly thirty years.

1 - The Pennsylvania State University, Entomology, 514 Agricultural Sciences & Industries, University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802, USA
2 - The New York Botanical Garden, 2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx, NY, 10458-5126, USA
3 - University of Wisconsin-Madison, 315 Birge Hall, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

Keywords:
Evolution
Ecology
Physiology
Genomics
Conservation
Carnivorous Plants
development.

Presentation Type: Colloquium Presentations
Session: C03, Evolution, ecology, development, and conservation of carnivorous plants
Location: 107/Mayo Civic Center
Date: Monday, July 23rd, 2018
Time: 1:30 PM
Number: C03
Abstract ID:41
Candidate for Awards:None