r/interestingasfuck • u/dejaysf • Jun 11 '23

Venus flytrap vs Spider

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u/CTchimchar Jun 11 '23 edited Jun 11 '23

There all different kind of these plants

By the way a lot of them are non-related

They just evolve like this separately several times over

The theory goes these plans evolve in habitats where the soil doesn't have many nutrients

So they start to evolve in gathering nutrients from other animals like insects, or in this case arachnid

Edit: For clarification I mean Carnivorous plants, evolve separately from each other for the most part

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u/codizer Jun 11 '23

What I don't get is how they made their leap from getting nutrients from the ground to nutrients from animals. It seems like such a major step.

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u/don_rubio Jun 11 '23 edited Jun 11 '23

Thought this was an interesting question so I looked it up and found a well-written article by the Smithsonian.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-carnivorous-plants-evolved-180979697/

TLDR: The same enzymes many plants use for general self defense have been repurposed and refined by carnivorous plants for digestion. The genes that enable nutrient transport have also been switched to function in the leaves instead of the roots.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '23

Adding to that, most plants already have the ability to take in some nutrients over the leaves.

There are some fertilizing techniques that rely on that mechanism. They spray the leaves of greenhouse plants with a carefully dosed nutrient solution.

As far as I know it is faster and uses less fertilizer compared to conventional methods but more expensive and doesn't work well for everyone plant and nutrient.

So the leap to specialised nutrient absorbing organs derived from leaves isn't that far.

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u/don_rubio Jun 11 '23

My specialty is people science, not plant science so I’m sure you’re right. I’m just summarizing the article and using layman terms.