Month: September 2022

COMPLEMENTARY CHARACTERISTICS. "Overall, the genomic innovation of the RNA world complements that of the more conservative and stable DNA world." https://lnkd.in/e-pJFM6 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE for the next two weekends deals with carnivorous plants, yet another area of research spurred by the work of Charles Darwin. These are not only active carnivores, but they display vigorous electrical action potentials, a property not generally considered to be plant-like. These ingenious creatures challenge our standard view of plants and open the possibilities. View in LinkedIn

MOST WONDERFUL. "This plant, commonly called Venus’ fly-trap, from the rapidity and force of its movements, is one of the most wonderful in the world." (C. Darwin, Insectivorous plants, 1898, p. 231). https://lnkd.in/eGEAMQ5 View in LinkedIn

SUNDEW OBSESSION. "At the present moment, I care more about Drosera than the origin of all the species in the world." (Darwin 1860, in a letter to Charles Lyell, Page 492 of the 1911 edition of The life and letters of Charles Darwin, edited by F. Darwin). https://lnkd.in/eGYndS2 View in LinkedIn

DARWIN'S BOOK. "Charles Darwin laid the foundation for modern research on carnivorous plants. In Insectivorous plants, Darwin (1875) applied his then relatively new conception of homology to illustrate evolutionary and functional convergence across seemingly unrelated taxa." https://lnkd.in/e2_et_n View in LinkedIn

TIPPITY TWITCHET, an old name for the seductive Venus Flytrap, which can live for 20-30 years, and lives in a diet of insects. https://lnkd.in/efpR2N7 View in LinkedIn

PREDATORY PLANTS. "Quite a few reasons for calling carnivores ‘the most wonderful plants in the world’. We are accustomed to thinking of plants as being immobile and harmless, and this may be a reason for our fascination with carnivorous plants and especially about those that move while trapping." https://lnkd.in/eyitYYX View in LinkedIn

"CARNIVORY has evolved independently at least six times in five angiosperm orders. In spite of these independent origins, there is a remarkable morphological convergence of carnivorous plant traps and physiological convergence of mechanisms for digesting and assimilating prey." https://lnkd.in/e2_et_n View in LinkedIn

ADAPTIVE STRATEGY. "Carnivorous plants live in nutrient-poor soils and have circumvented this shortage of resources by deriving most of their nutrients from the digestion of arthropods captured through a variety of trapping mechanisms." https://lnkd.in/eufMNnU View in LinkedIn

OLD AND DIVERSE. "Today we recognize at least 583 species of carnivorous plants in 20 genera, 12 families, and 5 orders of flowering plants. Based on DNA sequence phylogenies, these species represent at least nine independent origins of the carnivorous habit per se, and at least six independent origins of pitfall traps, five of sticky traps, two of snap traps, and one of lobster-pot traps...these origins of carnivory appear to have occurred between roughly 8 and 72 million years ago (Mya)." https://lnkd.in/eAvpP47 View in LinkedIn