Update on the carnivory of Stylidium

[Clint]

Twoton made an excellent post which can be found Here.

Apparently Stylidium has been found to produce protease and other digestive enzymes, and if it is proven they can absorb the nutrients then they would be considered carnivorous.

[endodoc]

Clint
I will again put a plug in for Doug Darnowski's book on trigger plants, very informative, an easy read on these incredible plants
regards
ed

[kitkor]

"And Wikipedia was quick to update their Stylidium page accordingly..."

Nice to see my work on that article noticed

And yep, I await the full paper by Darnowski et al. with bated breath. It's been so exciting to watch this genus go from "one of those sticky plants" to "carnivorous by at least one definition." Speaking of which, technically, sure... we can call it carnivorous if it breaks down prey and absorbs the nutrients. Others would argue that the plant has to demonstrate a significant gain from the carnivorous syndrome--that is, it must be more vigorous, produce more seed, etc. than if it didn't have those adaptations. And of course, we still consider some plants to be carnivorous even though they rely on internal food webs instead of their own digestive enzymes! Acceptance by the community also means a bit, too, I suppose. It's a difficult definition to unravel, which I tried to do in the Wikipedia article on protocarnivorous plants. By the way, I'd love it if someone would comb over that and check me for factual accuracy--I tried to find the most current references that I could.

Meanwhile, I just wait for the conference and subsequent publication