Nicholas J. Gotelli Dept of Biology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA. Carnivorous plants have fascinated evolutionary ecologists, botanists and horticulturists for centuries. Early investigators were reluctant to accept that plants could consume insects and other small invertebrates1; Darwin2 provided the first detailed experimental evidence for carnivory in several genera. Sin...

Mercury content, as methylmercury, in aquatic biota varies greatly among species from the same location. Many parameters may affect its accumulation and concentration in fish tissues. The study assessed total mercury (T-Hg) and methylmercury (MeHg) in the muscle, liver and gonad of Micropogonias furnieri carnivorous fish, Bagre spp. omnivorous fish and Mugil liza iliophagous fish from a pollute...

The carnivorous plant genus Utricularia L. (bladderwort) comprises about 240 species distributed worldwide and is traditionally classified into two subgenera (Polypompholyx and Utricularia) and 35 sections, based mainly on general and trap morphology. It is one out of the largest carnivorous genera, representing ca. 30% of all carnivorous plant species, and is also the most widely distributed. ...

Proteins produced by the large and diverse chitinase gene family are involved in the hydrolyzation of glycosidic bonds in chitin, a polymer of N-acetylglucosamines. In flowering plants, class I chitinases are important pathogenesis-related proteins, functioning in the determent of herbivory and pathogen attack by acting on insect exoskeletons and fungal cell walls. Within the carnivorous plants...

The aim of this study was to investigate the differences of the ability to synthesize sufficient amounts of vitamin D in the skin of different carnivorous species. To this endskin tissue of 22 different carnivorous species were collected from dead animals from zoo’s and our pathology department. Wis tar rat skin served as a positive control.Cholesterol, 7-DHC, and vitamin D content was determin...

The trophic relationships of 13 intertidal fish species collected in northern Chile (20°18’S and 20°54’S) from July 1997 to July 1998, the stomach content analysis of 820 specimens, were investigated. The importance of the prey items was assessed by means of gravimetric and frequency of ocurrence methods, together with the Shannon-Wiener (trophic diversity) and Pianka (trophic overlap) indexes....

While agrochemical pollution is thought to be an important conservation threat to carnivorous plants, the effects of insecticides on these taxa have not been quantified previously. Using a combination of lab- and field-based experiments, we tested the effects of commercial and technical grades of three widely used insecticides (carbaryl, lambda-cyhalothrin, and malathion) on survival and the ex...

A new ELF (enzyme labelled fluorescence) assay was applied to detect phosphatase activity in glandular structures of 47 carnivorous plant species, especially Lentibulariaceae, in order to understand their digestive activities. We address the following questions: (1) Are phosphatases produced by the plants and/or by inhabitants of the traps? (2) Which type of hairs/glands is involved in the prod...

Carnivorous plants have fascinated scientists and the general public since the pioneering studies of Charles Darwin (1). No doubt part of their wide appeal is that carnivorous plants have turned the evolutionary tables on animals, consuming them as prey, with the green predators often equipped with remarkable lures, traps, stomachs, and—in a few cases—extraordinary speed of movement. To be cons...