Carnivory Lab Report

Body The habitats in which carnivory is found include Bogs, Serpentine Fens, and epiphytic habitats. The main similarity between these environments is their lack of nutrients. In bogs this is caused by a low pH which means that they are acidic. In these acidic habitats nutrients are not able to be recycled. This is due to the fact that many of the organisms that would recycle these nutrients are unable to function at the low pH levels. In serpentine fens the low nutrients is cause by the amount of heavy metals in the water as well there alkalinity. Due to these factor they too are unable to recycle nutrients. Epiphytic plants are plants which are growing harmlessly on other plants. These habitats are often found in the canopies of rain forest and lack nutrients due to the absence of soils. The plants which living these environment have evolved carnivory as a way of …show more content…
To determine this he tested weather or not feeding the carnivorous plants would increase their fitness. The plants that he used where Drosera intermedia and D. rotundifolia. To conduct this experiment he made three test areas, one control which he did not feed and two others in which he fed them on top of what they would normally be consuming. After analysis the results from his experiment it was determined that the plants which received extra feeding had significantly larger leaves. They also produced more flower then the unfed control group. What these results show is that carnivory is in fact an adaptation which increases the fitness of the plants. The reason that carnivory increases the fitness of plants is that in the nutrient low environments they obtain there necessary nutrients from there pray. How this adaptation evolved has been contested over the years the two main points of view on its evolution were proposed by Darwin and