Carnivorous plants belong to endangered species. Due to agricultural development, natural populations of these plants are diminishing. The herbal and ornamental value of these species has also led to their over-collection. The Drosera genus is a natural source of pharmacologically important compounds (e.g. naphthoquinones, flavonoids, anthocyanins, phenolic compounds) used as substrates in the ...

Utricularia gibba, the humped bladderwort, is a carnivorous plant that retains a tiny nuclear genome despite at least two rounds of whole genome duplication (WGD) since common ancestry with grapevine and other species. We used a third-generation genome assembly with several complete chromosomes to reconstruct the two most recent lineage-specific ancestral genomes that led to the modern U. gibba...

Carnivorous plants allocate more resources to carnivorous structures under nutrient-limited conditions, and relative investment can also be influenced by animals (infauna) that live in association with these plants and feed on their prey. We investigated these effects within a population of the pitcher plant Cephalotus follicularis containing varying densities of larvae of the fly Badisis ambul...

We measured the activities of eight digestive enzymes in four species of herbivorous and carnivorous prickleback fishes and determined the effects of ontogeny, diet, and phylogeny on these enzyme activities. Of the four species, Cebidichthys violaceus and Xiphister mucosus shift to a more herbivorous diet as they grow (> or =45 mm SL [standard length]), whereas Xiphister atropurpureus and Anopl...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Ibicella lutea and Proboscidea parviflora are two American semi-desert species of glandular sticky plants that are suspected of carnivory as they can catch small insects. The same characteristics might also hold for two semi-desert plants with glandular sticky leaves from Israel, namely Cleome droserifolia and Hyoscyamus desertorum. The presence of proteases on foliar hairs,...

Among terrestrial mammals, the morphology of the gastrointestinal tract reflects the metabolic demands of the animal and individual requirements for processing, distributing, and absorbing nutrients. To determine if gastrointestinal tract morphology is similarly correlated with metabolic requirements in marine mammals, we examined the relationship between basal metabolic rate (BMR) and small in...

Background: The northern pike Esox lucius is a fresh water species belonging to the Esocidae family. It is a carnivorous fish which mostly feeds on invertebrates and fishes. The morphology of its intestine is very useful for understanding the fish’s digestive physiology, diagnosing some intestinal diseases and formulating suitable feeds. OBJECTIVES: This study was designed to determine the anat...

Carnivorous plants have emerged as model systems for addressing many ecological and evolutionary questions, and since Lentibulariaceae comprise more than half of all known carnivorous species (325 spp.), they are of particular interest. Studies using various molecular markers have established that Lentibulariaceae and their three genera are monophyletic with Pinguicula being sister to a Genlise...

In addition to induced direct defence, plants can defend themselves indirectly by improving the effectiveness of enemies of herbivores. Plants can respond to arthropod herbivory with the induction of a blend of volatiles that attracts predators and/or parasitoids of herbivores. Carnivorous arthropods can discriminate between infested plants and mechanically wounded plants, and between plants in...

  Neogobius caspius is an endemic species of the Caspian Sea which plays an important role in food chain as a predatory fish. The main aim of this study was to investigate selected feeding characteristics of Neogobius caspius in the south west coasts of the Caspian Sea. Monthly sampling was carried out using a bottom trawler at three stations (Astara, Anzali and Chabuksar) in three depths (0-5,...