Symposium # 19: Carnivorous Plants as Model Ecological Systems.

Organized by: A.M. Ellison & N.J. Gotelli.
Wednesday, August 9, 2000
8:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Ballroom I - Cliff Lodge

Although portrayed as simple curiosities of the plant kingdom ('toy plants'), we suggest that carnivorous plants (CPs) actually are ideal organisms with which to generate and test ecological theories. This symposium will illustrate how the unique combinations of traits that CPs possess can be used to test novel hypotheses about population biology and community organization. Because CPs are both autotrophic and heterotrophic, one fundamental question that CPs can be used to address is "why be a heterotroph?" CPs also possess suites of life-history traits that make them particularly amenable to demographic modeling and life-history analysis. At the population level, we can take advantage of the dual trophic nature of CPs to test general theories of resource competition using responses of CPs and non-CPs to soil fertility gradients, and to explore the evolution of pollination, deception, and resource parasitism. A central theory in plant community ecology is Grime's partitioning of plants along a three-way axis (C-S-R) related to disturbance, stress, and intensity of competition. This theory asserts that there is no life-history strategy for high-disturbance, low-productivity habitats, yet many CPs live in just such habitats. It is well-known that the inquiline communities of pitcher-plants (Sarracenia, Darlingtonia, Nepenthes) are model systems for studying trophic structure and community assembly across a broad range of environmental variables. It is less appreciated that CPs themselves may illustrate novel patterns of community structure and community assembly in habitats with dramatically different ecosystem properties (nutrient cycling and carbon dynamics). Finally, CPs are model systems for studying evolutionary convergence in response to similar ecological constraints. This symposium will highlight how a concerted focus on a unique group of plants can illuminate a wide range of open ecological and evolutionary questions.