When I read that there has been a decline in the numbers of plants that indulge in meat-eating, I wondered if they had turned to a vegan diet out of necessity, green awareness or just because they were tired of a rich diet. If they had gone vegan, they would be unpopular with their neighbors, as they would have become parasites. Better that I suppose than choosing to eat each other.
Reading, rather than glancing at the paper by Jennings and Rohr the U of South Florida (J Bio Con), I see that it is not a change of habit but of habitat that is the lever for the decline. They are getting fewer because we are bad neighbors. We keep exercising our right of eminent domain to take away the land from under their roots.
As plants become rare, a parallel with our animal neighbors becomes evident. Just as we (well most of us) no longer hang parts of endangered dead animals on our walls to show how testosterone charged we are, most of us don't pick rare plants and press them in scrapbooks. But just as we go for exotic pets, we go out and buy or collect exotic plants from the wild. This has now become a significant threat to our plant friends of the carnivorous persuasion.
