In parts of Florida and southern Georgia, wolf spiders eat the same bugs as the pink sundew, a type of carnivorous plant. The first studies of shown that the wolf spiders are outsmarting the plants. This is a type of competition in nature. The carnivorous plants use sticky mucilage on the tips of their plants. Once the plant catches a bug, it uses its digestive enzymes to break down the bugs so that the plant can take down all the vital nutrients. Meanwhile, the wolf spiders build their web just at about the same height as the sundews and they eat the same insects as the sundews do too. In one study, the scientists saw that the spiders would build larger webs farther away from the plants. With their primary food gone, the plants would become a lot weaker, thus producing smaller leaves and fewer seeds. "We have pretty convincing evidence that you get competition between very distantly related taxa,” said Rohr. This means that the scientists once thought that there was only competition between closely related species. This particular case said that it wasn’t so since it was the animal kingdom taking over the plant kingdom’s food. Although we don’t know if plants have any of their own defenses, more studies are going to investigate that. Also, other studies and observations are asking if the presence of frogs near that environment have any other effects on the spider-sundew interaction.
This relates to biology concepts because this is not the only plant-animal interaction on earth. Scientists can use this one example to learn about other ones in nature. We can also learn more about competition in nature. Also, we will know why some species will become weak or go extinct while other species will keep our growing and become more prosperous.
We should care about this information because it is always important to know what kind of interaction is happening in nature. We could use this to know more about our own interactions.
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