Insectivore

Examples of insectivores include different kinds of species of carp, opossum, frogs, lizards (e.g. chameleons, geckos), nightingales, swallows, echidnas,{{cite web |url=http://www.animalinfo.org/species/zaglbrui.htm |title="Long-beaked Echidna (Zaglossus bruijni)" (entry) |website=animalinfo.org |publisher=West of Scotland & Ayr Group |access-date=1 April 2010}} numbats, anteaters, armadillos, aardvarks, pangolins, aardwolfs,{{cite web |url=http://www.hyaenidae.org/the-hyaenidae/aardwolf-proteles-cristatus.html |title=Aardwolf (Proteles cristata) |author=Holekamp, Kay E. |publisher=www.animalinfo.org |access-date=1 April 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100417192844/http://www.hyaenidae.org/the-hyaenidae/aardwolf-proteles-cristatus.html |archive-date=17 April 2010}} bats, and spiders. Even large mammals are recorded as eating insects; the sloth bear is perhaps the largest insectivore. Insects also can be insectivores; examples are dragonflies, hornets, ladybugs, robber flies, and praying mantises.{{cite book |title=The Economic Importance of Insects |author=Hill, Dennis S. |year=1997 |publisher=Springer |page=198 |isbn=978-0-412-49800-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RKQIAqMyBJgC |access-date=2010-04-01 |df=dmy-all}}{{rp|page=31}} Insectivory also features to various degrees amongst primates, such as marmosets, tamarins, tarsiers, galagos and aye-aye.{{cite book |title=The Primate Order |last=Stetoff |first=Rebecca |year=2006 |publisher=Marshall Cavendish |page=92 |isbn=978-0-7614-1816-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=akbsqE8-ar4C}}{{cite book |title=The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution |editor1=Jones, S. |editor2=Martin, R. |editor3=Pilbeam, D. |year=1994 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |place=Cambridge, UK |isbn=0-521-32370-3 |url=https://archive.org/details/cambridgeencyclo00step}}{{rp|pages=56–57}} There is some suggestion that the earliest primates were nocturnal, arboreal insectivores.{{cite book |author1=Weiss, M.L. |author2=Mann, A.E. |year=1985 |title=Human Biology and Behaviour: An anthropological perspective |publisher=Little Brown & Co. |place=Boston, MA |isbn=0-673-39013-6}}

{{main|Insectivorous plants}}

File:Drosera à feuilles ovales (Drosera x obovata) dans les Hautes-Vosges - Cliché Vosagus 28-06-2009.JPG ]]

Insectivorous plants are plants that derive some of their nutrients from trapping and consuming animals or protozoan. The benefit they derive from their catch varies considerably; in some species, it might include a small part of their nutrient intake and in others it might be an indispensable source of nutrients. As a rule, however, such animal food, however valuable it might be as a source of certain critically important minerals, is not the plants' major source of energy, which they generally derive mainly from photosynthesis.{{cite book |last1=Slack |first1=Adrian |last2=Gate |first2=Jane |year=2000 |title=Carnivorous Plants |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-69089-8}}{{rp|page=14}}

Insectivorous plants might consume insects and other animal material trapped adventitiously. However, most species to which such food represents an important part of their intake are specifically, often spectacularly, adapted to attract and secure adequate supplies. Their prey animals typically, but not exclusively, comprise insects and other arthropods. Plants highly adapted to reliance on animal food use a variety of mechanisms to secure their prey, such as pitfalls, sticky surfaces, hair-trigger snaps, bladder-traps, entangling furriness, and lobster-pot trap mechanisms.{{rp|page=14–17}} Also known as carnivorous plants, they appear adapted to grow in places where the soil is thin or poor in nutrients, especially nitrogen, such as acidic bogs and rock outcroppings.{{rp|page=13}}

Insectivorous plants include the Venus flytrap, several types of pitcher plants, butterworts, sundews, bladderworts, the waterwheel plant, brocchinia and many members of the Bromeliaceae. The list is far from complete, and some plants, such as Roridula species, exploit the prey organisms mainly in a mutualistic relationship with other creatures, such as resident organisms that contribute to the digestion of prey. In particular, animal prey organisms supply carnivorous plants with nitrogen, but they also are important sources of various other soluble minerals, such as potassium and trace elements that are in short supply in environments where the plants flourish. This gives them a decisive advantage over other plants, whereas in nutrient-rich soils they tend to be out-competed by plants adapted to aggressive growth where nutrient supplies are not the major constraints.

Technically these plants are not strictly insectivorous, as they consume any animal that they can secure and consume; the distinction is trivial, however, because not many primarily insectivorous organisms exclusively consume insects. Most of those that do have such a restrictive diet, such as certain parasitoids and hunting wasps, are specialized to exploit particular species, not insects in general. Indeed, much as large mantids and spiders will do, the larger varieties of pitcher plants have been known to consume vertebrates such as small rodents and lizards.{{rp|page=13}} Charles Darwin wrote the first well-known treatise on carnivorous plants in 1875.{{cite book |author=Darwin, C. |author-link=Charles Darwin |title=Insectivorous Plants |publisher=John Murray |place=London, UK |year=1875 |url=http://pages.britishlibrary.net/charles.darwin3/insectivorous/insect01.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060923021622/http://pages.britishlibrary.net/charles.darwin3/insectivorous/insect01.htm | archive-date=2006-09-23 }}

• Entomophagy
• Consumer-resource systems
• Insectivora
• List of feeding behaviours
• {{Wiktionary-inline}}

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Category:Carnivory

Category:Animals by eating behaviors

Category:Insect ecology