It was during Christopher Coumbus's second voyage to the New World in 1493 that bromeliads were first collected and described by Europeans. During the five centuries since, at least 3,000 species have been described all of which occur exclusively in the Americas with the exception of one species. When we examine this vast group of plants, we see a startling diversity in the differing shapes, sizes, structures and colours of bromeliads. This wide diversity and adaptability has enabled the Bromeliaceae to emerge as one of the most successful families of New World plants. Bromeliads have mastered terrestrial, epiphytic and even in some cases lithopytic habitats, and within specific ecological niches they can dominate local flora. Yet within this incredible group of plants three particularly interesting species stand alone, for they have evolved the remarkable adaptations that enable the trapping of insects and other animal prey. They are the carnivorous bromeliads.

It may be surprising that just 0.1% of currently known bromeliad species are carnivorous. Carnivory in the plant kingdom is in all incidences extremely rare, however tank bromeliads seem so naturally predisposed towards the trapping of prey that they would appear to be the most likely plants to evolve to become carnivorous--yet this is not so, they are far outnumbered by almost 600 species of non-bromeliad carnivorous plants. Three species of bromeliads belonging to two genera are currently seen to be carnivorous. Two belong to the genus Brocchinia (B. hechtioides and B. reducta) and one belongs to the genus Catopsis (C. berteroniana). In both cases, each genus consists of around 20 species, the overwhelming majority of which are non-carnivorous regular tank bromeliads. This in itself is unusual since all other genera of carnivorous plants consist exclusively of carnivorous species--perhaps this is an indication of a the recent evolution of carnivory among bromeliads. It is certainly clear that carnivory evolved separately in the two genera after Brocchinia and Catopsis diversified from an ancient common ancestor, thus carnivory has emerged at least twice in the Bromeliaceae although it has apparently been driven in parallel evolutionary directions.

All three species were first described during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the botanical exploration of tropical parts of the New World intensified, yet all three have remained obscure and little known until relatively recently. During the 1980s and 1990s, botanists discovered unusual morphological traits in C. berteroniana and B. reducta which displayed similarity to adaptations of known carnivorous plants. Experiments such as those conducted by Frank et al (1984) demonstrated that B. reducta, B. hechtioides and C. berteroniana caught prey much more readily than regular tank bromeliads, and indeed in the case of C. berteroniana 12 times more prey was caught in comparison to regular bromeliad species under identical conditions and circumstances.

It has long been known that all tank bromeliads inherently trap insects which occasionally and randomly fall into the plant's water reservoirs and drown but observations reveal that unlike regular tank bromeliads, B. hechtioides, B. reducta and C. berteroniana possess...