Utricularia sect. Aranella is a section

Section (botany)

In botany, a section is a taxonomic rank below the genus, but above the species. The subgenus, if present, is higher than the section, and the rank of series, if present, is below the section. Sections are typically used to help organise very large genera, which may have hundreds of species...

 in the genus Utricularia. The ten species in this section are small terrestrial carnivorous plant

Carnivorous plant

Carnivorous plants are plants that derive some or most of their nutrients from trapping and consuming animals or protozoans, typically insects and other arthropods. Carnivorous plants appear adapted to grow in places where the soil is thin or poor in nutrients, especially nitrogen, such as acidic...

s native to tropical South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

 with one species also extending into tropical Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

. John Hendley Barnhart originally described and published this section in 1913 as a separate genus, Aranella. Sadashi Komiya revised the genus Utricularia in a 1973 taxonomic review and placed Barnhart's genus at the rank of subgenus

Subgenus

In biology, a subgenus is a taxonomic rank directly below genus.In zoology, a subgeneric name can be used independently or included in a species name, in parentheses, placed between the generic name and the specific epithet: e.g. the Tiger Cowry of the Indo-Pacific, Cypraea tigris Linnaeus, which...

 within Utricularia. Peter Taylor

Peter Taylor (botanist)

Peter Geoffrey Taylor was a British botanist who worked at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew throughout his career in botany. Taylor was born in 1926 and joined the staff of the herbarium at Kew in 1948. He published his first new species, Utricularia pentadactyla, in 1954...

 then published his taxonomic monograph

Monograph

A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...

 of Utricularia in 1986 in which he reduced Komiya's subgenus to the rank of section

Section (botany)

In botany, a section is a taxonomic rank below the genus, but above the species. The subgenus, if present, is higher than the section, and the rank of series, if present, is below the section. Sections are typically used to help organise very large genera, which may have hundreds of species...

, placing it within subgenus Utricularia

Utricularia subg. Utricularia

Utricularia subg. Utricularia is a subgenus in the genus Utricularia....

. More recent phylogenetic

Phylogenetics

In biology, phylogenetics is the study of evolutionary relatedness among groups of organisms , which is discovered through molecular sequencing data and morphological data matrices...

 data and revisions have reinstated subgenus Bivalvaria

Utricularia subg. Bivalvaria

Utricularia subg. Bivalvaria is a subgenus in the genus Utricularia. It was originally described by Wilhelm Sulpiz Kurz in 1874. In Peter Taylor's 1989 monograph on the genus, he reduced the subgenus to synonym under section Oligocista, a decision that was later reversed in the light of molecular...

and have placed this section within it.