Biological Sciences
Plant Evolution
Plant evolution refers to the process by which plants have changed and diversified over time. It encompasses the development of various plant adaptations, such as vascular tissues, seeds, and flowers, as well as the emergence of different plant groups, from algae to flowering plants. Understanding plant evolution provides insights into the history and diversity of plant life on Earth.
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6 Key excerpts on "Plant Evolution"
No longer available |Learn more- Rene Fester Kratz(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- For Dummies(Publisher)
Part IV The Wide, Wonderful World of Plants: Plant BiodiversityIn this part . . .Plants appeared on Earth long ago and have evolved many complex and wondrous forms, from tiny floating pond weeds to the mighty redwood tree. Just as you can draw a family tree for your family, scientists draw family trees, that show relationships among all the living things on earth. In this part, I introduce the amazing diversity of plant groups found in the family tree of life on Earth.
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Chapter 13 Changing with the Times: Evolution and Adaptation In This ChapterUnderstanding the sources of genetic changeExamining Plant EvolutionChecking out plant adaptationsLFiguring Out the Fundamentals of Evolutionife on Earth is constantly changing in response to environmental changes. Life, including plants, migrated from the oceans to the land, dinosaurs have come and gone, and modern humans evolved and spread over the face of the Earth. Biological evolution is the process that leads to changes in the species of life on Earth. Biological evolution occurs through a combination of genetic changes and natural selection. This chapter presents the fundamentals of biological evolution, examples of how to measure evolution in populations, and an exploration of some of the amazing adaptations resulting from Plant Evolution.Evolution is change that occurs over time. Biological evolutionmore specifically refers to changes in living organisms that occur over time. Life on Earth is constantly changing, usually in ways so small you’d hardly even notice. But if you look over huge spans of geological time — millions or billions of years — you can see the big changes that result from biological evolution, from the migration of life from the ocean to the land to the rise and fall of the dinosaurs. During this history of life on Earth, plants have changed from strictly aquatic organisms to simple land plants that reproduced by spores to the more dramatic cone-bearing and flowering plants that grow all around you today.
eBook - PDFEvolutionary Ecology of Plant-Plant Interactions
An Empirical Modelling Approach
- Christian Damgaard(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Aarhus University Press(Publisher)
7. Evolution of plant life history Trade-offs and evolutionary stable strategies If relevant genetic variation is available in a plant population, the proc- ess of natural selection will cause evolution (Darwin 1859), i.e., the phys- iology, morphology and life history of the plant population will adapt to the present abiotic and biotic environment. Since evolution depends on the process of natural selection, the type of evolutionary changes are limited by the mechanisms of natural selection and often, but certainly not always (Lewontin 1970), this means that the evolutionary changes should be explained at the level of the fitness of the individual plant. A plant with a given amount of resources at a certain point in time may allocate its resources to different purposes determined by the evolved life history of the plant and impulses from the environment. For example, an annual plant will usually allocate all its resources to re- production at the end of the growing season, whereas a perennial plant only can allocate a fraction of its resources to reproduction (e.g. Harper 1977). Some of the resources of the perennial plant need to be stored to survive during harsh periods, e.g. during a drought or a winter period. The perennial plant is said to make a trade-off between reproduction and survival, and since both features are important for the individual fitness of the plant this trade-off will be under selective pressure. The characteristic life history of a specific plant species will to a large extent often be determined by the way natural selection has shaped the morphological and physiological features underlying the various trade- offs. Other trade-offs that are being selected to increase the fitness of the individual plant at its particular environment include the allocation between male and female sexual structures, and the allocation between structures that will increase growth, e.g. stems and leaves, and a general storage of resources (e.g. Harper 1977).
No longer available |Learn more- (Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- University Publications(Publisher)
________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter- 3 Plant Evolutionary Developmental Biology Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) refers to the study of developmental programs and patterns from an evolutionary perspective. It seeks to understand the various influences shaping the form and nature of life on the planet. Evo-devo arose as a separate branch of science only in the last decade. Most of the synthesis in evo-devo has ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ been in the field of animal evolution, one reason being the presence of elegant model systems like Drosophila melanogaster , C. elegans , zebrafish and Xenopus laevis . However, in the past couple of decades, a wealth of information on plant morphology, coupled with modern molecular techniques has helped shed light on the conserved and unique developmental patterns in the plant kingdom also. Historical perspective Before 1900 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The origin of the term morphology is generally attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). He was of the opinion that there is an underlying fundamental organisation (Bauplan) in the diversity of flowering plants. In his book titled The Metamorphosis of Plants, he proposed that the Bauplan enabled us to predict the forms of plants that had not yet been discovered. Goethe also was the first to make the perceptive suggestion that flowers consist of modified leaves. ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ In the middle centuries, several basic foundations of our current understanding of plant morphology were laid down. Nehemiah Grew, Marcello Malpighi, Robert Hooke, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Wilhelm von Nageli were just some of the people who helped build knowledge on plant morphology at various levels of organisation.
No longer available |Learn more- (Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Academic Studio(Publisher)
________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter- 6 Plant Evolutionary Developmental Biology Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) refers to the study of developmental programs and patterns from an evolutionary perspective. It seeks to understand the various influences shaping the form and nature of life on the planet. Evo-devo arose as a separate branch of science only in the last decade. Most of the synthesis in evo-devo has ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ been in the field of animal evolution, one reason being the presence of elegant model systems like Drosophila melanogaster , C. elegans , zebrafish and Xenopus laevis . However, in the past couple of decades, a wealth of information on plant morphology, coupled with modern molecular techniques has helped shed light on the conserved and unique developmental patterns in the plant kingdom also. Historical perspective Before 1900 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The origin of the term morphology is generally attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). He was of the opinion that there is an underlying fundamental organisation (Bauplan) in the diversity of flowering plants. In his book titled The Metamorphosis of Plants, he proposed that the Bauplan enabled us to predict the forms of plants that had not yet been discovered. Goethe also was the first to make the perceptive suggestion that flowers consist of modified leaves. ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ In the middle centuries, several basic foundations of our current understanding of plant morphology were laid down. Nehemiah Grew, Marcello Malpighi, Robert Hooke, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Wilhelm von Nageli were just some of the people who helped build knowledge on plant morphology at various levels of organisation.
eBook - ePub- Andrew Lack(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Garland Science(Publisher)
5VARIATION AND EVOLUTIONDOI: 10.1201/9781003104711-5In the discussion of plant populations in Chapter 3, we have assumed that all individuals of a species behave in the same way and react in the same way to external factors. We can normally say with some confidence, that members of one species will behave in a way similar to other members of that species. But similar does not necessarily mean the same. Individual plants are different genetically, unless they are clones, and may react differently to particular circumstances. The most obvious differences are geographical or ecological; many plant species have populations that look different in different parts of their range or growing on different substrates. We frequently see variation within one population, too, in vegetative characters such as leaf shape or hairiness, in timing of leaf or flower production or in characteristics of the flowers such as size, shape or colour (). The extent of that variation differs markedly between species. Some species are extremely variable, and some hardly vary at all. This is an important feature of biodiversity that is usually ignored in any assessment. It gives rise to problems defining species (Section 5.9 ).Figure 5.1Plants are, at all times, dependent on their immediate environment for their growth, and they can vary considerably as a direct response to the conditions in which they ar e growing. Size of a full-grown plant can vary by an order of magnitude, and size of leaves or flowers can vary to at least some extent. Numbers of leaves or flowers can vary almost indefinitely. Many aspects of the phenology such as timings of leaf unfurling and flowering are dependent on environmental triggers. This phenotypic plasticity allows plants to grow in a range of conditions and to respond appropriately to those conditions. It can mean that two individuals, even two parts of a single clone, can look very different, especially in size, through growing under different conditions. The conditions affect how long a plant lives.
- Barbara A. Ambrose, Michael D. Purugganan, Barbara A. Ambrose, Michael D. Purugganan(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
Chapter 7 GENOMICS, ADAPTATION, AND THE EVOLUTION OF PLANT FORM Kristen Shepard Department of Biological Sciences, Barnard College, New York, NY, USAAbstract: A central question in the evolution of plant development is to understand how modifications of plant form contribute to adaptation within a species. Molecular population genomics and quantitative genetics offer complementary tools for answering this question. Quantitative trait locus mapping identifies genetic variation that underlies variation in plant form, while analyses of nucleotide diversity illuminate the evolutionary history of developmentally relevant genes. By combining these tools with developmental genetic characterization of natural sequence variants and with ecological experiments that test adaptive hypotheses, recent studies have begun to tease apart the genetic basis of adaptation. This chapter includes an overview of genome-wide mapping and population genomic methods, as well as case studies detailing the application of these techniques in root development, plant domestication, phytochrome-mediated phenotypic variation, and regulation of flowering time.Keywords: plant development; molecular population genetics; QTLmapping; natural variation; evolution of development; adaptation; association mapping; phytochrome; flowering time; BREVIS RADIX .7.1 OverviewA central goal of studies in the evolution of plant development is to understand how developmental mechanisms have been modified to generate the amazing diversity of plant form that we see around us. We know that diversity in the genome underlies the intraspecific and interspecific changes in plant development. Yet, even within a species, the genomes of any two individuals can differ in hundreds of thousands to millions of nucleotide sites as well as insertion/deletions (indels) and even gene copy number variants. Which of these genetic changes actually influences plant form? And, how do we determine whether this molecular variation is indeed adaptive?
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