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Anyone familiar with evolution?
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| Sunsnail |
I'm pretty familiar with it but I have this one question.
In general, plants or animals that can produce offspring the best will pass their dna onto their children, which then become better at producing offspring as well. My question is why do some plants produce seeds that are utter at growing? I'm talking about 1 in 100 seeds will grow into a plant. Why does the plant waste so much energy producing seeds which will do nothing? Why hasnt evolution done anything there in terms of seed viability?
(this post is a rant because I can't grow some plants for ) |
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| Ivand |
| is proof that god exists |
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| Sunsnail |
| no no no... this isnt against evolution, I'm asking a question about it. |
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| Marc Summers |
Reproduction isn't that simple. The idea is to have the best genes passed down to the offspring, but sometimes you get the end of the stick and have a downs syndrome baby.
Your plants are just making enough seeds to ensure the survival of their genes. |
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| Psy-T |
| direct your question to mr.opus from the pdd. |
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| Sunsnail |
I don't understand though how a mutation that causes an organism to have less chances of producing offspring and surviving can cause the plant to become more successful.
| quote: | Originally posted by Psy-T
direct your question to mr.opus from the pdd. |
good idea. |
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| Silky Johnson |
There's a glitch in the matrix!!!
*explodes* |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
If we are looking at things from an evolutionary perspective, every organism has a single goal: to reproduce its genes as many times as possible by producing offspring that will themselves reproduce. There are two general ways you can go about this with roughly equal investments of energy: (1) just throwing so many copies of yourself out there that a few are bound to survive (making hundreds or thousands of flimsy seeds -- called "r-selection") or (2) throwing fewer copies out there while caring for them better (fruit-bearing plants, for example -- called "K-selection"). The level of energy investment is important because it is advantageous for organisms to stick around and reproduce themselves multiple times; reproductive times are often risky for lots of organisms, so any form of reproduction that will be too energy-intensive (example: making hundreds of offspring and trying to protect each and every one of them) gets selected against, since the ones who risk too much with individual reproductive acts end up getting killed off by disease or predators.
The plants and animals alive today are the ones whose ancestors happened to do what they needed to do to survive: not necessarily anything more or less. And due to the wide variations in environment and all sorts of other variables, "survival of the luckiest" might be a better way to describe what happens in evolution than "survival of the fittest." |
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| Sunsnail |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
If we are looking at things from an evolutionary perspective, every organism has a single goal: to reproduce its genes as many times as possible by producing offspring that will themselves reproduce. There are two general ways you can go about this with roughly equal investments of energy: (1) just throwing so many copies of yourself out there that a few are bound to survive (making hundreds or thousands of flimsy seeds -- called "r-selection") or (2) throwing fewer copies out there while caring for them better (fruit-bearing plants, for example -- called "K-selection"). The level of energy investment is important because it is advantageous for organisms to stick around and reproduce themselves multiple times; reproductive times are often risky for lots of organisms, so any form of reproduction that will be too energy-intensive (example: making hundreds of offspring and trying to protect each and every one of them) gets selected against, since the ones who risk too much with individual reproductive acts end up getting killed off by disease or predators.
The plants and animals alive today are the ones whose ancestors happened to do what they needed to do to survive: not necessarily anything more or less. And due to the wide variations in environment and all sorts of other variables, "survival of the luckiest" might be a better way to describe what happens in evolution than "survival of the fittest." |
Wow, thanks for the very nice reply. (most) Plants don't exactly protect their offspring (or at least expend energy to do so), so what is the logic that a plant would spend the energy to create many seeds that aren't able to grow?
I suppose since chance is a huge part of nature that perhaps there isn't a benefit to doing this. :conf: Just wondering if there was or not. |
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| montie |
| quote: | Originally posted by Sunsnail
Wow, thanks for the very nice reply. (most) Plants don't exactly protect their offspring (or at least expend energy to do so), so what is the logic that a plant would spend the energy to create many seeds that aren't able to grow?
I suppose since chance is a huge part of nature that perhaps there isn't a benefit to doing this. :conf: Just wondering if there was or not. |
Well it all comes down to how much energy is invested in each seed. I think what your talking about is R-Selection which Mr. BoJangles described.
(correct me if i'm wrong)
but in this type of reproduction method, plants invest little energy in creating each seed, thus it is more economical for them to produce massive amounts of seeds and have very few of them survive. they don't expend the energy to provide extras to care for their young. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | | Wow, thanks for the very nice reply. (most) Plants don't exactly protect their offspring (or at least expend energy to do so), so what is the logic that a plant would spend the energy to create many seeds that aren't able to grow? |
Yeah, it sounds odd to speak of "protection" in the case of plants, but think of seed-carriers like pineapples and coconuts as opposed to dandelions, for example. It takes a lot more energy to make a pineapple or a coconut, so a lot fewer of them get made, but the payoff is that the seeds have their own "food" for a long time and so each individual seed is more likely to survive. There are lots of other interesting things going on with the evolution of fruit, too; animals find fruit really attractive and end up spreading the seeds everywhere, which is to the advantage of any plant that happens to have sprung up in crappy soil.
It's also worthwhile to note that the "lots of flimsy seeds" strategy was originally probably the only reproductive strategy, if you think of "primitive" organisms like bacteria, fungi, or zooplankton. The plants who use that strategy (or their ancestors) were likely the first ones around, and evolutionary pressures have not yet been such that they have had to either develop better ways of protecting / ensuring the survival of their seeds or die. |
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| Sunsnail |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
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I get it now. Thanks a bunch :) |
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