“Son, if you’re interested in biology, you’ll have to learn to understand that the definitions of terms are rather… loose.”
Leaves have evolved at least twice 🤔
Submitted 1 day ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/2e1806f0-187d-4b62-952e-8c9f738be675.jpeg
Comments
Dasus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
plenipotentprotogod@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Looks like it’s time to post my favorite SMBC again
olafurp@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Good question my son, define “seed”
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
A seed is an integumented indehiscent mega sporangium with one functional megaspore.
It doesn’t have an ambiguous definition, and we know, without any uncertainty, that it evolved precisely once.
olafurp@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
This, and your explanation below is fantastic. I had no idea that this was known and thought it plausible to have evolved many times like crabs.
Also, name checks out
Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
“How to Jordan Petersen your kid”
vala@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Also define “evolve” in a way that can be quantized like this.
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
The answer to any question like that is: I have no idea, but we’ll try and find out tomorrow. And if we can’t, that’s okay.
Sirius006@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
The “if we can’t, that’s okay” is really nice to add. I’ll try to keep it in mind. My 4yo tends to become frustrated when we can’t keep our words.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 11 hours ago
Depends on what you mean by leaf, some plants has phylloclades, which is the widened stem to look like leaves. You can see this in acacia trees, you see those tiny leaflets those are the actual leaves on the stem
flora_explora@beehaw.org 23 hours ago
Hm, I was intrigued and looked at the evolution of plants. This made me realize how paraphyletic gymnosperms and angiosperms really are! We just don’t know how angiosperms exactly started out and if they might be monophyletic. And in case of gymnosperms, they are consisting of many very different plant groups that evolved independently.
So gymnosperms were probably the first plants to evolve seeds and they “include conifers, cycads, Ginkgo, and gnetophytes, forming the clade Gymnospermae”.
It was previously widely accepted that the gymnosperms originated in the Late Carboniferous period, replacing the lycopsid rainforests of the tropical region, but more recent phylogenetic evidence indicates that they diverged from the ancestors of angiosperms during the Early Carboniferous.[12][13] The radiation of gymnosperms during the late Carboniferous appears to have resulted from a whole genome duplication event around 319 million years ago.[14] Early characteristics of seed plants are evident in fossil progymnosperms of the late Devonian period around 383 million years ago. It has been suggested that during the mid-Mesozoic era, pollination of some extinct groups of gymnosperms was by extinct species of scorpionflies that had specialized proboscis for feeding on pollination drops. The scorpionflies likely engaged in pollination mutualisms with gymnosperms, long before the similar and independent coevolution of nectar-feeding insects on angiosperms.[15][16] Evidence has also been found that mid-Mesozoic gymnosperms were pollinated by Kalligrammatid lacewings, a now-extinct family with members which (in an example of convergent evolution) resembled the modern butterflies that arose far later.
Wow, so there was already pollination going on before flowering plants even existed??? By scorpionflies who’s ancestors I frequently see? And there were butterfly-like insects long before real butterflies existed? This is wild!!
azi@mander.xyz 19 hours ago
Leaves evolved more times if you include blades of algae
HowAbt2day@futurology.today 1 day ago
69, son. 69.
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Nice, dad. Nice.
propter_hog@hexbear.net 1 day ago
Nice
RQG@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Isn’t evolution a constant process instead of happening in steps?
lugal@sopuli.xyz 23 hours ago
I think the question is how often it evolved independently like bird and bat wings evolved independently
RQG@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
That makes a lot more sense then. Thank you, happy to learn something new.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
Add flying fish to that.
Geodad@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Also pterosaur wings.
vala@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Ohh I also misunderstood the question.
The term for what your talking about is “convergent evolution”.
Ephera@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
I recently figured out that wheat/gluten FUBARs my health, so even just the concept of cereal grains has recently exploded in complexity in my head.
Before, I was eating:
- wheat (incl. durum, spelt, rye, and rarely barley, emmer)
- oats
- rice
Now I newly eat:
- buckwheat
- millet
- quinoa (in like three different colors)
- amaranth
- whole-grain rice is apparently pretty cool
- maize/corn (in the form of polenta and tortilla)
lb_o@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Buckwheat is so good if you fry onions, carrots and bacon, and then mix with boiled buckwheat.
Also if you don’t use multi-cooker - consider. It is a bit hard to get used to, but gives additional freedom in cooking everything from your list with meat.
Ephera@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
Well, I happen to separately
only eat foods that don’t cast a shadowdo the vegan thing and my genes don’t like the taste of onion either, so uhh… 😅But still good info. I haven’t yet tried cooking whole-grain buckwheat myself, so knowing a combination that works, I can figure out substitutes or other combinations which are likely to work.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Integumented indehiscent mega sporangium with one functional megaspore?
Once.
But once is all you need.
P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br 1 day ago
The original comic was drawn by Chris Halberk, if I’m not mistaken.
Midnitte@beehaw.org 1 day ago
At least once
radix@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Which came first, the plant or the seed?
loomy@lemy.lol 1 day ago
Ask your school teacher tomorrow.
kalpol@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Chris Hallbeck for credit
Geodad@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
The correct answer is, “We don’t know son. You could become a paleo-biologist and be the one to figure it out!”