masterofn001Jul 12, 2024

How do trees know?

https://lemmy.ca/post/24868882

How do trees know? - Lemmy.ca

How does a tree (or any plant, really), know to evolve to produce a delicious fruit or a poison berry, a seed inside an impenetrable shell, or invent a type of flying machine, in order to reproduce? (Each of these examples exists in my backyard) How do they receive feedback about their evolutionary experiments? How do they know it worked/failed. [10]

Show threadtiredofsametabJul 12, 2024
Random mutation. If it reproduces successfully, those genes pass on. If successful enough, it could become the dominant variety. If not successful, that variety will be a small population or die out. That's all there is to it.
Show threadmasterofn001Jul 12, 2024

How does a tree evolve a wing? - not to fly, but to propagate.

Parallel evolution makes sense to me in the animal kingdom, but a tree evolving winged vehicles for their seed is just mind blowing when I think about it.

Show threadMajorHavoc

berries and wings don’t just randomly appear out of nowhere from year to year do they?

They do! Any useful trait is likely to appear more than once in different species.

Jul 12, 2024 at 2:26amWeb