Evolution: land plant evolution required changes (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, November 15, 2022, 19:35 (737 days ago) @ David Turell

Solution found:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/11/221114190602.htm

"The earliest land plants were small -- just a few centimeters tall at most -- and restricted to moist, boggy habitats around streams and ponds. Around 400 million years ago, however, plants developed vascular systems to extract water more efficiently from the soil and use it for photosynthesis, a transition that would forever alter the Earth's atmosphere and ecosystems. A team of researchers have now solved a 100-year-old paleontology mystery: How did ancient plants emerge from swamps and riverbanks to new habitats with limited access to water?

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"Over the past decade, Brodersen and colleagues have explored the implications of how modern plant vascular systems are constructed, especially within the context of drought. When plants begin to dry out, air-bubbles get stuck in the xylem, which is the specialized tissue that transports water and nutrients from the soil to stems and leaves. The bubbles block the movement of water. Left unchecked, they spread throughout the network, disconnect plants from the soil, and ultimately lead to plant death. Avoiding the formation and spread of these bubbles is of critical importance for tolerating drought today, and the research team applied this same thinking to explain the patterns of vascular organization in the fossil record.

"The cylinder-shaped vascular systems in the earliest land plants, which were similar to a bundle of straws, had initially served them well in their early watery habitats. But as they moved onto land with fewer water resources, the plants had to overcome drought-induced air bubbles. Early land plants did this by reconfiguring the ancestral, cylindrical-shaped xylem into more complex shapes that prevented air bubbles from spreading.

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"'It didn't just sort of happen. There's actually a good evolutionary reason," says Bouda. "There was strong pressure from drought that made it happen. That was the hundred-year-old riddle, which we've now answered." (my bold)

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These changes happened rather rapidly -- in paleontological timeframes, that is -- over approximately 20-40 million years. The driving forces behind the change to plant vascular structure could help inform research in breeding drought-resistant plants, helping to build resilience to the impacts of climate change and address production-related food insecurity issues. (my bold)

Comment: note my bolds. I expect God helped with the best design.