Natures wonders: mathematical patterns (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, June 17, 2023, 15:46 (523 days ago) @ David Turell

In plants over time:

https://www.sciencealert.com/400-million-year-old-fossil-upends-our-understanding-of-fi...

"If your eyes have ever been drawn to the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem, the texture of a pineapple, or the scales of a pinecone, then you have unknowingly witnessed brilliant examples of mathematical patterns in nature.

"What ties all of these botanical features together is their shared characteristic of being arranged in spirals that adhere to a numerical sequence called the Fibonacci sequence.

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"Such is the prevalence of Fibonacci spirals in plants today that they are believed to represent an ancient and highly conserved feature, dating back to the earliest stages of plant evolution and persisting in their present forms.

"However, our new study challenges this viewpoint. We examined the spirals in the leaves and reproductive structures of a fossilized plant dating back 407 million years.

"Surprisingly, we discovered that all of the spirals observed in this particular species did not follow this same rule. Today, only a very few plants don't follow a Fibonacci pattern.

"Spirals occur frequently in nature and can be seen in plant leaves, animal shells, and even in the double helix of our DNA. In most cases, these spirals relate to the Fibonacci sequence – a set of numbers where each is the sum of the two numbers that precede it (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on).

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"If you look at the tip of a leafy shoot, such as that of a monkey puzzle tree, you can see the leaves are arranged in spirals that start at the tip and gradually wind their way round the stem. A study of 12,000 spirals from over 650 plant species found that Fibonacci spirals occur in over 90 percent of cases.

"Due to their frequency in living plant species, it has long been thought that Fibonacci spirals were ancient and highly conserved in all plants. We set out to test this hypothesis with an investigation of early plant fossils.

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"Specifically, we studied plant fossils of the extinct clubmoss species Asteroxylon mackiei. The fossils we studied are now housed in museum collections in the UK and Germany but were originally collected from the Rhynie chert – a fossil site in northern Scotland.

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"...we discovered that leaf arrangement was highly variable in A. mackiei. In fact, non-Fibonacci spirals were the most common arrangement. The discovery of non-Fibonacci spirals in such an early fossil is surprising as they are very rare in living plant species today.

"These findings change our understanding of Fibonacci spirals in land plants. They suggest that non-Fibonacci spirals were ancient in clubmosses, overturning the view that all leafy plants started out growing leaves that followed the Fibonacci pattern.

"Furthermore, it suggests that leaf evolution and Fibonacci spirals in clubmosses had an evolutionary history distinct from other groups of living plants today, such as ferns, conifers, and flowering plants. It suggests that Fibonacci spirals emerged separately multiple times throughout plant evolution.

"The work also adds another piece to the puzzle of a major evolutionary question – why are Fibonacci spirals so common in plants today?

"This question continues to generate debate among scientists. Various hypotheses have been proposed, including to maximize the amount of light that each leaf receives or to pack seeds efficiently. But our findings highlight how insights from fossils and plants like clubmosses may provide vital clues in finding an answer."

Comment: the use of mathematical patterns in nature is strongly suggestive of design.