So trees are the “evolve to crabs” meme and wood is like a crab shell. Or, I guess just exoskeleton, because things that aren’t crabs also have hard shells.
Kinda! But the shell isn’t what the carcinization memes are referring to. I’d say the biggest part of carcinization is the loss of crustacean tails. Basically every false crab is in the process of losing their tail in favor of a rounder body plan
I was under the impression that lignin was what really made trees possible, and that seems like an odd chemical for a bunch of unrelated plants to all evolve. Is there something I’m missing?
I wasn’t being specific enough. Cell walls in plants are composed of cellulose, henicellulose, and lignin. Lignin IS one of the structural polymers that plants produce, and yea, every single vascular plant has and uses lignin to provide structure. Iirc its a polymer produced by every plant, including mosses and other nonvascular plants, it’s just not used to the same extent.
RedAggroBest@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
As far as they are all vascular plants, but that’s like, basically everything that isn’t moss iirc.
The evolution of wood is common because it’s simple for cellulose to get denser in response to a need to grow taller to outcompete your neighbors.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 weeks ago
So trees are the “evolve to crabs” meme and wood is like a crab shell. Or, I guess just exoskeleton, because things that aren’t crabs also have hard shells.
RedAggroBest@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Kinda! But the shell isn’t what the carcinization memes are referring to. I’d say the biggest part of carcinization is the loss of crustacean tails. Basically every false crab is in the process of losing their tail in favor of a rounder body plan
wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
I was under the impression that lignin was what really made trees possible, and that seems like an odd chemical for a bunch of unrelated plants to all evolve. Is there something I’m missing?
RedAggroBest@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I wasn’t being specific enough. Cell walls in plants are composed of cellulose, henicellulose, and lignin. Lignin IS one of the structural polymers that plants produce, and yea, every single vascular plant has and uses lignin to provide structure. Iirc its a polymer produced by every plant, including mosses and other nonvascular plants, it’s just not used to the same extent.
wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
AH, I see. So, it already existed, but until trees evolved, it wasn’t used to such an extreme extent.