I always liked the idea of being a tree like life form.
On trees...
Submitted 10 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/943f424d-9d77-46b1-b0c0-05206a6e49a7.jpeg
Comments
Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org 10 months ago
OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Imagine looking down at a bunch of cute little things crawling all over you for hundreds of years and then one day one of them shows up with an axe
andybytes@programming.dev 10 months ago
Well, I’m just a product of my environment.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 10 months ago
Are at least all woody plants related?
RedAggroBest@lemmy.world 10 months 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.
wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 10 months 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?
JackbyDev@programming.dev 10 months 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.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 10 months ago
theres also a definition of a what a tree in the sense , its develops wood, many things are tree like, but not trees: such as palms(just overgrown herbs), dracaena( aka cabbage tree, they have something dracenoid thickining.) extinct plants like giant lycophytes and ferns
Hadriscus@lemm.ee 10 months ago
obvs@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Or maybe the microorganisms and food sources that life forms are exposed to have more of an effect on how the macroorganisms evolve than is currently talked about, which would explain why so many things in similar environments evolve similar traits.
TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I wasn’t ready for how weird this comment section turned out to be…
EstonianGuy@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Based on your username, you should be used to weird shit.
TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Doesn’t mean I can’t still be aww’d though!
Pnut@lemm.ee 10 months ago
By the logic we are not humans…
xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
no, we didn’t have mice and also ants evolve into humans… there’s one distinct line of ancestors…
it’s called convergent evolution. check out wikipedia
carpelbridgesyndrome@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
There are fern trees, conifer trees, and flowering trees. Where are my moss trees?
fossilesque@mander.xyz 10 months ago
RedAggroBest@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Except clubmoss isn’t moss iirc? They’re vascular and more of a fern than moss.
altphoto@lemmy.today 10 months ago
So if you look at a tiny blade of grass and a gigantic tree its like looking at a Chihuahua and a brachiosaurus. And there are smaller things and bigger things in the aminal kingdum!
Sir_Simon_Spamalot@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It’s also mindblowing that chihuahua and tibetan mastiff belong to the same species even tho they look entirely different.
pupbiru@aussie.zone 10 months ago
also that humans did that is wild
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Same for roots, btw, just earlier.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I think palm trees are a kind of grass
IhaveCrabs111@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I didn’t know that and I agree
fossilesque@mander.xyz 10 months ago
I’m firmly in this camp.
Anomalocaris@lemm.ee 10 months ago
I’m a billion years, crabs will start turning into trees and trees into crabs. merging into the ubercreature
Atlas_@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I imagine it’ll look like paras
multifariace@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Paras is a fungus. Totally different thing.
PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
“ubercreature” excuse me, lichen would like a word with you
khannie@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’m a billion years
Damn. You look good for your age.
Comment105@lemm.ee 10 months ago
I’d argue, but I agree. I don’t need to know how they look, if they’re a billion years and capable of communicating, whatever state they’re in looks good. Even if its a fungus posessed rot monster.
VernetheJules@hexbear.net 10 months ago
you may not like it but Ms Crabtree is what peak performance looks like
Dogyote@slrpnk.net 10 months ago
Trees are like every other plant, ONLY MORE SO
ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 10 months ago
Its basically just the best way to be a large plant if you’re not gonna be a big parasitic ivy. Once your plant circulatory system gets complex enough to send stuff further away, you start getting big enough that you need hard tissues just to stop yourself from folding over.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
Also cool that for a period of like 60 million years, nothing decomposed dead trees. As they would die or fall over, they’d just stay there, piling up. This is where most oil came from. The massive amounts of trees stacking up before bacteria and fungus evolved to decomposed them. Imagine 60 million years worth of trees just lying around.
Ileftreddit@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I thought that was coal
turtlesareneat@discuss.online 10 months ago
Mushrooms are the great undertaker, the great decomposer. The Langoliers. They are just waiting to eat you, and they’re happy to share their fruits in the meantime. They’re fattening you up. They can wait.
voracread@lemmy.world 10 months ago
That Langoliers reference spotted in the wild!
stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net 10 months ago
I imagine dead trees were flammable, even back then. And oxygen levels were 15% higher. Can you imagine the forest fires?
Dogyote@slrpnk.net 10 months ago
Didn’t those trees become coal, not oil?
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
Yes. I made mention of this in a reply to someone else as well. I’m not sure if my teacher (like 30 years ago) told us wrong or if I simply remembered it wrong.
DancingBear@midwest.social 10 months ago
I think near water they became oil and fat from water they became coal
ravenaspiring@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I love this fact, and am curious where you learned it?
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
I learned it nearly 30 years ago in school. I just did a search and found a link about it, though.
Also, seems that either I remembered wrongly, or my teacher made a mistake, but it seems it was most of the worlds coal; not oil, that came from all the piles of trees from that period.
BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net 10 months ago
The genus Cornus is a huge middle finger to growth-form-based taxonomy. It contains dogwood trees and also bunchberry, an itty bitty herb that grows on the forest floor.
The first “trees” were also lycopods whose closest extant relatives are the club mosses, a name which gives you an idea of how big they get.
fossilesque@mander.xyz 10 months ago
We use a specific type of Lycopodium as a control group to calculate pollen counts in palaeoecology. It’s pollen is super distinct.
BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net 10 months ago
That’s super neat. Is that little triangular bit at the top a germ pore or something else? It’s funny how you get one clade that takes what you’d think would be a really optimizable form like a spore or a pollen grain and takes a left turn with it. In fungi, Entolomas are really identifiable because their spores are pink and cube shaped.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Also, no such thing as fish.
Google it.
boydster@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Impossible. If there were no such thing as fish, how could bees be fish?
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I don’t have the tools to know how to respond to this comment. You win.
tamagotchicowboy@hexbear.net 10 months ago
Its trees and crabs all the way down.
hash@slrpnk.net 10 months ago
So that’s why every stargate planet looks like Canada
LeFantome@programming.dev 10 months ago
That and every Stargate planet is Vancouver
ravenaspiring@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
🤣🤣🤣
Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 10 months ago
My sister in law recently quipped that “Trees are a social construct” and at first I thought she was just being glib but now I can’t get that statement out of my head.
resting_parrot@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I listen to a podcast called Completely Arbortrary. They talk about a different tree species each episode. They say trees are a strategy, not a strict definition.
SOB_Van_Owen@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Thanks! Just subscribed. See they have a couple Metasequoia episodes -a favorite of mine .
m_xy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
here’s a cool blog post that expands on this There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)
i didn’t even put it in a folder, it’s just loose on my bookmark bar because it’s such an interesting post that i reread from time to time
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Very cool read, thank you
Thadden@lemmy.world 10 months ago
That was a very fun and interesting reading! Thanks for sharing
bananabenana@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Maybe…but I doubt many of these phylogenies use DNA, and if so, likely only a single or few genes. Nowhere near enough resolution to accurately determine genetic relatedness. Woody plants may actually be more related than we think.
These sorts of phylogenies tend to use morphological characteristics which is an unreliable measure of genetic relatedness.
I will stand corrected if wrong though
twice_hatch@midwest.social 10 months ago
Unsurpassable power: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crabtree
whotookkarl@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Not to be confused with Dryococelus aka the “tree lobster”
propter_hog@hexbear.net 10 months ago
Now we just need crabs to evolve a treecrab and we can have the two battle for the ultimate life form
Slovene@feddit.nl 10 months ago
Good moaning!
mrslt@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The absolute peak of evolution.
DeathsEmbrace@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Its called convergent evolution and you also have some shit you wouldnt believe that makes all apes similar to us.
OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Apes are so similar to us because we came from a common ancestor. I’d love to hear if there are traits we evolved independently after we split though.
stebo02@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
tbf isn’t a tree just a plant but big? makes sense that any plant species can evolve into a tree just by getting bigger
IndiBrony@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Heh, branch
OpenStars@discuss.online 10 months ago
And it’s not even one creature or even type of creature. Look up rhizobium.
Tbf, as we learn more about our gut microbiomes, it turns out that humans are that way as well. Maybe that’s why we have the thoughts in our heads vs. the feelings in our guts… (no that’s actually not it at all, except… isn’t it though?).
mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Trees are tall because trees are tall.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmynsfw.com 10 months ago
Fish too
OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Concentrated sun energy sinks