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Maybe plants evolved very late on this world, maybe from simple animals that became ever more stationary. Not having to move is an advantage: you can invest mor
by fh 17y ago
Maybe plants evolved very late on this world, maybe from simple animals that became ever more stationary. Not having to move is an advantage: you can invest more in static defenses (like bark) if you don't have to carry them around. Sea shells are a real life example of something similar.
As for the link not being peer-to-peer, it might be as simple as the bigger/more complex nervous system dominating the other one.
- neilk 17y agoThat's impossible, at least the way I understand biology. The definition of a plant is that they produce food. An animal produces no food of their own and only takes from others. So plants have to evolve first. You could potentially have motile plants (maybe going directly from free-floating algae to something that swims). But generally, plants are stationary or move passively on Earth because they just don't have the energy. Animals hoover up many times their weight in plants over a year so they can do stuff like intentional motion.
- billswift 17y agoOn Earth they co-evolved from different single-celled (protoctist) ancestors.
- fh 17y ago> The definition of a plant is that they produce food. This can't be true: Not all plants are autotrophic, and not all autotrophic organisms are plants.
- neilk 17y agoWhich plants aren't autotrophic? As for the autotrophic non-plants -- I guess you are referring to algae and some bacteria?
- dalke 17y agoAlso fungi. I was curious myself and did some searching. Some non-autotrophic plants include the parasitic Cuscuta and Balanophora. There's also semi-parasites like Loranthus and Santalum (sandlewood). See Wikipedia under "Parasitic_plant". The most relevant term is "holoparasitism" and one page says: Holoparasitism has evolved at least six times independently.