A team of scientists, led by researchers at Yale University, think they have finally figured out why land plants evolved such complex vascular systems – a mystery that has stood for roughly a century.
As plants began to move further inland into more arid areas, they needed new ways to capture water, sunlight, and nutrients while protecting themselves from evaporation and dehydration.
That's where branches and roots came in handy. And yet, at the same time, these structures also created new challenges., that blocks water from flowing up through the roots. In a simple and primitive vascular system, an air bubble inside a plant can readily spread to other channels or 'straws', creating a blockade against further water and nutrients. The result can trigger tissue death, and it might even kill the entire plant.preserved in the fossil recordWhen the straws that make up a plant's vascular system are separated into patterns, simulations suggest air bubbles have fewer neighbors to spread to.
The animation below illustrates the difference between an embolism spreading in the vasculature of a simple, primitive plant versus a more complex, modern one. A schematic animation of an embolism spreading between channels in the cross-section of two plant stems. The stem on the left represents a primitive plant, and its simple configuration allows the embolism to spread easily. The structure on the right is more complicated, and as a result, the embolism produces less damage. (
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