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Mobile Plants
Topic Started: Feb 15 2018, 02:09 PM (360 Views)
ZoologicalBotanist
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When I asked about this in the Questions That Don't Need Their Own Topic thread, I anticipated a simple answer. Now the discussion has started to grow, so I decided that it was better moved to its own topic. So far, Here is what was said about the idea of plants (Earth or Alien) developing mobility.

ZoologicalBotanist
Feb 14 2018, 10:16 AM
Okay. Also, plant mobility. could a plant possibly move on its own, by pulling itself along with vines? I have an idea for a plant that sneaks up on animals, and then explodes, covering them with spores.


Strychnos
Feb 14 2018, 01:50 PM
ZoologicalBotanist
Feb 13 2018, 11:46 PM
Other than increasing leaf size, what ways could a plant evolve to maximize captured sunlight in low light conditions?
Some plants, instead of having broad leaves to increase surface area, have "windows" in their leaves (Hawthornia truncata is one). This lets the plant use the inside of the leaf for photosynthesis as well as the outside. This strategy is mostly used by plants from arid regions to reduce surface area that water could be lost through, but could hypothetically be useful in low light.

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Okay. Also, plant mobility. could a plant possibly move on its own, by pulling itself along with vines? I have an idea for a plant that sneaks up on animals, and then explodes, covering them with spores.


Depends on the plant? If it is an alien plant, almost anything is fair game. But if it is an Earth derived plant, this would be more unlikely. It would be a longer evolutionary pathway to evolve pursuit tactics than to just cover an animal with spores if it brushes up against a stationary plant (plants already do this with pollen).


Rodlox
Feb 15 2018, 05:43 AM
ZoologicalBotanist
Feb 14 2018, 10:16 AM
Okay. Also, plant mobility. could a plant possibly move on its own, by pulling itself along with vines? I have an idea for a plant that sneaks up on animals, and then explodes, covering them with spores.
pulling itself along, like a seal on a beach, moving its entire body - no.

pulling itself along, as in it grips rocks and whatnot as it grows longer and longer, one end following a chemical/? trail to its prey - sure.


ZoologicalBotanist
Feb 15 2018, 09:10 AM
So then it wold need to be able to grow rather fast, as I plan to put it in an area where animals are scarce, hence the reason it needs to hunt, as spores need the fresh carcass for the nutrients and moisture it contains, hence why it "hunts". The roots and main body of the plant would also need to be well protected, to keep herbivores from munching on it. That, or as it grows towards its prey, the parts behind it die off. this would protect the plant, and keep the planet in question from being covered in so much foliage from one plant it looks like a kudzu invasion.


Lowry
Feb 15 2018, 01:07 PM
ZoologicalBotanist
Feb 15 2018, 09:10 AM
So then it wold need to be able to grow rather fast, as I plan to put it in an area where animals are scarce, hence the reason it needs to hunt, as spores need the fresh carcass for the nutrients and moisture it contains, hence why it "hunts". The roots and main body of the plant would also need to be well protected, to keep herbivores from munching on it. That, or as it grows towards its prey, the parts behind it die off. this would protect the plant, and keep the planet in question from being covered in so much foliage from one plant it looks like a kudzu invasion.
If animal matter is scarce and these are regular old 'plants', meaning they have the same energy-producing capabilities of a simple Earth plant, then I don't expect them to be walking around much at all. Besides if they need a corpse producing tonnes of spore-young being pumped out to disperse over the air is far more efficient and far more plausible than some walking plant.


ZoologicalBotanist
Feb 15 2018, 01:40 PM
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IMO mobile plants are not far fetched in certain scenarios they just don´t need to move right now and IDK how energetic is photosynthesis for them to get energy for movement be affordable
plants technically move just not at the speed animals do, have you ever seen vines climbing on surfaces or even holding strongly to any sort of stem or metal bar.
again that also depends of how you define plant in an alien contest, photosynthetic organism is very broad
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Lowry
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Once again you are severely misinterpreting how energy intensive moving would be for a photosynthetic organism, unless they were converting ludicrous amounts of light into energy. But even then if they're producing so much energy the need to move becomes needless as they don't need to hunt, perhaps moving for water? But again they'd be extremely slow at plausible best, not fast enough to be a predator. As for using seed dispersal as a justification for movement? Wind currents are once again more efficient even for carcass brooding, otherwise we'd see motile fungi or ferns with every extinction event. Besides if such a rapid extinction event suddenly required them to be motile the timeframe in which they'd be able to reproduce with enough generations to do so would be ridiculously fast even with as much epigenetic meddling you'd do. Motile autotrophs have always made little speculative sense to me, mixotrophs I can buy into, people forget the difference between growing towards something and moving towards something.
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Setaceous Cetacean
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Lowry
Feb 15 2018, 02:46 PM
Once again you are severely misinterpreting how energy intensive moving would be for a photosynthetic organism, unless they were converting ludicrous amounts of light into energy. But even then if they're producing so much energy the need to move becomes needless as they don't need to hunt, perhaps moving for water? But again they'd be extremely slow at plausible best, not fast enough to be a predator. As for using seed dispersal as a justification for movement? Wind currents are once again more efficient even for carcass brooding, otherwise we'd see motile fungi or ferns with every extinction event. Besides if such a rapid extinction event suddenly required them to be motile the timeframe in which they'd be able to reproduce with enough generations to do so would be ridiculously fast even with as much epigenetic meddling you'd do. Motile autotrophs have always made little speculative sense to me, mixotrophs I can buy into, people forget the difference between growing towards something and moving towards something.
I mostly agree with this, though I am 1000% guilty of loving mobile plants. The way I justified it in my project was having them possess atrophied muscles since their ancestor was a photosynthetic animal, a la an upside-down jellyfish or coral. For an animal with a low metabolism and diurnal habits, I imagine photosynthesis could be quite advantageous. Most of these “plants” aren’t above consuming nearby carrion with their roots, though.

A potential advantage to mobile seeds (at least somewhat advanced) is their ability to choose where they will plant themselves. Wind and water, and even animals, just drop off the plant seed in random locations; this isn’t ideal if said seed is deposited in a shady forest floor or another region where competition is high. A mobile seed, possessing some sort of mental capacity, could pick a region with the best soil, and perhaps it could even eat nearby plants, decreasing competition and fueling a growth spurt.

And yes, one does need to take into account energy concerns and how partial mobility would affect said concerns.

EDIT: If you want to see a project featuring mobile Earth plants, I highly recommend checking Picrodus’s Umbriel, one of my favorite projects.
Edited by Setaceous Cetacean, Feb 15 2018, 06:06 PM.
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Tartarus
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Concerning mobile "plants" of the extraterrestrial variety, the speculative evolution project Fentil has a number of these.
https://demmmmy.deviantart.com/art/Poison-Bean-126076009
https://demmmmy.deviantart.com/art/Bghelly-basket-127787044 (NOTE: some turn sessile later in life: https://demmmmy.deviantart.com/art/Adult-Bghelly-basket-165951298)
https://demmmmy.deviantart.com/art/Woolly-Finger-Blas-Lanacaudia-451797095
https://demmmmy.deviantart.com/art/Bounder-Blas-Lagomorphis-451795535
https://demmmmy.deviantart.com/art/Killer-Fairy-Blas-Neraida-Fonias-451802664

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ZoologicalBotanist
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Alright, I did a little research on how plants move to follow the sun and how vines twist their tendrils around stuff. Apparently, there is a hormone that causes the plant cell to elongate, and the direction it moves is affected by where the hormone is in the cell (and several other factors, depending on why the plant is repositioning itself). If we had a plant that was a mixotrophe, could it theoretically move at a snails pace or slower by controlling where the hormone is in the cell, inching along like a caterpillar?
Edited by ZoologicalBotanist, Feb 15 2018, 08:08 PM.


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Lowry
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ZoologicalBotanist
Feb 15 2018, 08:07 PM
Alright, I did a little research on how plants move to follow the sun and how vines twist their tendrils around stuff. Apparently, there is a hormone that causes the plant cell to elongate, and the direction it moves is affected by where the hormone is in the cell (and several other factors, depending on why the plant is repositioning itself). If we had a plant that was a mixotrophe, could it theoretically move at a snails pace or slower by controlling where the hormone is in the cell, inching along like a caterpillar?
You're talking about Auxin which is all bout growth, once again not movement, growth is even slower and arguably more energy intensive to do at speed.

Seeds do not need to be motile to find desirable spots to grow as they do that already detecting water, ph etc before germinating at an incredibly less energy intensive cost.

'Inching along like a caterpillar' more like inching along like a lithotrophic bacterium. They do be so slow that in this corpse scarce habitat you mentioned they'd go extinct.

This emphasises one of my gripes about people speculating. They come up with an idea, which may or may not be great or interesting, but the justification and steps towards implementing said idea in an organism are entirely missed. That is called creature design and not speculative evolution.
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