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| Mobile Plants | |
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| Topic Started: Feb 15 2018, 02:09 PM (360 Views) | |
| ZoologicalBotanist | Feb 15 2018, 02:09 PM Post #1 |
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Mixotrophic Sea Slug
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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.
At the moment, I have nothing further to add. |
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| Archeoraptor | Feb 15 2018, 02:15 PM Post #2 |
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"A living paradox"
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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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Astarte an alt eocene world,now on long hiatus but you never know Fanauraa; The rebirth of Aotearoa future evo set in new zealand after a mass extinction coming soon......a world that was seeded with earth´s weridest and who knows what is coming next........... " I have to know what the world will be looking throw a future beyond us I have to know what could have been if fate acted in another way I have to know what lies on the unknown universe I have to know that the laws of thee universe can be broken throw The Spec I gain strength to the inner peace the is not good of evil only nature and change,the evolution of all livings beings" " Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| Lowry | Feb 15 2018, 02:46 PM Post #3 |
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ARH-WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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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 | Feb 15 2018, 05:56 PM Post #4 |
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Insert Funny Creative Title Here
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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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If you like balloons, the color red, or mixotrophic plants derived from photosynthetic vertebrate-analogues, then check out my xenobiology project Solais
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| Tartarus | Feb 15 2018, 06:15 PM Post #5 |
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Prime Specimen
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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 | Feb 15 2018, 08:07 PM Post #6 |
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Mixotrophic Sea Slug
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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 | Feb 16 2018, 05:33 AM Post #7 |
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ARH-WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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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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| hotpotato! | Feb 16 2018, 06:21 PM Post #8 |
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Big Scary Aliens
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Three words for you all: Walking potatoes.........boom! |
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