Speaker 1: Plant a speciation. What does it mean to speciate? It
means the evolution of new species, okay. And but before
we get into that, though, we will learn that, uh
can you see this fucking screen? Is this coming through? Huh?
You fuck? I think so. Before we get into it, though,
you will learn that, you know, the concept of a
species itself is a human thing, all right. Nature doesn't
obey find boundaries such as this. It doesn't listen, it
doesn't it doesn't constrain itself to boxes. That's why we
get all these different things, like a species concept. You
can see, this ship is so convoluted, and scientists don't
really know what it is. I mean, you get the
general gist of it, but it's not you know, it's
a little fluid. Okay, So it's a spectrum. Sometimes this
species stuff. You got ecotypes, different phenotypes. And that's because
the more that we learn about evolution and natural selection
and how plants exchange genes, we learn as species is
not clearly defined in some things. The species is clearly
divines some lineages. In other lineages like astace, for example,
or some of the buckwheats, they hybridize readily. There's new
ecotypes popping up. There's new species, especially certain like the
genus Ariagonum. There's different ecotypes. I mean that thing. There's
like three hundred species the buckwets that they're dominant out west.
They like that. They thrive in drier places. Okay, and
if they occur in the east, in the eastern half
of the United States, they tend to only occur in
dry microsites. Okay, like that. What's that Areagona at Lennie
over there in Virginia and the shale barons. Great fucking species. Anyway,
the buckwheats, they they're very they're very evolutionarily plastic. You
get new different ecotypes and phenotypes popping up all over
the place that can turn into different species, et cetera.
So anyway, the species concept, you can see here as
we've got right here, fucking degenerates. The biological species concept
defines the species as a group of organisms that can
interbreed and produce healthy offspring, etc. But of course, different
species hybridize all the time, Different species in the same
genus even sometimes you know, species in different genera will okay,
like happens with ferrocactus and Lukedenbergia. You know, the Lukedenbergia
is most closely related to ferocactus. Who would have thought
it's just got those elongated tubercles. They can bang, they
can interbang, and they form a hybrid. Wild stuff. Okay.
Carantho fremontia a hybrid between Carantho ndron, which grows in
the Wahawkan Cloud forest at nine thousand feet and Formatodendron,
which occurs in California, wonderful chaparral plant. They can interbreed,
they can interbang, as you would say if you have
a sophomore humor like me. Okay, and they can form
inter intergeneric hybrids. Okay, wild stuff. So you've got to
be fluid. You got to remember, at the end of
the day, these boxes that we draw around lineages, especially
at the species level, are fluid. Okay, So you got
all these different species KINDSPT morphological species concept defines the
species by its distinctive physical features. Well, that doesn't really
work right sometimes because there's cryptic species. You'll get a
plant species that when it's the DNA's looked at, it's fine, Wow,
this is something entirely new that can't breed, Okay with
this other thing that it looks a lot alike. Okay,
because maybe this is polyploid. It's got more chromosomes than
this one, but they look a lot alike. Ete are phylogenetic.
Species concepts defines the species by its evolutionary relationships with
other species, ecological species. The point is we're not going
to get into all these it's a whole fucking separate podcast.
But you could clearly see, uh, there's a number of
different number of different species concept and I think you
should read about that in your free time. You know,
what are you doing? What are you gonna be doing?
Then it pictures of food and butts comparing yourself to
others on social media? Okay, anyway, so we got that
species concept out of the way. You gotta get loose,
you gotta get a little fluid with it. What is speciation?
It's the evolution of new species. Okay? And what is
it the what's it? The hard especiation isolation? All right?
Great graphic right here. Okay, original population gets split up
by a physical barrier like a mountain range or an
underwater volcano that splits off the lakes. What are the
lakes in Africa? Great example of what all the fucking
fish species over there? I forget this is This is
like elementary evolutionary biology, and I forget the name of
the anyway, cichlids. I think they're cicklids, all right. It
was a lake used to be, was it? Lake Victoria?
Used to be a larger lake got split up into
smaller lakes each h you know, what was formerly a
larger population got split up into multiple different populations. You
get different species evolving. Then it's a restriction of gene flow. Okay,
it's isolation. Genetic isolation can be and it can be
restriction in gene flow at restriction or in a leele flow,
which is a copy of a gene Isolation can be
physical or it can be you know, genetic, all right,
like a phenology like this species of critagish, or it
was a large population of critagis the what is it hawthorns? Right,
one flowers. Suddenly something happens. One starts flowering later in
the year. Okay, the the ancestral population flowers in the spring.
These new individuals that evolve different mutations, different phenotypes, they
start flowering in the fall. Okay. They're they're restricted all right, temporally,
they're restricted from from exchanging genes. But they're restricted temporally.
Now you know, they're still growing. That's simp patric e speciation,
by the way, all right, So they're still growing within
close proximity to each other, but they can no longer
interbreed a polyploidy event, all right. Remember humans are diploid.
We have two copies of each chromosome. Plants can have
multiple copies of each chromosome. Sometimes the whole genome will
duplicate itself, and so they'll be polyploid, all right. So
they could be you know, tetraploid whatever. And in that case,
you know, they would have multiple copies of every chromosome.
It can no longer interbreed with the ancestral population. That's diploid. Okay,
So you see how you see how one population can
be genetically isolated from another population of organisms. In this case,
we're talking about plants, even though they're still growing in
close proximity, all right, And that's sympatric expeciation. Allopatric e
speciation is a reproductive isolation due to geographic isolation, which
is really easy to visualize, which which I've been here
with this little drawing. See two different species, those little
cones are supposed to be trees, coniferous trees. Right mountain
range due to tectonic forces, rises up, splits the population
in two, and the population on the left side can
no longer exchange pollen with the population on the right,
and so they evolve into different species. And presumably the
conditions on either side of the mountain are not the
same either, all right, it's it's a there's heterogeneity there,
so that maybe this will be a more moist population,
gets more rain, this is a more dry population, et cetera.
And so they will each each population will will evolve
under the selective pressures, the natural selection of each respective environment. Okay,
which is not the homogeneous homogeneous homogeneity, you know what
the fuck I'm talking about. Let's get to the point
what caused the That's when I get these pictures, These
cute little birds, those are Darwin's finches. Darwin saw this,
all right. He was a worldly man. He was traveling,
he was traveling with all those those uh syphilitic sailors
on that ship. What were they doing over there? What
were they doing? They were doing something for Her Majesty's service.
They were getting I don't know what the fuck they
were doing. They were picking up diseases, is what they
were doing, because they were a bunch of filthy fucks.
But Darwin was on on the you know, he was
the on board scientist, and uh.
Speaker 2: Probably fuck, I don't know. The guy was going all
over the place, you know, back in the day. And
he gets to the Galopago silence and he says, wow,
he says, he got all these different islands, and each
island has a different bird on it, a different finch
with a different kind of beak, and the beak has
evolved to a different food source.
Speaker 1: Does it eat insects? Does it eat cactus? Does it
crack seeds? What is it doing? Okay? Great, this this
was this was a great example, a great illus, all right.
And because it was these islands were not so far apart,
he could see that he picked up on the same
general theme. I eat a finch, but different variations on it,
and that's all evolution. Well it's not all it is,
but that's a lot of what is variations on a theme. Okay,
great little graph there. Alopatrick speciation, Parapatrick para Patrick speciation
sim Patrick. Let's just focus on Alopatrick and Simpatrick for
now though. Okay, let's see he's splitting up original population.
Initial step of speciation. The circle splits in two, all right,
It's like a split pizza, and then you know, one
half the pizza starts evolving into something else, evolution of
reproductive isolation, new distinct species after equilibration of new ranges.
The fuck oun't know anyway, but Parapatrick and Parapatrick will
get to later. But Alopatrick and sim Patrick focus on
the is allopatric geographic isolation, and Simpatrick, there's still there's
still you know, like if a sim if a plant
is growing sympatrick with another species, that's those two plants
are occupying the same habitat. They're not geographically isolated, but
they're reproductively isolated due to something like phenology, different flowering times,
or one is polyploid, all right, and you know a
polyploid organism can't can't interbreed with the diploid organism. Okay.
Allopatric E speciation occurs on a population is geographically say
we got that already. Sympatric E speciation happens within the
same geographic area without a physical barrier often driven by
behavioral or ecological factors that isolate different groups. Okay, anyway,
great an another great graph with the split pizza. All right,
the circle that's been split into geographic barrier reproductive isolation
spec I love thinking about this stuff. I love thinking
about the variations on a theme. Then when you get
to Alla patrick'speciation that the geographic isolation could later be
split up into dispersal events, i e. Seed gets stuck
in the plumage of a bird transported to an island,
you know, two thousand miles away. It's it's relatively rare,
but it does happen, as we'll see what the Hawaiian
silver swords and the California tarweeds. And you can also
have vicarious like we talked about before. Okay, the you know,
the the Earth's crust gets a stiffy and a mountain
building That happens in orogeny, and you get a mountain
popping up, right, splitting a population into or a lake
or a big river. What happened with chimps and bonobos? Right?
What happened with the chips and bonobos? How did they
get out of Bonobos? So nice? And the chimps are
fucking maniacs like humans are. Huh. That was the river
in the congo in case. Okay, so and anyway, any
shape you see, you're just trying to think about what
different things can split up a population, because that that
is what causes the speciation. It's just that restriction in
gene flow. That's why I like when plant breeders. Someone's
trying to breed you know, a more drought resistant tomato
or something. They will you know, grow a thousand and
they'll pick the ones they'll subject them to, like a
drought stress in a greenhouse. Right, turn off the water,
and the ones that will at first they pick out right,
they just destroy, and then the ones that are last twilt.
All right, that's a great example of selection. Okay, all right,
this is all over the place. I apologize, you know,
I have been trying to do too much at once,
but hopefully you're picking up some of what I'm putting down, kay, Key,
difference is Dispersal involves movement, and dispersal individuals actively move
to a new location, crossing existing barriers. Vicarians involves a
barrier formation. All right, it's easy enough, all right, let's
get the pair up Patrick and parah Patrick speciation. Parapatric
speciation is a type of allopatric speciation. These are both
types of alopatric speciation where species develop different characteristics in
lifestyles despite being located next to each other. Okay, this
can occur when a habitat changes dramatically. This is not
in proximity to each other. This is like we'll see
with the vernonias. Okay, eastern half of North America gets
more rain, it's more music, less stressful, and then you
hit the one hundredth meridian which runs right through Texas,
and the whole content starts fucking drying out. And you
can see that in the plant life. And you can
see in the genus Vernonia among many other genera, because
plants like Vernonia larcini they've got the same flower structure
as Vernona. The iron weeds well known plant in uh
in the east, but the leaves are narrower and so hairy,
they're almost fucking white. Okay, so that's that would be
a form of parah Patrick speciation. Pair uh parat Patrick
speciation will be something like island speciation, a type of
atta of Patrick speciation where one of the new populations
is much smaller than the original population, all right, and
this can lead to different illegal frequencies and phenotypes in
the new population. Okay, so it's geographic isolation, but the
new population is much smaller than the original. This is
like what you would see in island speciation, right, like
we're seeing here with the with the silver swords on
top of the volcanoes. Look at the beautiful view of
the parking lot. So all the Americans and a tourists
can get their fat asses up, no offense. I'm sorry,
you know, I'm really fucking out of it. I'm I'm out.
I'm out of this today. So they can get up
to the top of the volcano. Right, you go, You
drive up to the parking lot, you look around, get
back in the car, and you just right back. You
don't really do anything, right most people, especially especially if
you're in Texas, You don't go on along. You just
kind of waltz around the parking lot because no people.
You know, Americans don't like walking. They hate walking, all right.
It's not their fault. It's the infrastructure they were given.
It's not their choice, it's just what they were given.
You know, Americans don't walk anyway. I digress this thing
right here that you're looking at. The silver sword. You
can see looks otherworldly. Okay, they're they're monocarpic, like a gave.
So they flower once and then they die, and it
takes them about twenty or thirty years to flower roughly.
I think that's about right. I've never actually seen one
in person. I've not been to Hawaii, but hopefully at
some point they'll go. It's you know, Hawaii is largely
wrecked ecology. It's kind of said. There's still some wonderful
stuff there, but you know, a lot of it. Plus
it's got all these corny ideas about tropical paradise that
make me one of them. It's so uh and it's expensive,
so anyway, but I'm gonna make it there one point.
So on top of these folks hanos, you got this plant,
the Hawaiian silver sorts. Look at those beautiful blue leaves, narrow,
almost looks like a yucca covered in hair. And what
was what what what is the closest relative of of
the tarwi or the silver swords? Excuse me, right, the closest.
There's something I think about all the time. I become
interested in the plant, I will what's the what's the
most closest relative of it, so something like peyota. I'll
type in lofafra and then the words phylogeny after it,
and I'll be given a phylogenetic tree, an evolutionary tree,
a cladogram, and it will show what loffra according to
DNA sequencing, which doesn't lie, it's close most closely related
to In that case, it's it's this genus called Obergonia,
another genus of cacti wild you never think so. They
don't look much alike at all. When you see the
flowers in the underground stem, you can kind of clicks,
but for the most part no anyway, So what is
what is silver sword most closely related to? What is?
What is? What did it? And what what? What is?
The presumative specieded out of right because it then the
Hawaiian Islands are only six million years old, roughly six
or seven, right, They weren't there six or seven million
years ago. They're a result of hotspot volcanism, all right.
An underwater volcano started puke and out lava created these islands.
So everything that arrived on Hawaii got there in the
last six or seven million years, because there was no
island there before. It might be a little bit older,
I'm not sure, but they're still being created, obviously, as
you can learn from those disastrous basalt floats that level
neighborhoods instead of the islands. Anyway, before the event of
DNA sequencing, it was hypothesized just from looking at the
flower structure, because remember, flowers are what we used to
identify plants. They are what giveaway what a plant might
be most closely related to. Right, you compare the shape
of one plant's flower with the shape of another plant's flower,
and you can see similarities. And as you know, the theoretically,
the more similarities, the more closely related there. So what
was what was the what were the silver swords most
closely related to? Look at the nice money shops of
the silver swords. Pictures are stole off the internet. Look
at those fucking things, incredible landscape. Right. Well, this is
what it turns out their most closely related to. Here's
the clade of silver swords, the evolutionary group, the clade,
and it's related to this plant called riarity Apsis muriai,
which has been renamed the genus has been renamed Mattia
bolanderai and rayardy Apsis scabbarda. Okay, oh yeah, that Maddi
has sandwiched in between the two riarity Apsis. They're gonna
have to do a name change there for sure. So
this is what the DNA revealed, And this is what
I think. It was a carl Quist who decided that's
probably that's probably what they were even before we look
at the DNA, what they're most closely related to. Yeah,
and what do these plants look like? What are what
do the ancestors look like? Well, here is the Nissocarpus scabbardess,
which is that what they changed the Yeah, riarity Opsis
beaks came a nisocarpus. The tarweeds, these little herbs, these
little herbs, so five or six million years ago the
seeds are one of these things got stuck in the
plumage of a bird, got taken to Hawaii on a
Transpacific flight, well only halfway across the ocean, the fuck
you know what I'm talking about, and it evolved into this.
So when that seed evolved, that founder population, when that
not evolved, When that founder population, that seed was brought
to the Hawaiian islands. It evolved into this freedom the
constraints that we're keeping plants like a Nisocarpus scabbardess from
getting too big on the mainland, like herbivores and other things.
This new population could now evolve into these weird ass
monocarpic monolithic beautiful weird ass plants, right, beautiful fucking weirdos.
And that right there is what makes studding shit like
this so fun because you can literally see it. And
when you look at things like human selection, shit like
this is amplified. And you look at the fact that
we got broccoli, cauliflower kale bacchoi et cetera from the
same species of Braskabrasca olerasia. Okay, you can and you
think about how quickly we did that, all right, a
few hundred years, maybe a thousand. Then you can see, well,
if we could do that in a thousand, what can
the environment do? What can quote nature do? And the
selective forces in a given region, what can they do
in millions of years? Well, there's your answer. You get
things like silver swords evolving from things like tarweed's. Okay,
here's carl Cristia murii, which that was really already apsis.
Look at you see what they call it tarweeds. It's
got those glandular trichombs, little hairs and shit, little yellow
flooris there's the seeds or the achenes. It's not it's
a single seeded fruit. Okay, So that is actually a
fruit and a seed, all right, single seeded fruit. You
get the PAPIs, the pappi up top. You could see
how that would get stuck in the plumage of a
bird or something. And there's up close of the tarweeds.
Looking at it. You get the parking lot in the background.
Fucking oh god, America. Okay. The Canary Islands are another
hotspot of island speciation anetimism. So you get a lot
of speciation on islands. Islands are great ways for new
things to evolve. They're great examples of isolation. All right.
Islands are isolated and they're surrounded by a moat of
the open ocean that seals them off from the mainland. Okay,
so you get shit like this, some of these weird euphobias.
What is this? Are these some of those dressinas? You
get dressinas over there, et cetera. So great great case.
Here's another great case of island speciation. Echium is a
genus native to much of Europe in the family Baragina.
See all right, there's a couple that there's one or
two that are invasive in the Chicago region, for instance, European.
Of a lot of the invasive plants in the Chicago
region come from Europe. Right, similar latitude, similar climate, also
gets cold winters. And anyway, so what does zekion do
when it gets to the Canary Islands. When it got
to the Canary Islands, turns into this look similar form,
almost a similar form to the silver sorts. It's remarkable,
totally unrelated, but silver similar form to the Hawaiian silver swords.
You have a small herbaceous plant, maybe an herbaceous perennial,
doesn't get that tall, tops out at two or three
feet max. Gets to an island and goes nuts, gets
to an island that's free of herbivores and goes nuts.
And I think that is the main selective force affecting
these things is that they're no longer nibbled down and
they can actually evolve to get big. So you know,
if a plant like this evolved on the mainland, that
we get nibbled down relatively quick, and an island where
there's no herbivores, it's free to grow and so nothing
is selecting against big ass forms like this. You can
go everywhere thinking about this. It's really fun stuff to
think about. Look at it, there's a little what is
that a gecko or not a gecko, a knoll or something.
I don't fucking know. I'm not a herb intelligence, but
you could see look at it. He's not Look he's
pollinating that echium. All right. So the Hawaiian tarweeds follow
the pattern seen many plants when they get to islands,
especially islands lack herbivores, large seeds. Okay, Appendages for wind
dispersal are not as necessary since there's nowhere for seeds
to go, so they are selected against. Okay, all right,
anything that can anything that any seed that has wind
dispersal mechanisms on it, if it's if you're growing on
an island, it's just gonna go out the seeds. It's
gonna be cast off to sea and it's never gonna germinate.
It's never gonna get a chance to reproduce and produce
more seeds. Whereas the seeds if you have phenotypes. Okay,
same species, different phenotypes that are producing large seeds. Those
large seeds are not gonna go very far, and they're
also going to have more endosperm, right, like the little
lunch box that a seed gets sent off with to
feed the ceiling, all right, reduce defenses, less need for
strong defenses against herbivores due to lower herbivore pressure on islands,
you don't need a lot of defenses. Many plants will
if they have spiny relatives in the mainland, they will
lose the spines eventually. And because there's nothing selecting for it,
it's not the plant doesn't know. I don't need to
do this anymore. There's just nothing selecting for it, all right.
Whereas but now there's something selecting against If you're producing
spines that takes energy, that's less energy you can put
into producing leaves, et cetera. And so the plants that
can put the plants the phenotypes that pop up, and
we'll get into phenotypic variation a little bit few slides down.
The phenotypes that produce these phenotypes are new phoenom types
are always being created, right, but there's maybe nothing is
selecting for them, Okay, so there's always anytime you have
sex and as opposed to just asexual reproduction like clone,
anytime you have sex and genetic recombination, new phenotypes are
being created. And that is that is the palette of
available options that evolution has to work with and natural
selection has to work with. All right, So there's gonna
be something selecting against the production of spines, all right,
the ones that don't produce spines but can grow faster
and get more robust because they're taking the energy the
plants that took the energy to put the instead of
putting it into spines, they're putting it into producing more
leaves or growing faster. They're gonna thrive more. Eventually they
will be selected for. If there are no herbivores to
select for the plants that produce spines. There's herbivores on
the island. You know, some sailors, some syphilitic sailors, drop
off a few hundred goats, figuring they can come back,
you know, in a year or two and harvest the goats.
Those goats are gonna nibble everything down. Anything that doesn't
have spines is going to be you know, cold, whereas
the things that have spines won't. So you see how
this is working pretty easy. So same thing humans are
doing with human selection manually, just going and picking out,
you know, the the the plants that produce the best fruit,
or that grow the most vigorously or et cetera. It's
all just selective forces, self compatibility, right, ability to self fertilize.
You could fuck yourself and you don't need you know,
you you're able to produce seeds using just the flowers
on yourself, okay, instead of needing to outcross some plant.
Some plants are obligate outcrossers. If you could do that,
that's an adaptive benefit that's going to be beneficial on
a place like an island right where there may be
only a couple seeds made it, and there's not a
lot of genetic diversity. Unspecialized flowers, less complex flowers with
reduced need to attract specific pollinators. What pollinates the silver swords?
Maybe some kind of bird, I would assume. I don't
know that. I've never actually thought about that. A lot
of birds on Hawaii. The silver stord flowers are pretty showy.
But so there's there's you know, every case is different.
Woody growth forms, higher proportion of woody plants compared the mainland. Again,
less herbivores chewing on things, knocking stuff down. Also, I
think on islands they generally have a milder climate because
they're surrounded entirely by water, which has a moderating effect
on climate and also produces fog. You know, islands are
generally milder and easier to grow and than mainland environments,
especially if you're in a desert. I want to see
some wild shit on islands. Go to Cecotra off the
coast of you men, here's a great case Ariogonum genus
of buckweeds, three hundred species. Most don't get that big.
Here's Ariagonam giganteum from the Channel Islands off the coast
of California. It turns into a large shrub sometimes a
small tree, and I fucking love that species. I miss it.
That's a great fucking plant. There's where the Channel Islands are.
There's Long Beach and all the traffic clogged, polluted streets
of the LA region. Great video right here on the
Channel Islands by PBS. You know, tried to get a
gig with them, you know, doing a speaker series. I'm
just kidding, But they wouldn't that be funny though, if
they had me, you know, if they gave me a spot,
you know, just let me do an episode. Just run
in my mouth, you know, throw a couple of low
jokes in there. Whatever, Okay. Anyway, Generally speaking, when plans
get the islands, ay alt to be bigger. When large
animals get the islands, they evolve and become smaller, right
because it's easier if the food is not that if
there's a shortage of food in an island, which there
probably will be unless it's a very large eeland, it's
gonna be more. It's gonna be beneficial if you don't
get that big, whereas if you got and there's no
predators either, if there's no predators on that island, where
you gotta get big, whereas predators will be selecting for
bigger herbivores that can defend themselves, you know. Okay, keep takeaway.
When plants get the islands and gene flow with the
mainland population ceases, they evolve on a different set of
environmental constraints and evolve into new species that usually exhibit
a similar suite of traits that our result of environmental
factors specific to an island habitat a similar suite of traits,
meaning among all the plants that you might see on
an island, Okay, unrelated plants converging on the same theme, right,
But the same can be said. What we've learned now
about islands is not just I mean, it's the same
can be said for deserts, for alpine zones, for swamps.
You see the same taking shape in deserts, like hairy leaves,
drought dormancy, storage tubers in the ground, stem, succulents, spines. Okay,
alpine zones, things tend to grow lower, more matted, closer
to the ground. The winds and alpine zones can be big,
can be bad, and also the ground heats up faster
than the air in sunlight. Remember alpine zones can be
really really chilly, all right. Swamps, of course, especially if
something's water inundated, maybe there's a nitrogen deficiency, maybe it's
hard to get If you're a tree to become very stable,
you know you're gonna want to tip over on that
soft ground. So they form those buttress trunks, water, tupelo,
bald cypress, same thing, nutrient leached ancient soils such as
quartzite like you might see in South Africa or in
Western Australia, et cetera. Or in Brazil. All right, that
leached sandstone, that metamorphosed sandstone that's been leached of many
nutrients can be very tough to and so you see
convergent forms among plants that grow in such places, such
as ericoid leaves, leaves that named after the Arikacey family
or the genus Erica that are you know, lack of
petiole are very short, kind of waxy sclerophilis, feels like plastic,
et cetera. Toxic soil type such as serpentine, that's another
type of habitat. You see the similar themes evolving among
unrelated plants in different habitats, it's because the habitats are
selecting for a similar suite of traits. Okay, great little diagram.
I did hear about vicarians? What is vicarius? The geographical
separation of a population. I just wanted to draw one
of their little things here. So look, we got this
population of plants. I want to draw a little diagram.
We've got a population of plants. So let's say we
got rain coming from the east, from the right hand
side of the screen. Why is this important Because when
this mountain range, when you know, the lithosphere gets you
stiffy and the mountain range pops up, it's going to
create a rain shadow on the left side, the west side. Uh.
Let's say this is like the Sierra Madre oriental right
of Mexico and the plants on the west side, it's
gonna get drier. The region on the west side of
the mountain is gonna be drier. The region on the
right side is gonna be wetter. Okay, same thing you
see with the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. Oh wonderful. I
love the Atlantic Forest shadow to Rodrigo down to Earth
all right, Uh, Guardian of the Atlantic Forest near Nova
fribergo great man, okay. And then you get but then
you go in. Then you go to you know, start
going towards Minas Mina's your rice and stuff, okay, Or
to fucking central Mexican plateau on the other side of
Sierra Madre and it gets a lot dry and you
start seeing a lot of cactus diversity. You go to
fucking Vera Cruz on the east side of those mountains,
it's like a rainforest beautiful, big fucking oaks, tree ferns,
all the wonderful shit. Okay. Elclo Biosphere reserved fucking epiphytic
orchid's wonderful habitat. Okay, it used to be kind of
scary to go down there. I've been. I went there
once when my daughter was in ams womb and we
I think we saw a cartel King signiora leaving. We
saw a bunch of very expensive trucks and they were
having like a like a cartel members daughters Keen Signior
or something that I don't fucking know, but they were
having some sort of event in Lclo Biosphere Reserve. Good
for them. Okay, those are wet areas, Okay, lcllo Vericus.
You go to the west side of Seria Monder is
very dry, a lot of cagins diverse, and you start
seeing shit like the spiny plants, lots of hairs on leaves,
this bottle shaped tree right, storage like storage stem succulents
and storage mechanisms right the store extra juice at extra
carbs right during the drought season, right during those dry winters,
because they're at the you know, right at the right
latitude for those the itcz you know, the summer, wet, summers,
dry winters. Okay, great example of vicarians, right, but again
you started with the same ancestra population, all right, of
the same species what would be considered the same species
that mountain range pops up. They can no longer inter breed,
inter bang, and you get two different populations which later
become two different species, all right. Of all the plants,
whether it's a fucking euphobia or a gave or whatever.
You look at the agaves on the east side of
the Sarah Matre Serra Madre. They're a lot more fleshy,
they're not as spiny, They're a lot you know, they're
they're set up more for a mild or more rainfall environment.
So there we go, a nice little diagram showing that
great case of vernonia. Here we go Venonia Missourika. I
always already talked about the Vernonia Miszurka, the Midwestern US
music average rainfall environment, temperate zone, et cetera. Uh, this
is outside of Chicagos, in the Miriam Burns Prairie. Great
spot you're gonna have to go take acid down there
or something that'd be a great spot to go take acid.
You know, on like a nice August or September day
or just what. I don't know why I always bring
it to acid. I'm just saying you can do mushrooms.
Any kind of psychedelic psychedelics in nature, though, should be
a mandatory requirement least once or twice for every human
being in this country. I think it would lead to
us all being a lot better off. Right, Go fuck yourself.
You disagree with me, Here we go. Vernonia larcini a
same genus as this, but look at that. Look you
could see it. You can see in the flowers, same flowers,
but a different genus or a different species. Jesus Christ. Sorry,
I got too much up going on upstairs. I gotta
work on this fucking book. I'm get shipped to draw.
I gotta finish your barium labels later. Anyway, same genus,
different species. You can see how it's adapted. This vernonia
is like six feet tall, big broad leaves, green, not
that much hair, A little bit of hair, tiny bit
of hair. This vernonia is growing outside of Sanderston, Texas,
in the beautiful Chihuahua desert limestone deserts with the short
leaves so fucking hairy it's white, very narrow leaves. Look
at how much wh that service area of those leaves
have been reduced. Boom. I could see this and I
would know immediately this is a if I saw it
in a pot, you know, in a fucking home despot
or something, which would be nice. I wish they sold
this plant home despert. You know, I would know that's
that's from a dry region, right, Okay, this this is
a The landowner near here is kind of insane. I
think he's on cocaine. And he went off on a
rant with me about Joe Biden people trespassing on his land.
He wasn't directing it at me. He wanted to know
if I was going to trespass on his land. I said, no, sir,
I'm just looking at plants. And then he went on
a deranged rant about how Joe Biden voters are coming
across the border from his land. Fucking you know. I
don't know what he was going up, but would have
been fun. You know, I wish I had an eight
ball to give him, because it would be fun to
just watch someone like that go off on a you know,
diluted rant. I kind of enjoy watching things like that. Okay, anyway,
Alo Patrick's speciation doesn't need to mount to rise up
and split up a population at the same species. However,
if a population occurs over a broad geographic area, but
parts of that area experience of climatic drying is happened
with the North American West millions of years ago, the
segment of that population that grows in the drying climate
will undergo selection for traits. What does selection mean? It
means death for anything that is not fit for that environment.
That's the brutal truth. It's a filter. Death is the filter. Sometimes,
if you want to think about it nicer, it could
just mean those plants don't get to reproduce. But if
you're one of these Vernonias over here, Vernonia Mazurka, and
the population the climate dries especially too rapidly for you
to evolve for the different phenotypic variation within your population
to be selected for, you will go extinct. Okay, you
just does look at how broad those leaves are. You
start getting those harsh West Texas winds and hot temperatures
and low humidity. You're a gunner, my friend, So your
population has to evolve or you're going to go out.
But Remember, the individual doesn't evolve. The individual plant doesn't evolve.
The population does. A population consists of many different individuals,
and not all are one hundred percent alike. They're like
ninety nine point eight percent the like, or ninety nine
point nine probably a little bit more than that actually,
But the little areas in which they differ, those are
the different phenotypes. Okay, And so those phenotypes can then
be selected for, and if the climatic change happens slowly,
life will find a way. Okay, there we go anyway. Great,
another great example of a more music plant and a
dryer plant. Okay, ibravillly a tenuous sector here in the
left from the Chihuahua Desert, dry windy, The winds especially
just desiccate the piss out of any plant, the leaves
of any plant that's grown there, all right, ibvially at
tenuous second from the Chiuahai desert in your big bend.
Can I've heard the leaves of Ibervili Lendheimri from Central
Texas like the Edwards Plateau, et cetera. Dissected leaves with
less surface area are an adaptation to a much drier climate.
Look at this, How recently were these two members of
the same population. Right, if you could visualize it like
a fork on a branch on on a clatagram or
a phylogenetic tree, how far back would you have to
go to those two branches converged back at the same fork,
you know, because you have to look at when the
region started really drying out. Another great example the persimmons
Diasporos texaena Texas Percimmon versus the more eastern occurring diaspors
Virginiana Virginia per simon. The leaves here in Texas Percimon
are about an inch and a half maybe two inches long,
if that covered in a heavy indument of white fuzz
on the ab axial surface. The underside where's the leaves
over here are probably about eight times the length, six
times the width, and the fruits are a lot bigger.
All right, So Virginia Percentmon Diasporas Virginia, same genus, but
obviously one is adapted to a much different environment. All right.
It's a I want to you know, Texas person. If
it was growing in the shade and maybe some of
these eastern climates, Eastern US climates where you get more rain,
maybe it would rot those those short leaves, and or
it would get smother because those short's not going to
grow as fast as the Virginia percentmon. Right. So what's
adaptive in one benefit is not necessarily adaptive in the other.
That's why quotes like only the strong survivor is fucking stupid, right,
only the fit Depending on what environment you're in survive.
What's fit in one environment might be negative maladaptive in
the other. We've seen what traits evolve on plants that
speciate in islands and deserts now. Let's see what traits
evolve on plants that evolve in high elevation alpine environments.
What a what a great example of a high elevation
alpine environment. Fourteen thousand feet in northern Chile, we have
Azarella compact of the Cara family apac looking like some
weird doctor seussy and green lump that just fucking trails
over the rocks. What's this ship next to it? It
looks like, you know, big piles of dog puke. Looks
like when Jack is he's getting older and aging, he's
getting more of a bile, you know, probably from the
acid reflux. I try to spoil him. I try to
give him, you know, slim gems, summer sausage, pork chops sometimes,
but regardless, if he's been eating grass or something, he'll
puke and it'll look like this pile right here. That's uh,
that is a member of Carriophileci Did I not put
that in there? Oh, motherfucker, you really did. I not.
I forget what that anyway, you'd have to go to
my naturalist and look up Carrio PHILESI family and Chile
country to find out what it is. I forget the
genus name. It was a really cool matted plant. It
looks like a puddle of green puke when you're standing
fifteen feet away. But again, this is a great example
of the alpine. If you go to high elevation Wyoming,
you see the same thing. Okay, you're gonna see these
matted saiespotose carpet plants. You go to high alpine Tasmania,
which because it's so high latitude, you only have to
wear like three or four thousand feet and you get
to the alpine zone. We were there in like fucking December,
which is the equivalent of July in the southern Hemisphere,
like midsummer, and it was frigid up there. Okay, a
lot of those those quocushion plants up there, which is
what Azarella compacta is doing. Right, there's the little rosette leaves.
You could see it right when these leaves would break,
or like we found areas where an insect that burrowed
into them and there would be there would be a
you know, this resin coming out that smelled like carrot.
It smelled like celery, like cilantro like you could smell
the similar chemistry. Another great, great hint that it's in
that certain family. But anyway, there individual leaf rosettes off
Azarella compact the carrat family apac converging on a theme
here unrelated Cinesio humulus from Asteraci right the sunflower family
in the same habitat elevation fourteenth feet also doing a
madded thing. Anything that produces a stem that gets too
tall above the ground is going to be selected against
the wind. The wind will take it down. Maybe maybe
even the herbivores that we sell a lot of guanacos
up here, but probably just the wind and the cold.
So the closer you can stay to the ground, the better.
Gentiana set a folio ooh, a blue Gentian i love
gentians elevation fourteen and thirty five feet. Potosia clandestina rush
family junk casey ooh a mino cut elevation fourteen four
hundred and thirty five feet. There's a habitat great example
of Cumulo puntia ignesence, a cactus that looks like a
goddamn fuzzy wallaby or something, you know, dangling off this cliff.
Look at how long those spines are, right, they're protective.
They're also giving it some insulation. And remember the UV.
The ultraviolet is going to be more intense up here
because there's less way less atmosphere fourteen thousand feet less
atmosphere to break up that ultraviolet radiation and there would
be at sea level. See a lot of fuzzy plants
up in the Andes like this Oreo Sirius leucotrichis. It's
got spines and it's also got it's also got fuzz.
It's also got the fuzz, the white fuzz insulation. Okay,
it's low latitude, it's like eighteen degrees latitude south, but
it's at fourteen thousand feet to get summer every day
in winter, every night really really those those high elevation,
low latitude environments, whether it's in fucking Kenya in some
of those high mountains there, or if it's in the Andes,
they're really cool, all right. Or to Paramo in Columbia. Okay,
tropical lineages adapting to alpine environments. Wild shit, Okay, keep
going on, here we go. Poly Lipis tarpakana rose family
Rose see elevation forty seven hundred meters fifteen thousand, four
nineteen feet. Fuck face, there is what we I forget
what was that azarella? Or I forget this little matted
plant right there. This is the tallest growing plant by tall,
I mean elevation wise, the highest elevation tree in rows
in among the flowering plants. This is and it's in
the rose family Rose acy Polylepus turns into like a
big tree at lower elevations in places like Columbia. By lower,
I mean like eight thousand feet instead of fifteen four
hundred and twenty feet. This is a cool habitat. There
was a really cool little mallow here with really weird leaves.
There was a member of oroban Casey, the paintbrush family,
that was parasitizing, probably one of the composites nearby, some
cool grasses. I can't wait to go back to fucking Chile.
Look at the bark on it, polylepus, insulated papery looks
like looks like installation, looks like red insulation papery. Bark
protecting against those frigid nighttime temperatures and the winds. There's
the hair all over the wax he leaves. Okay, ecotypes,
So we have phenotypes. We have ecotypes, right, we've already
kind of talked about what phenotypes are. You get phenotypic
variation as a result of genetic recombination aka banging. You
don't look exactly like either one of your parents. You've
got a mixture of different traits you've inherited from each
set of chromosomes. You get one set of chromosome from
your dad, one set of chromosome from your mom. Haploid
and haploid together makes a diploid. Two copies of chromosomes, Okay, Okay,
So anyway they mixed up, you get dominant recessive in there.
Of course, dominant always overrides the recessive. For the recessive
traits to be expressed, you have to have two recessive traits, etc.
This is all just elementary Mendelian genetics, Okay, and in
remembright that's the raw material that evolution and natural selection
have to work with. So what are ecotypes? Ecotypes are
different populations of the same species, each having adapted to
the specific environmental condition in different environments, Okay, such as climate, soil,
light exposure. The list goes on. Fun shit to think
about anything you can imagine that might select for different ecotypes, Okay,
And this is what's like, it's why some people in
native plant community really fixate on ecotypes. You take a
plant like a cerubrum red maple, which grows in Florida
and also the way the fuck up there in Maine.
What population would you want to draw from If you're
living in a place like South Carolina, right, you're probably
gonna want the more if you've only if you can
only draw from the Florida population or a main population.
Say there's a fucking nursery that's you know, there's there's
no South Carolina, so you're gonna want the stuff that's
probably more southern. Especially with climate changes those those the
range of warmth is going to be moving north. You're
gonna want stuff that's better adapted to high humidity and
high heat, where stuff that is adapted to cold winters
may not do so well in a place like South Carolina. Right,
So different ecotypes, al Right, best always goes with what
you want, the stuff Carolina ecotype. But if all you
can get is anyway, you get the point. All right,
So here case in point panicom brigade and aka Indian grass. Okay,
you got three different dominant ecotypes each. Okay, obviously the one,
the blue one in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana is going
to be probably much more tolerant of cold winters. Okay,
where's the population out here? This little red band going
from Oklahoma through Texas is going to be much more
tolerant of dryer and hotter temperatures because this is remember,
this is where the continent starts drying out in humidy
levels start really dropping off along with rain. Whereas if
you're getting a lot of humidity, et cetera, you're probably
gonna want to go with the stuff that's from the southeast.
So there's a method to the manners. It's not just
about native purity. It's about what makes sense because the
evolution the evolutionary history of each one of these ecotypes
has already been selected for according to the conditions in
each region. Makes fucking sense. See okay? Great? Another great
way to learn about ecotypes. This is from Jessica Grovitch's
plant or Jessica Grivirich's book Excuse Me Ecology of Plants,
third edition. This is Achilea lnylosa, a species of yarrow.
This is the same species. They can all enter breed,
They can exchange pollen readily and produce fertile seeds. No
big deal each one of these different populations. But if
you grow seed from one of these populations in a greenhouse,
it will stay true to form. The population from the
high elevation Sierra Nevadas by Bighorn Lake will stay small,
smaller in stature, and the one closer to sea level
will get much taller when it grows in milder conditions.
You know, and the only say forty five hundred feet Okay,
wild stuff. When you see this, you've got this graph
marked out with the topography corresponding to each different silhouette
of this plant species. You can really see how ecotypes work,
and it makes sense when you think about it too. Right,
different conditions across the range of this species. Could this
be the forerunner to you know, future speciation of each
one of these ecotypes. Possibly? Yeah, a lot of times
xcotypes probably turn into species cat. I gotta piss, like hell,
can I take a break? I don't think you can
pause this thing, you know what. I'm just gonna have
to have to do this. Hold on, we'll turn it,
We'll turn you around. Okay, I'm gonna go take a leap.
Speaker 3: Oh God, Jesus, oh Christ. I can't pause the thing.
Otherwise I just would have put it on pause. But
I really got to piss. I got, you know, thirty
five ounces of great team in me. You know, my kidneys.
I should really bring some water too.
Speaker 1: My kidneys are really working over time here. Holy hell, yeah,
that feels so much. But okay, there, we're gonna turn
a fan in two. It's getting hot in here, all right.
So let's go back to this.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Distribution of red maple we already talked about that you
could see the rain. This is a very wide ranging
plant species, very wide ranging tree. Okay, okay. Distribution of
Corcas Virginiana southern Livo. Texas is much drier climate than Florida.
Again see this, So there is not vin there is
not environmental homogeneity across the range, very much drier in
the west. So if you live in Texas, you're gonna
want to plant ecotypes of Quircus virginiana that are more
adapted to the dry climate of Texas than they are
to Florida, where dryness is not really something that plants
have to worry about too much because the high rainfall
and the humidity. In order for change via natural selection
to occur, there has to be changed in the first place.
Where does it come from? We talked about this already,
right banging, Okay, only graph I could find was in
Carl Zimmer's book Evolution Making Sense of Life. It's a
human okay, let's not Let's not think about that. Let's
not think about your parents banging. Let's think about plants,
exchanging exchanging pollen, uh, you know, to egg. Let's think
about plants. Right, But there there you go. Either way.
You can see the chromosomes here, right, haployd and haploid
forming a coming together. Oh shit, for coming together form
a diploid zych Right, sperm is haploid, egg is haploid.
Every other cell in your body is diploid, has two
copies of chromosomes. You get myosis. You get a haploid
sperm cell, a haploid egg. They come together, voila. It's
like shaking up the can full of different combinations of alleles.
You can inherit et cetera. Okay. And so in the
case of a plant, the diploid zygo, the seed's a
fully diploid plant. Thereat okay, just different because you know,
with like some of like ferns that put out spores,
spores are not analogous to seeds because uh spores are haploid,
whereas a seed is already diploid. It's a fully formed
plant ready to go. Okay, And the seed is a
new phenotypic individual with a different genetic combination, a combination
of alleles more specifically than either one of the parents
who invited this. Look at this skuy, look at his
sexy man, this beast. They're right, he's a you know,
maybe cruising in a park after you know, after he's
experimenting with his peas. No shade there, definitely you know,
the can't can't shave a man for it. That's just
what I get from him. I don't know, he looks
like a bearl Okay anyway, Well I guess not. Maybe
he's he's he looks like a shade or well shaven bear. Okay, anyway,
I digress. Let's keep going. Different phenotypes of peas. Great
example of different phenotypes. This plant that produces round peas,
round green peas, or a plant that produces yellow peas,
a plant that produces wrinkled peas, round the ringled, yellow,
and green, different phenotypes. Inflated peas, constricted pea fruits, different phenotypes.
Purple flowers, white flowers, different phenotypes. Right, this is the
raw all the same species. But this is the raw
genetic material. This is the raw material that evolution and
natural selection have to work with, have to select for. Okay,
greg Gregor Mendel, wonderful man. He was probably a nice
guy too. Hopefully he wasn't a prick. You know, you
never know, some of these academic types hyat academia and
get egos on him. But he you know, he was
working outside of academia. He was working as a priest or,
a pastor or whatever the hell. Who's anyway, but that's
what he was doing in his past time. He was
fucking around with peace, fatally fucking around with peace and
trying to to figure out what made the different phenotypes.
And he's, you know, obviously discovered an inheritance. Right. The
alleles are there all along, but because they're assessive, they
may not be expressed until in organism. And it inherits
two of them all right, long before DNA was even
though to exist. Okay, phenotypic changes thro raw material evolution, right,
look at it in the background. I got my friend
Jirel's cactus dungeon with astro fight them. These are all
the same species of cactus, a very rare and endangered
cactus from South Texas. And look at what has been
able to be coaxed out by plant breeders in the
last fifty or sixty years. Fucking wild. Okay, all the
same species. You got some that don't have any of
these weird white tricombe patterns or just little hairs and
maybe a little bit of wax. You have some that
have a lot so much that they look like they're
covered in snow, beautiful geometric patterns of white, just the
fucking incredible. Okay, great example of different phenotypes. Why is
astrophyt them so full of different phenotypes, and other cactus
genera for instance, or cactus species. Excuse me, are not
you know? Why is astrophyt the mysterious, so full of
different so full of different phenotypes, so much phenotypic variation,
but something like peyote lafafer wimci is not. I don't
know that's a good question, but it's pretty cool when
we think about artificial selection and human breeding of crops,
that makes it easier to visualize how natural selection works.
We already talked about this. I already mentioned this. Kale,
collared greens, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouse called robbie, all
the same species Brasca olerasia. All right, all this result
of humane growing a thousand of one thing, picking out
the ones that you like. Dog breeds, same thing, Okay, Pugs,
which shouldn't exist, No offense to them, you know, just
just an example of inbreeding the ones with the weird faces. Okay,
I love pugs. I'm just saying all came from wolves,
German shepherds. I mean, hopefully everybody knows this. I would
assume everybody does. Then again, it's America. You'd be surprised
how stupid people could be. Got I'm such an asshole.
I'm sorry. Here we go, all right, it's everyone's got
the same potent, well not everyone's got the most. People
got a medium the average level of potential. But you know, society,
the consumer society especially conditions us to be stupid, right,
especially when you've been defunding education for forty years. Here
we go. Here's another drawing. I did a population consisting
of different phenotypes being put through a filter selection pressure,
all right. The filter is selection pressure, a change in climate, herbivores,
exposed geology, pollinators, elevations surrounding sympatric plant species, some kind
of stress, all right. One way to visualize natural selection
is like a filter, the old evolutionary filter. It's a
sloppy drawing, only a couple naked through. Some don't. Here's
a drawing I did, showing a hand all right, using
the analogy of human selection. Individuals don't evolve populations do.
When I originally made this that individuals don't change populations do,
I realized that might confuse some people too much. Okay,
And it's not about changing. Evolving is more specific. I mean, yes,
evolution is a kind of change. The population changes, but
the evolve is a more specific. We hear different phenotypes.
This one's got hairs on the leaves, this one's got
cupped leaves. This one's getting a little bit taller than
the rest. You know, different different phenotypes. So instead of
a human hand picking different phenotypes of a batch of seedlings,
the environment is doing the picking. In this case, the
environment consists of the geology, different pollinators present, different herbivores
or insects present, the presence of a certain pathogenic fungus
or insect, the humidity, the elevation, and so on. Right,
there can be a broad spectrum of geologic outcroppings, which
are the mineral basis of soil. Right, Serpentine great example,
Gypsum great example. You get your They cause new plant
species to evolve because they're so fucking hard for plants
to grow on. So it takes some finagling, right to
get the there's not every phenotype it's going to be
able to grow on serpentine soil which is low and nitrogen,
high end nickel, or on gypsum, which produces a really
hard concrete like crust when it's dry. Okay, zoom out,
to think of all everything. Okay, and our last class
about serpentine endemism that I put that up, maybe I did,
I think I did. Okay, we saw how a novel
kind of geology can directly cause new plant species to evolve.
Nice little drawing here, normal soil with a tree, relatively
robust shrubs, and then serpentine soil, rocky, some what barren.
A couple plants are growing there, but they're much smaller
in stature. And here you can see these little errors
are indicating seeds blowing over into the serpentine soil, with
the little skull and crossbones indicating the seedlings that germinate
and then die because they can't tolerate the high levels
of nickel, the low levels of nitrogen, the open exposure,
the barren environment, lack of plant cover, lack of shade
or plant cover from other plants. Because again it's part
of the part of the issue with serpentine soil is
it's so toxic that a lot of stuff can grow there,
which means it's going to get more more solar insulation.
The actual ground is going to get cooked more, and
it's gonna be more. It's good, it's gonna be more
stressful to grow on. Okay, make sure this is still recording.
It didn't fuck me yet. Okay, there we go. Boy,
really turn up today, you know. I'm really sorry. Guys.
Okay from Gervich Ecology of Plants. I really suggest you
download this book. I did put a link to the
pdf download. It's on libgen dot is. For the class
I taught, there was a folder with these don't tell.
Don't you know? I don't want to get you know,
copyright violation. I just Girlvich is down. She's on the
level right her publisher maybe not though not come after
me anyway. This is about in the nineteen sixties eighty
Bradshaw and his students, Jane and Bradshaw. Of the nineteen
sixty six Bradshaw and his students began to study local
adaptations of grasses to different differences in soil conditions due
to mind waste contamination in Great Britain, okay, heart of
the industrial Revolution, zinc and copper up and mind for
centuries they create tailing piles that are pretty fucking toxic.
In this study, this mister Bradshaw was able to was
it a she? I don't fucking know. I'm sorry. They them.
They then Bradshaw was able to discover that this grass species,
what genus was it? He was with an a I
forget now fuck anyway, this this agrostis tenuous. The ones
that that were growing on these mostly barren tailing piles
had more tolerance for heavy metals than the population growing
on non tailing piles on just regular soil, and it
was he was able to test it. They then fuck
were able to test it on a lab in a
lab setting in a greenhow silver to a nice see
really cool And this is just it's just an example
of what happens with cercuntine right, or gypsum or fucking
latterites or no evacuate or any of these weird soil type.
This is okay, this is that's it. That's great. Great,
I'm fucking dolerated because I was I gotta go get
it the water. But this, this, uh, this mind tailing
experiment was really showed how edaphic endemism being restricted and
only growing on a certain soil type evolves. Okay, the
things that make you, if you're a plant, able to tolerate
high high heavy metal con concentrations and low nitrogen concentrations
low macro nutrients, et cetera. Uh, there's you know, the
cost is that you're not going to be able to
compete with stuff that on normal soil, on the serpentine soil,
you'll be able. On the heavy metal soil, you'll be
able to grow. You're not gonna thrive, but you'll be
able to grow. And the stuff that doesn't have those
the ancestral populations of plants unquote normal soils won't be
able to Okay, but then when you go to normal soil,
you know, so in other words, you don't need these
these serpentine endemic plants don't need serpentine soil, but they
can't have They can handle serpentine, but they can't handle competition.
They will get smothered out, competed for light, for root space,
et cetera. On normal soil, they grow slower, they don't
get as big, all right, They're more adapted for the
harsh environment. Okay, so you know you get to plush
they start that or health the clients, you know, which
happens to some of us too. You know, you grow
up in a you know, to school of hard knocks.
The next thing you know, you're going you know, going
out to live in a you know, cul de sac
and suburbs. You know, you gain a few pounds, come
down with diabetes at age forty five. You're not walking anymore,
you know, you've you've softened up, right versus you're not.
You're not you know, waiting for the bus and Western
Avenue at two in the morning anymore, you know, having
a fend off crackheads and urchins and stuff. Anyway, So
that concludes our lesson on speciation. Fun shit to think
about plant speciation, natural selection? How do things evolve? How
does a plant like aerocarpus know what a rock looks like?
It doesn't. It's the result you got to zoom out,
the result of baby steps, phenotypic variation and lots of
fucking time, and probably gradual change to okay, not like
you know before that was before Aerocarpus living rock hat
this was growing before that whole habitat was this barren
limestone deserts with only a few sparse shrubs, et cetera.
It was probably a little bit more music, uh maybe
more of a grassland, and Aria Carpus may not have
looked as quote harsh or as much as much like
a rock as it does now, probably had a thick cuticle,
maybe some other adaptations that were stepping stones, initial stepping
stones to eventually looking like a goddamn rock and being
able to have this cryptic habit. But slowly over time
it got selected for. Okay. Remember, phenotypic change is the
raw material of natural selection of the environment, selecting for
traits just like a human hand does. Okay, And the
individual doesn't evolve, the individual doesn't change, the populations do anyway.
That's all. I gotta have a grocery daego fuck yourself by.
I'll put some of the uh, I'll put some of
the texts the PDFs uh in the comments that they
used to recommended reading. Okay, Evolution Making Sense of Life
by Carl Zimmer. It's got the one that get the
one that's got a it's got a little bunny on
a cover. Okay, not the in Grakham orchid, all right,
not Darwin's orchid. And it's a pdfic you can download
that on libgen two. UH. Raven's Biology of Plants goes
into this as well. Uh and uh. Jessica Gurvich Ecology
of Plants, third Edition. That's how I got this shit
is fascinating. It's what I live for. It's really fun,
gives you great you know, just philosophically, the fucking the
perspective it gives you on your own life and the
immense amounts of time evolved in all the life around
you was so fun and cool to think about. Is
what makes studying biology and botany funny. Shit, especially plants,
because I think plants are a lot more interesting than animals.
All Right, that's really all I got have Grecia, They
go fuck you, Stuf Bayh