Question

You are researching what you are hoping is a new rare native plant species found in a newly-restored habitat. You are anxious to understand what kind of plant it is and help it become established and grow well. Your colleague shares her observations: the plant has a sizeable taproot, leaves with branched veins, and flowers with five petals. When transplanting to a new location, you notice that some of the plants have knobby growths on the roots. The plants with these growths seem to grow bigger and stronger than neighboring plants and seem to have no nitrogen deficiency symptoms. When the soil is examined in the laboratory, they found a high concentration of soil nitrogen around the plants with the growths.

Using your evolutionary knowledge, describe the most likely mechanism for how this association evolved - from the perspective of the plant member. If you think that natural selection is at work, please make sure to clearly include all the postulates in detail and a therefore statement. Define all evolution terms used.

Answer 1

Answer- the observation like veins in branches indicate that is a vescular plant like horsetail plant. The leaves are also similar to horsetail plant. The knobby growth are similar to nodes and flower is also present with 5 petals. The presence of high nitrogen means that it is leguminous plant. The height and weight are indicator that the plant is at natural selection as the ancestors of the horsetail plants were even 98 feet long. This may be the evolutionary process like natural selection taking place which may lead to speciation from horsetail plant to new individual plant species.