Plant Speciation Podcast for You Rotten Degenerates

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