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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday November 11 2018, @05:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-thought-C4-went-boom dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Dry conditions may have helped a new type of plant gain a foothold on Earth

Researchers have long believed that falling carbon dioxide levels drove the origin of plants with this innovation, but a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, based on biochemical modeling by a group led by University of Pennsylvania biologists and paleoclimate modeling by a group at Purdue University, indicates that water availability may have been the critical factor behind the emergence of C4 plants.

"The initial origin of C4, which happened when atmospheric carbon dioxide was still very high, seems driven by water limitation," says Haoran Zhou, a graduate student in the School of Arts and Sciences' Biology Department and first author on the paper. "Then later, about 5 to 8 million years ago, there's a large expansion of C4 grasslands. That's because carbon dioxide was getting lower and lower. Carbon dioxide and light intensity were actually the limiting factors favoring C4 at that time."

"What we show," says Erol Akçay, an assistant professor of biology at Penn, "is that the increased water efficiency of the C4 pathway is enough to give it an initial ecological advantage in relatively arid environments. That's the benefit of doing this type of physiological modeling. If you were only looking at temperature and carbon dioxide, you might miss this role of water and light."

The researchers' work also suggest that C4 plants may have had a competitive advantage over C3 plants even when carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were still relatively high, in the late Oligocene.

"The inference is that C4 could have evolved quite a bit earlier than we previously thought," says Penn's Brent Helliker, an associate professor of biology who, along with Akçay, serves as Zhou's advisor. "This supports some molecular clock estimates for when C4 evolved as well."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @05:51PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @05:51PM (#760666)

    Learn something new every day.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @07:03PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @07:03PM (#760686)

    Exploding C4 based plants.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @07:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @07:33PM (#760693)

      Well death by pesticides is worse, at least for what concerns the bees.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @07:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @07:35PM (#760694)

      Making jokes about photosynthetic biochemistry is just crass -ula

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @07:43PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @07:43PM (#760696)
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Fluffeh on Sunday November 11 2018, @08:56PM

      by Fluffeh (954) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 11 2018, @08:56PM (#760710) Journal

      From the first section of the article:

      This same period saw the emergence of a new form of photosynthesis in a subset of plants, the C4 pathway. Present in a subset of plants, the C4 pathway supplemented the earlier C3 photosynthetic pathway, meaning those species now reaped energy from the sun using two different strategies.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Sunday November 11 2018, @09:16PM

      by MostCynical (2589) on Sunday November 11 2018, @09:16PM (#760713) Journal

      here is a comparison [cropsreview.com] of C3 and C4 and CAM (eg: cacti and pineapples) plants.
      and here is a more complicated version* [khanacademy.org]

      *khan academy requires javascript or shows no content

      --
      "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @08:25PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @08:25PM (#760704)

    ...life on planet Earth continued as usual.

    • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday November 11 2018, @08:50PM (3 children)

      by MostCynical (2589) on Sunday November 11 2018, @08:50PM (#760707) Journal

      Yes, but "life" doesn't neccesarily include humans [climatecentral.org]

      --
      "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @09:39PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @09:39PM (#760715)

        Yeah the humans are SO much dumber than any antediluvian rat.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @09:43PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @09:43PM (#760717)

          Actually, they are.

        • (Score: 5, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Monday November 12 2018, @12:28AM

          by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Monday November 12 2018, @12:28AM (#760747)

          Yeah the humans are SO much dumber than any antediluvian rat.

          What does intelligence have to do with survivability? Organisms evolve to fit a niche in their environment.

          Intelligence is just one strategy to ensure survival, but jellyfish do it way better than we do. They've been trucking on for more than 500 million years, longer than anyone else in the multicellular business.

          This is the second period in our planet's history that an organism has altered the entire climate with its activities. The first time it happened, everything died. [wikipedia.org]

          I know you thing it's all bull, because "Your Team" doesn't believe in climate change, but it really doesn't matter what you believe.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday November 11 2018, @11:41PM (4 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday November 11 2018, @11:41PM (#760736) Journal

      Yeah, all those technologically-advanced civilizations had no problem coping with the changing cli--waaaaaaitaminnit.

      ...dumbass.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @11:49PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @11:49PM (#760739)

        then good riddance.

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday November 12 2018, @02:35AM (2 children)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday November 12 2018, @02:35AM (#760778) Journal

          Says the guy typing on a computer. Feel free to off yourself first and get ahead of the crowd, Mr. Tough Guy Survivalist.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @05:09AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @05:09AM (#760810)

            > Says the guy

            Or a lesbian

            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday November 12 2018, @08:00AM

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday November 12 2018, @08:00AM (#760834) Journal

              I seriously doubt that's a woman on the other end of that post. Maybe it's just sampling bias, but I almost never see other women saying that kind of stupid shit, ever.

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
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