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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 29 2014, @09:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the hiding-from-Tarzan dept.

A woody vine, Boquila trifoliolata, has been discovered in Chile that has the amazing ability to change the shape of its leaves depending on what tree it is climbing. Further, the same single vine can drape different species of tree, and it will match the shape and size of its leaves to those of each host, but only along that portion of its length.

Other vines are known to mimic one species of host, as a defense against herbivores, but this vine can mimic many, along its length. Biologists say "It is unclear how B. trifoliolata vines discern the identity of individual trees and shape-shift accordingly." Speculation is that chemicals or microbes might trigger gene-activating signals that trigger leaf differentiation. But left unsaid is how the vine would "learn" how to match the shape of its new host's leaf, how it would know it had succeeded, where it would acquire the genes to do so, and how many different trees it can mimic.

Wouldn't you need eyes to do that?

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Dunbal on Tuesday April 29 2014, @11:57AM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Tuesday April 29 2014, @11:57AM (#37604)

    " If the plant would indeed only mimic a single other plant, then it is clearly a simple matter of natural selection"

    Who said that natural selection is limited to one and only one feature, gene, etc. The vine is capable of adapting itself to more than a single set of conditions. The way it does this must have a corresponding biochemical pathway activated by specific triggers. These pathways have come into existence because it's advantageous to the vine to have them. There's no magic or mysticism involved. If you want to know why, then like I said, you have to figure out what exactly was the cause of the demise of other similar vines that lacked this particular ability. Since leaf shape is evolutionarily important as a marker then something must have been killing those vines that had the "wrong" leaf shape for particular tree types. As for the "how", it's just a case of digging in a bit more into the chemistry. Leaf shape isn't controlled by all that many genes.

    If you think that is amazing, then obviously you've never seen an octopus in action. This world is full of amazing things.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Fluffeh on Tuesday April 29 2014, @01:34PM

    by Fluffeh (954) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 29 2014, @01:34PM (#37635) Journal

    I'm sorry, I should have emphasized the simple in that statement more strongly. I meant that one plant evolving to have a leaf shape similar to another (to mask it from potential predators) is simple enough.

    What I wanted to really highlight in my post was that given the evolutionary complexity for something to evolve to not only mimic a single other type of plant, but rather a MUCH MORE complex system of immersing itself in whatever plant happened to be nearby - all the while doing so alongside plants evolving to mimic a single type of plant is simply amazing. Simple, straightforward, natural selection (ie, pretend to be a nasty tasting plant or whatever) is logical and makes sense in an evolutionary path. But something as amazing as this, given the steep competition (surely it wouldn't have been a quick process - and at the start, this plant would have certainly been behind the eight ball compared to other plants pretending to be the nasty tasting one) this really delights me.

    Leaf shape might not be controlled by a huge amount of genes (I'll take your word for it) but to have a process develop whereby a single stem of a vine can have many leaf shapes upon it, each specifically there to pretend to be a nearby plant - I am saying that THAT process is amazingly beautiful to me - and I am dumbstruck by the beauty of it.

    I have often been delighted by the amazing things in nature, yes, an octopus is really astounding - copper based blood, a semi-brain in each limb, high intelligence - oh and skin with cells that contract to hide particular pigments that it doesn't want shown... that's awesome (and all off the top of my head here) - but this is fresh, this is something I haven't come across before. That's why I am delighted, don't take that away from me :)