Question

Land plants are closest to the algal group “Zygnemetophyceae”. In the process of moving onto lands, these aquatic plants had to evolve to withstand the adversaries of terrestrial life. In sequences, describe the problems these plants faced and their adaptations to become successful and dominate the landscape?   

Answer 1

When an aquatic plant has to adapt to a land plant ecosystem there are many considerations to take place. The adaptations that these plants have to make are:

1. Development of roots that are deep rooted into the soil as landscape environment offers limited amount of water when compared to the water ecosystem.

2. Transformation of the leaves to suit the high sun exposure. In aquatic plants the leaves are suited to grow on low sun exposure but land plants need to adapt to high sun exposure.

3. Reproduction should be changed i.e., aquatic plants leave a lot of spores into the water and it is carried by water currents, but on land air or insects have to carry the spores and so there should be some mechanism to woo the insects or make the spores so lightweight that they can be carried by the wind currents.

4. A proper xylem and phloem structural features have to be constructed in order to make the transport of water and food available to all parts of the plant.

5. Secondary xylem and phloem are to be built to make the plant withstand adverse conditions.

6. Symbiotic relationships with some microbes has to be established to get more nutrients from the landscape.

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