In: Biology
Parasitic plants have lost many of the morphological and generic traits necessary for an autotrophic lifestyle. From an evolutionary point of view, how do you think this happened?
Parasitic plants have lost many of the morphological and genetic traits necessary for an autotrophic lifestyle. From an evolutionary point of view, how do you think this happened?
This has been observed in the holoparasitic plants. The carbon source used by the holoparasitic plants was from the host plant cells. These plants generally do not have chlorophyll. Parasitism is referred to as the interaction in which there would be consumer resource. As a consequence of evolution, there occurs negative selection of some of the traits which would be neutral, since the phenotypes that are associated with those traits are becoming redundant. This process is referred to as the process of evolutionary compensation. An example is the lack of synthesis of lipids, within some of the parasites. By manipulation of the host in an exploitive manner, the parasites obtain lipids. Most traits are lost as s result of negative selection