To clarify: Why would a plant/bush/tree evolve to produce a large fruit or something similar where there are easier, more effective ways of reproduction?
I know that berries have seeds and when eaten by animals and shit out elsewhere, will grow new plants, but why would a plant take so much from itself to produce fruit instead of say, pollen or something like the oak seeds?
This isn't supposed to be a banana argument to try and prove the existence of God or anything, but I'm just curious to see what people have to say.
I know that berries have seeds and when eaten by animals and shit out elsewhere, will grow new plants, but why would a plant take so much from itself to produce fruit instead of say, pollen or something like the oak seeds?
This isn't supposed to be a banana argument to try and prove the existence of God or anything, but I'm just curious to see what people have to say.
I know that there are plenty of 'unintelligently designed' features in nature. As I understand it, evolution doesn't always favor the best or most logical solutions to problems, it simply rewards whatever works.
^I do tend to agree with Sarzy that a good club sandwich will sometimes give my atheism a moments pause.
This can be applied to the area of fruit production. The fruit/vegetable, can essentially be considered the "egg" of the plant. During Natural Selection, consider the idea that if all the species of one fruit bearing plant produced the same small, and perhaps not that delicious, fruit (or "egg"). Then a mutation occurs wherein a plant produces a slightly larger fruit, that tastes just that much better. Those plants would, of course, be favoured and their fruit eaten more often. That, in turn, would lead to that plant's seeds being spread more, forgive the pun, fruitfully across the landscape.
Add a few thousand, and hundred thousand years of Natural Selection and you'd find all the plants which mutated fruit that tasted horrible, and small in size, to be extinct. Then those plants which produced large (larger fruit would provide more sustinace for the animals that eat it, this is almost a side to "artificial selection" on account of the fauna feasting on the flora), tastier fruit would be in greater abundance and flourish.
Plants, like most of us other organisms, don't see the "bigger picture" in the chain of Natural Selection. Natural Selecton does't produce a pristine, perfect world. It merely creates a world in which all organisms fight ferociously to survive, and reproduce. And after enough time passes, certain systems will reach an E.S.S. (Evolutionary Stable System). You can read a lot of detail about E.S.S. in Richard Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene".
The rest is just speculation on my part, so take it for what its worth. Being disbursed by animals rather than say wind or just dropping to the ground has a few benefits over the former. With fleshy fruits where the animal swallows the seeds and eventually passes them, the seeds pass along with the fecal matter which I'd imagine would be a good high nitrate fertilizer, plus another seed eating animal such as a squirrel or bird would be less likely to go picking through feces for a meal. Only humans do that, what with their high priced monkey poo coffee beans (yeah I'm sure a few other animals do to). Even when the animal actually eats he seeds, in the case of squirrels, they tend to bury a lot more acorns than they actually eat, thus the seed become buried in the ground where if not found again by the squirrels it can germinate.
Animals can travel far and aren't hampered by which direction the wind happens to be blowing in, so there's always the benefit of that. Plus some of the seeds in fruits are a bit larger, which would have a harder time traveling on the wind. A larger seed generally means more nutrients for the potential plant to draw on.
Also evolution isn't always what seems the most logical, it's what develops and what works. So it not like some ancient not quite apple trees were sitting around and decided fruit was the way to go, it was a trait that developed, it worked and so now many happy animals have delicious apples to snack on. It's actually a fairly common occurrence in nature, two or more different methods for dealing with the same problem develop. Mammals have bear live young, birds have eggs, both have their draw backs both have their advantages, and both seem to work as of this point in time.
Anyways that's what I got, hope I was at least somewhat insightful.
Well that's easy, silly -- because god wants us to eat delicious food. That's also why he invented Twinkies, jellybeans and club sandwiches.
Sarzy, if God didn't invent Jellybeans why do I find some many tasty ones on the street wherever I go? I mean it's either got to be God or someone leading me into some sort of trap.
if you're a dandelion or something, you'll have a more insect-like approach. send up hundreds of spores, that each have a 1% chance of germinating. easy come, easy go.
if you develop fruit, you're going for something different. more investment, therefore more expectation, and need, of a payoff.
just like humans.
so, in a like manner, one might wonder why we humans spend roughly a quarter of our lives 'in the nest'. why not something easier?
because we're going for something different.
something a lot more complicated, demanding, and potentially rewarding.
Is the mass of fruit per the size of the plant bearing it different between berries and larger fruits? I think it's relatively similar. A bigger tree can produce bigger fruits. Bigger animals probably eat those bigger fruits because, let's face it, it's a more "efficient" way of eating right? So let's say that bigger fruits allow for the spread of seeds over a larger area. At least that would be the case if it weren't for birds...I'm sure they have a big influence on the evolution and spread of berry plants.
I think I'm going to go read up on how fruit-bearing plants originally came to be now that I'm on it.