Mix
Which came first, colonization of land by plants or animals?
Colonization of land by plants
What is LUCA?
Last Universal Common Ancestor
What is a phylogeny?
A phylogeny is the evolutionary history and relationship of a group of organisms. Phylogenies trace patterns of shared ancestry between lineages.
What is vascular tissue?
A complex transporting tissue, formed of more than one cell type (xylem and phloem), found in vascular plants.
What is pollination?
The biological process of transferring pollen grains from the male part of a flower (the anther) to the female part of a flower (the stigma) or cones to enable plant fertilization, seed production, and fruit development
Non-vascular plants are __________-dominant
Gametophyte
Explain the endosymbiotic theory.
Key eukaryotic organelles—specifically mitochondria and chloroplasts—originated as free-living prokaryotic microbes that were engulfed by a larger host cell and formed a permanent, mutually beneficial relationship.
What are shared derived characters?
Characters that distinguish a clade from its ancestral group.
What is the sister group of land plants (Embryophytes)?
Charophytes (charophyte algae)
Seed plants are _________-dominant
Sporophyte-dominant
Which plants have flagellated sperm that must swim to fertilize an egg?
Non-vascular plants, seedless vascular plants, some gymnosperms
What is an adaptive radiation?
An evolutionary process where a single ancestral species rapidly diversifies into a multitude of new, distinct forms as they adapt to different ecological niches
What is the process by which unrelated species look similar because they face similar environmental pressures?
Convergent evolution
What is an example of a bryophyte?
mosses, liverworts, and hornworts - small, non-vascular land plants.
What is the difference between gymnosperms and angiosperms?
Angiosperms produce seeds enclosed within a fruit or ovary (flowering plants), while gymnosperms produce "naked" seeds exposed on the surface of cones or scales (non-flowering plants)
What is sporopollenin?
A tough polymer found in outer walls of land plant spores and pollen grains and some charophytes. The evolution of sporopollenin allowed early plants to survive desiccation and solar radiation when moving from water to dry land roughly 470 million years ago.
What is the Great Oxygenation Event?
A major geological and biological shift around 2.4 to 2.1 billion years ago when free oxygen first accumulated in Earth's atmosphere produced by photosynthetic cyanobacteria.
What type of group includes an ancestor but excludes some of its descendants?
paraphyletic clade
Where are apical meristems located?
In the shoots and roots of a vascular plant
Explain alternation of generations.
Plants alternate between two different life stages, or generations, in their life cycle; a haploid stage (gametophyte) and a diploid stage (sporophyte).
What is a monophyletic group?
A group of organisms that consists of a single common ancestor and all of its descendants
What is the Cambrian explosion?
The Cambrian explosion refers to the unparalleled emergence of organisms (most major animal phyla) that occurred roughly 541 million to 530 million years ago.
Explain the difference between a monophyletic and polyphyletic clade.
A monophyletic clade includes a common ancestor and all descendants, while a polyphyletic clade includes distantly-related organisms that don't share a common ancestor.
When did land plants evolve?
470-500 million years ago
What is a trait unique to seed plants?
Pollen, ovules, seeds, heterospory (two types of spores)