Plants as organisms Flashcards
What are 5 ways autotrophs have evolved to tolerate the stresses of the terrestrial environment?
Absorb nutrients and water from the soil Absorb and transport water Prevent or tolerate water loss Hold a large photosynthetic area up against gravity Dispersal of genetic material
What are 3 consequences of vascular plants evolving to tolerate the terrestrial environment?
- Need a large root surface area to absorb water and nutrients means you can’t get up and move to another location
- need another way to respond to their environments other than nervous systems, so use chemical responses and changes in growth patterns
- need to survive being eaten
What is dendritic growth? Why do plants do it?
Branching growth that creates a modular body plan. It ensures no part of the plant is essential to survival and is infinitely adaptable to different environmental conditions
How do plants modulate their size and growth patterns in response to the density of surrounding plants? What makes this possible?
Plants can sense each other and change their growth pattern to not be in each other’s space, and can allocate to particular modules to change shape. In a low density environment, plants will spread themselves out but will grow more up in a high density environment. Possible because of phenotypic plasticity
What is indeterminate growth?
Parts of the plant capable of growing throughout their whole life
What 2 parts of plants are capable of indeterminate growth?
Meristematic tissues and the vascular cambium and cork
What 4 components of plant cells are unique and not found in animal cells?
Vacuole, chloroplasts, cell wall, plasmodesmata
What do plant cells use their vacuoles for?
Storing things from the cytoplasm to remove them from biochemical reactions, coloured compounds, hormones, and maintaining turgor pressure
What are plasmodesmata?
Channels that connect the cytoplasm of cells and allow rapid transmission of molecules between cells
