this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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Biodiversity

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A community about the variety of life on Earth at all levels; including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi.

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Biodiversity is a term used to describe the enormous variety of life on Earth. It can be used more specifically to refer to all of the species in one region or ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. Scientists have estimated that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence. However, only around 1.2 million species have been identified and described so far, most of which are insects. This means that millions of other organisms remain a complete mystery.

Over generations, all of the species that are currently alive today have evolved unique traits that make them distinct from other species. These differences are what scientists use to tell one species from another. Organisms that have evolved to be so different from one another that they can no longer reproduce with each other are considered different species. All organisms that can reproduce with each other fall into one species. Read more...

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19
A plant you’ve never heard of can do what scientists once thought impossible (www.eurekalert.org)
submitted 1 month ago by solo@slrpnk.net to c/biodiversity@mander.xyz
3 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

A new study shows that an unassuming plant has some very unusual family dynamics.

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[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It has three sets of chromosomes and coexists with its ancestral plant, which has either one or two sets of chromosomes. Perhaps all three variants coexist, the article is unclear (or I have morning brain). Scientists previously thought organisms with multiple sets of chromosomes (polyploid organisms) could not exist long term, and when that theory was disproved, they thought polyploid organisms would compete with their progenitor species for resources and one would edge the other out.

[–] meyotch@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 month ago

It’s an interesting phenomenon wrapped in an article so full of writing errors and freshman college-essay blunders that I could barely understand their point.

If I hadn’t done my own undergrad thesis on ploidy in plants, it would have been nearly incomprehensible.

Yay for the subject! Boo for the source.

[–] flora_explora@beehaw.org 4 points 1 month ago

Weird article. It begins with a brief paragraph of the question of how life started and amino acids, but then goes on to talk about speciation and polyploidy. In the end, nothing is resolved and you are send to read somewhere else. With a basic (modern) understanding of polyploidy, nothing new is told here...