We are seeing a lot about Zombies these days, from our
televisions to the bookstore it is certainly a part of popular culture.
Recently I read an article that used the ‘zombie card’ to describe how a
specific parasite took control over a certain species and preventing it from
reproducing (thus, turning it into a zombie, serving only the bacteria that
used it as home).
It sounds hard to believe that a parasite can actually
change the behavior of a plant, but it seemed to modify the flowers to look
more like leaves, which would attract insects, which would then transfer the
bacteria to other plants and ensure that it could be spread over and over
again. This leaf like structure stopped the plant from flowering, which is
crucial to its reproductive cycle – meaning the plant itself could not continue
to ‘spread’ so to speak.
Sounds hard to believe that you could stop a plant from
reproducing so easily, but we do it all the time. At home in the summer, we
pick the fading flowers from the plants in order to prevent them from going to
seed so that it will continue to flower all summer long. Once a plant goes to
seed, it stops producing flowers.
This article, written by Esther Landhuis is a good example
of evolution at work. Surely the bacteria doesn’t think to itself “hey, maybe I
can complicate life for that vulnerable looking plant……” it is all a part of
natural selection which goes much further than how we came from Homo Habilis.
It makes me stop and wonder just how the species we know now might evolve in four
or five generations – or less. It is
certainly scary how fast bacteria can change and adapt to a friendly
environment, especially with cold season right around the corner.
You can find the article here:
Discussion Questions:
1)
Can you think of other examples of when a
parasite host that continues to live on? What are the advantages and
disadvantages of this situation?
2)
How do you think life on earth will evolve over
the next five generations? What are some of the highlights, and some of the
drawbacks for us to this new evolution.
I think that the life on Earth will evolve in the next 5 generations when the bacteria and the insects keep taking over the plants, and most of the plants will become “zombie” plants and we won’t have many plants with flowers on them. This is good for the bacteria because the leaves attract the bugs needed to carry them to a new flower and that makes them start a new infection, but it is not very good for the plants because there flowers will just keep dying. Also, I think that the bacteria will spread to so many flowers that there will be too much bacteria in the world than needed.
ReplyDeleteHi Emily - this was a thoughtful reply. You make a good point about the flowers dying off - which means the plants will not be able to reproduce! This could be very dangerous in terms of sustaining life.
DeleteI think that over the next 5 generations more and more plants will become 'zombies' as in the article. This will lead to the change off many things in our environment that we have today including the evolution of certain species that will have to adapt to 'zombie' plants. The plans that will have been infected will certainly die off one by one making some species of plants disappear. Some of the plant species that will be 'zombified' might even affect us. If this kind of bacteria takes over, life on Earth just might not be the same again.
ReplyDeleteHi Amanda - I liked how you thought about how the organisms might have to change and adapt. It made me wonder if the bacteria might adapt even faster than the plant and animal species - this could create quite the cycle!
DeleteLike Emily and Amanda, I believe that in about 5 years the earth will not be exactly the same as it is now... And so I think that things will have had the time to change (evolve) including the spreading of this "zombie-plant species". I believe that the "zombie parasite/disease" will spread from plant to plant ending up in almost all of the world. Lots of things will have to adapt to this...When thinking of this I automatically thought of the food chains and the food webs. Everything will have to change because of this parasite. The amount of zombie plants will just keep growing and growing and perhaps even getting out of control. The whole earth might end up covered in these plants.
ReplyDeleteHi Alex - I think you are right, if the plants are removed, our food web could be in big trouble! The good news is that the Zombie plants can't reproduce so they won't get out of control, but things change awfully quickly when you remove one species from the equation, don't they?
Deleteanother type of parasite is a tik
ReplyDeletein 5 generations we will have bigger brain the good thing is that we could us bigger brain capacity the bad thing is that we will have probably more population
Maybe in 5 generations the parts of our body that we don't use so much, like our small finger in our hands and feet will disappear, we will be loosing things, like the plants.
ReplyDelete