General Biology

Allison Bankston

Blog #1

In our first couple weeks of classes we have been talking about land plants. Land plants include bryophytes such as mosses, lycophytes, pterophytes (ferns), gymnosperms (i.e. conifers), and angiosperms (flowering plants).  I decided to do some research on land plants, and were they have first appeared. Today land plants have diversified into numerous forms but their evolution and role in the formation of early ecosystems remains unclear.

It is hypothesized that large-scale removal of CO₂ – a greenhouse gas – by early plants may have contributed to the initial cooling of the planet and climate changes such as the ice ages. Scientists did experiments to see how these plants were causing Ice Ages and other climate changes. The scientists did an experiment with rocks and moss, and incubated it for three months. This is how they determined what the plants were doing. If it weren’t for this experiment they would not have a clue to what was causing all these climate changes.

Some scientists suspected the “first plants to take root on dry land cooled the Earth and brought Ice Ages.” The scientist figured out that the plants “drew down atmospheric carbon, by clinging to rocks and dragging the rocks down.”  What they mean by this is that plants are extracting inorganic nutrients from the rocks, taking the minerals out of the abiotic environment and enabling them to be used by other organisms.

In conclusion, I learned that plants could cause climate changes. Who knew something so small can cause something so large to happen, for instance an ice age. I think scientist need to continue to do more research on land plants to see what else they can cause.

Work Cited

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/feb/01/first-land-plants-ice-ages. By Ian Sample. 1 February, 2012. “First Land Plants.

Campbell Biology. Ninth Edition. Reece, Urry, Cain, Wasserman, Minorsky, Jackson. 2011.