Todays word of the day is semelparity and is characterized by an organism that only reproduces once and uses a lifetime of stored energy to do so in grand fashion. A very common example is the giant agave bloomspike weve been documenting in these pages. In the animal world, pacific salmon also use this reproductive strategy. Interestingly, our agave has spent nearly 20 years on this earth and is not going to make the seed it has been waiting so long to produce. Rather it is making small plantlets, called bulbils on the stalks where the seed capsules would normally form, and it will make several hundred on a bloom spike that trememendous. It is well known that agaves pup, sending up genetically identical offspring from rhizomes in the soil surrounding the mother, but to do so also where the seed capsules should form is rather inconvenient to Darwinism, which depends on genetic recombination. Why would it do this? It seems bulbil production is inversely related to seed production, so if a factor such as absence of the proper moth or bat to do the pollinating or the bloom spike being knocked over by grazing wild goats limits the pollination, it will produce bulbils which will drop to the ground and some will survive, allowing the plant to live another day. Perhaps in another 20 years, conditions will have improved!
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 17:43:03 +0000
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