this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
6 points (100.0% liked)

Science Memes

11047 readers
3063 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
6
No touchy (mander.xyz)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
35 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

This shouldnt happen in nature should it? Just talking out of my ass here but i feel like this only happens because they are all the same height because they were planted by humans at the same time. Or maybe only in mono culture forests, because i have never seen this simply because there is always overlap from smaller or different trees where i have been.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

I'm no expert, but plants could all begin growing at the same time in nature thanks to things like wildfires, landslides, etc.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Not only should it happen in nature, but nature causes this behavior. They evolved that way because they survive better than a species that gets tangled up in itself. That's it. That's the whole reason, start to finish. There are a multitude of reasons why not getting tangled up in your neighbors is good, but the tree simply has to survive better, and that is all that is required for the behavior to become the new natural norm.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Man, that's some crazy logic. I'll take occams razor and state that wind movement abrades the leaves/limbs on one another.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's not crazy logic to describe natural selection.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

I'm just saying you're adding too much complexity in this particular phenomenon. Evolution by natural selection is a very robust model that has remarkable predictive power. It only works if you're not assuming too many inputs.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

And isn't it advantageous to the whole forest if the mature trees are the same height? Doesn't that happen naturally all over the place? Something about equal sunlight, hydraulic pressure, hydration, and... I forget.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It's advantageous to be a taller tree than your neighbours, since you get more sun. That turned into an evolutionary arms race to the top, and now we have tall forests.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Correct

Natural selection happens at the genotype level, not the individual level. Having a species that likes to combat with other individuals with, essentially, the exact same genotype, at the expense of both individuals, is often not a winning strategy.

(There are exceptions and caveats of course -- e.g. competition between individuals to select the fittest ones of them to preferentially survive, or Fisher's Principle which explains why the ratio of males to females is roughly 50:50 in most species, even though that's often not optimal for the species as a whole).