Light scarcity forces Schistostega to abandon leaves and shoots entirely

Evidence

Inside the shoreline caves light is reduced to mere watery reflections from the lake surface. … It is only one-tenth of one percent of the light outside. … Sunlight in caves is much too scarce for Schistostega to afford much in the way of architecture. Leaves are a bit of a luxury in so spare an environment. So, in place of leaves and shoots, Goblins’ Gold is reduced to a fragile mat of translucent green filaments, the protonema. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 630

Categorization

• XREF: Direct builds-on of ch12’s claim that moss leaf shape optimizes for the limiting resource; here the limiting resource eliminates architecture altogether. — connects to: Cellular lenslike facets let Schistostega focus scarce light onto one chloroplast — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 632; Some mosses thrive on a tiny fraction of the sunlight others require — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 628; Moss leaf shape optimizes for water where trees optimize for light — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 191

Broader Connections

• Moss leaf shape optimizes for water where trees optimize for light #complicates (0.78) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 191