Organisms sometimes retain reproductive structures that have lost all function
Evidence
Try as I might, I couldn’t see how that happened. I thought they might splash like Tetraphis gemmae, so I set up experiments to shower them with water. Nothing. Wind? I put sticky traps around the plants to detect any brood branches that might blow from the parent. Nothing. I added a strong fan to help matters along. Still nothing. D. flagellare makes clonal propagules but seems incapable of using them. Non-functional parts to organisms are not uncommon. Many organisms have vestigial structures that have lost their function, like the human appendix. Perhaps brood branches were similarly useless. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 367
Categorization
- CANDY: A moss that makes cloning branches it can’t seem to use — a small fun puzzle with a vestigial-organ flavor, good elevator conversation.
- STORYSTEM: A species equipped with a mechanism it cannot deploy invites a story about adaptation lagging reality — the plant world’s version of having a tool with no way to use it.
- XREF: connects to: Liverworts’ name persists from medieval Doctrine of Signatures logic. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 288; Exploitative agrarian structures can persist after their original causes vanish — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1609
Broader Connections
- Exploitative agrarian structures can persist after their original causes vanish
#exemplifies(0.70) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1609