Plant Diversity Paper

Plants are extremely diverse multicellular photosynthetic organisms whose evolution can be traced back to one common ancestor. This common ancestor would most likely be some variation of the common day green algae. Even though these green algae are only modicums of modern day plants they still contain the most important characteristic of all, the ability to photosynthesize. Photosynthesis is the ability to take in water, carbon dioxide, and solar energy and convert it into glucose. Any plants that appear green contain a photon absorbing pigment known as chlorophyll, which is essential to absorb light. The first plants, such as algae and kelp, most likely lived in aquatic environments. However plant’s evolutionary history shows that they made the challenging transition from sea to land in favor of less competition for sunlight and higher concentrations of carbon dioxide. At this time all photosynthetic plants lived in marine environments. This resulted in all of these amphibious plants competing for the best environments to collect the optimum amount of sunlight. This in turn caused a struggle for many of these plants to collect their required sunlight for photosynthesis. At the same time aquatic plants were also consuming too much carbon dioxide as a result of living in the same habitats. Carbon dioxide also diffuses easier in air than in water, which made carbon dioxide more readily accessible on land than in water. These two reasons were the primary motivating factors for plants to make the transition to land. When plants made the move from maritime environments to land it wasn’t all just smooth sailing, no pun intended. Plants had a whole new set of problems to deal with. This caused the plants to form new adaptations in order to combat these new threats. For example, plants are much more likely to desiccate on land