| Organization for the Advancement of Interdisciplinary Learning |
| Fruit, Seeds and Evolutionary Biology Did you know that, through the process of evolution, certain plants developed fruit in order to increase their reproductive success? Many plants endanger the viability of their offspring by dropping seeds around their base. Many of these seeds will be able to germinate, but once rooted will have a great deal of trouble gaining the water and nutrients that they need from the soil because they are in direct competition with their larger, parent plant. Those plants that were able to encase their seeds in fruit created a vehicle for the transportation of their seeds away from their roots, ultimately enabling them to conserve their own resources. This vehicle happens to be animal consumption. Animals found the fruit attractive because it supplied them with the calories that they needed to live. After consuming the fruit most animals will stray from the tree, and later deposit the seeds, along with their energy enriched fecal matter, an effective fertilizer for young plants. The development of fruit created a relationship of symbiosis between plants and animals. It helped each to become more reproductively successful and enabled them to prolong their lifespan: Parent trees last longer because they experience less competition & older, weaker animals live longer lives because fruit is relatively easy for them to procure. Many animals developed an evolutionary adaptation in response to fruit availability. Because fruit was an excellent source of energy, those animals which had a predilection for the taste of fruit ate more of it. The animals that ate more fruit were more likely to survive in calorie scarce environments and so those animals who favored the taste of fruit were selected over those that did not. Most carnivores are averted by the smell, and taste of fruit whereas many herbivores and omnivores are attracted by both the smell and taste. Part of the reason that our palate is equipped to sense and react favorably to sugars is related to the advantage that fruit conferred to our ancestors. |