Stay for a long time in the Hangduan Mountains near Yulong, China. The small, charming plants have magnificent green leaves and bell-shaped yellow flowers. Each statement pops up like a brooch in front of a gray screen.
The same mountain track is only 65 miles away, and you have to work harder to see plants of the same species. There, f. Delvai plants are a pale tan, as if they live on rocks. Near the radish, they are rather dark gray and reddish-brown in puja.
Why does this one species come in so many different colors? It will probably be hidden from you.
According to a paper published last month in current biology, f. Delvi has developed many different types of colors as people harvest its bulbs. Discovery suggests that vegetation is the latest example of a growing list of species that appear to have been influenced by humans inadvertently developing new traits.
The impressive tricks that animals use to disguise themselves are familiar to most people, but the camouflage of plants pays less attention. Yang Niu, a researcher at the Kunming Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the lead author of a new paper, has spent years documenting possible examples of how plants hide themselves. The fatty leaves of some herbaceous plants make it difficult for vegetarians to find. Lithops, also known as “living stone plants”, seem to masquerade as pebbles.
These plants are usually trying to fool something in particular. Dr. Another alpine plant studying Neu, Corydalis benecinta, has “an expert enemy,” he said – a butterfly whose caterpillars cut the leaves of the plant. Probably in response, the green plant usually develops a micro gray morph.
“Other hidden plants of this type are reported in other places around the world – including enemies,” he said. Initially f. Delaware’s variety was astonishing, as no animal eats it.
But bulbs of this and other fritillaria plants are common inal medicinal ingredients, used to treat cough. People have been harvesting them for 2,000 years. What if the enemy of this plant is ours? If so, F. in areas experiencing more intense collection. Delvi plants should have better camouflage than where people like them less.
To test this, the researchers focused on eight populations of the plant. To judge the harvesting pressure at each site, they asked for records from herbalists and used them to calculate the population of each F. Delaway age annually for six years. They also estimated how difficult it was to collect plants in different places.
To determine how closely the plants matched their backgrounds, they took rock and leaf samples from each site and compared the color and intensity of the light they affected.
And to establish whether a close match really makes it difficult to see the plants, they’ve created a game online game called “Spot the Plant” – in which players play in different locations, f. Shows photographs of deciduous plants, with instructions for quick clicking on them. They can. The local collector also told the researchers that they had noticed that the plants were better disguised in some places. Said Niue.
When they put these metrics together, they match as expected. F. The delinquent population that lives mostly alone is easy enough to be green. But people under the pressure of the harvest are now blending into the background, whether they are red, red or brown.
Ilik Sacheri, a professor of ecological genetics at the University of Liverpool, who studied color change in moths and butterflies and was not involved in the work – said the study was “absolutely convincing”. However, he added, more experiments would encourage evidence.
As people continue to manipulate other species, it is good to remember that other species also move forward in their response.
“Humans have been artificially selecting all kinds of plants, animals and yeast for thousands of years,” he said. Sachari said. “This is a great example of an inadvertent choice.”
