Nutrients clearly limit the growth of plants. Explain four ways that plants have adapted to increase access to nutrients and what limits the association from becoming more common.
What will be an ideal response?
ANSWER: Mycorrhizal associations are very common in plants. This plant root-fungal association
promotes the uptake of water and some essential ions, especially phosphate. Presumably,
even though there is a carbon cost to the plant to maintain the association, its commonness
suggests that the benefits are great. Nitrogen-fixing plants are plants that form a bacterial
mutualistic association with the roots of plants in the legume family. While the legume
family contains many species, this association is relatively rare. Presumably, this
association is not more common, that is, found in many species in many families, because
it is costly to the plant. Some plants supplement their mineral nutritional requirements by
digesting animals. Presumably, this adaptation is evolutionarily restricted to very nutrient
poor environments. Other plants have evolved mechanisms to parasitize other plant species
to obtain nutrients, including in some cases, sugars. There are many species of epiphytes,
which grow on other plants and trap falling debris or water, where the roots absorb
nutrients from it as the litter decomposes. Finally, some plant species have been found to
take up organic nutrients in the form of amino acids. Like carnivorous plants, this
adaptation appears to be very restricted to nutrient poor environments, although this
phenomenon has just started to be examined.
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What will be an ideal response?
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a. true b. false