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The similarity of these to the scales of bony fish is largely superficial. Lizards and some frogs have somewhat similar osteoderms forming bony deposits in the dermis, but this is an example of convergent evolution with similar structures having arisen independently in diverse vertebrate lineages.
Plant fruit: the fleshy nutritious part of plants that animal dispense by eating independently came about in flowering plants and in some gymnosperms like: ginkgo and cycads. [239] Water transport systems, like vascular plant systems, with water conducting vessels, independently came about in horsetails, club mosses, ferns, and gymnosperms. [240]
Aquatic plants have adapted to live in either freshwater or saltwater. Aquatic vascular plants have originated on multiple occasions in different plant families; [5] [9] they can be ferns or angiosperms (including both monocots and dicots).
Evolutionary theory predicted that since amphibians evolved from fish, an intermediate form should be found in rock dated between 365 and 385 million years ago. Such an intermediate form should have many fish-like characteristics, conserved from 385 million years ago or more, but also have many amphibian characteristics as well.
Amphibious fish; also several types of normally fully aquatic fish such as the grunion and plainfin midshipman that spawn in the intertidal zone; Some amphibians such as newts and salamanders, and some frogs such as fire-bellied toads and wood frogs. Some reptiles such as crocodilians, turtles, water snakes and marine iguanas.
Of North American freshwater species, an estimated 48.5% of mussels, 22.8% of gastropods, 32.7% of crayfishes, 25.9% of amphibians, and 21.2% of fish are either endangered or threatened. [24] Extinction rates of many species may increase severely into the next century because of invasive species, loss of keystone species, and species which are ...
The more shallow the water, the greater the biomass contribution from rooted and floating vascular plants. These two sources combine to produce the extraordinary production of estuaries and wetlands, as this autotrophic biomass is converted into fish, birds, amphibians and other aquatic species.
Freshwater invertebrates provide an important link in freshwater food chains, transporting the nutrients and energy from producers such as algae and aquatic plants to higher consumers such as fish and amphibians. [9] Additionally, invertebrates can act as important bio-indicators for ecosystem health. [9]