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Plants also have vestigial parts, including functionless stipules and carpels, leaf reduction of Equisetum, paraphyses of Fungi. [35] Well known examples are the reductions in floral display, leading to smaller and/or paler flowers, in plants that reproduce without outcrossing, for example via selfing or obligate clonal reproduction. [36] [37]
Ileum, caecum and colon of rabbit, showing Appendix vermiformis on fully functional caecum The human vermiform appendix on the vestigial caecum. The appendix was once believed to be a vestige of a redundant organ that in ancestral species had digestive functions, much as it still does in extant species in which intestinal flora hydrolyze cellulose and similar indigestible plant materials. [10]
Plant toxins independently came about in: solauricine, daphnin, tinyatoxin, ledol, protoanemonin, lotaustralin, chaconine, persin and more. [243] Venus flytrap sea anemone is an animal and the Venus flytrap is a plant. Both look and act the same. [244] Digestive enzymes independently came about in carnivorous plants and animals. [245]
The most well known examples are antibiotic resistance in the medical field along with better-known laboratory experiments documenting evolution's occurrence. Natural selection is tantamount to common descent in that long-term occurrence and selection pressures can lead to the diversity of life on earth as found today.
A number of traits can vary as a result of shortening of the fetal development of a trait or by prolongation of the same. In such a case, a shift in the time a trait is allowed to develop before it is fixed can bring forth an ancestral phenotype. [5] Atavisms are often seen as evidence of evolution. [6]
This phenomenon is an automatic-response mechanism that activates even before a human becomes consciously aware that a startling, unexpected or unknown sound has been "heard". [2] That this vestigial response occurs even before becoming consciously aware of a startling noise would explain why the function of ear-perking had evolved in animals.
In many circumstances, the apparently vestigial structure may retain a limited functionality, or may be co-opted for other advantageous traits in a phenomenon known as preadaptation. A famous example of a vestigial structure, the eye of the blind mole-rat, is believed to retain function in photoperiod perception. [97]
These additional EPMs are the by-product traits of a species’ evolutionary development (see spandrels), as well as the vestigial traits that no longer benefit the species’ fitness. It can be difficult to tell whether a trait is vestigial or not, so some literature is more lenient and refers to vestigial traits as adaptations, even though ...