<
https://theconversation.com/meet-the-worlds-largest-plant-a-single-seagrass-clone-stretching-180-km-in-western-australias-shark-bay-184056>
"Next time you go diving or snorkelling, have a close look at those wondrously
long, bright green ribbons, waving with the ebb and flow of water. They are
seagrasses – marine plants which produce flowers, fruit, and seedlings
annually, like their land-based relatives.
These underwater seagrass meadows grow in two ways: by sexual reproduction,
which helps them generate new gene combinations and genetic diversity, and also
by extending their rhizomes, the underground stems from which roots and shoots
emerge.
To find out how many different individual plants are growing in a seagrass
meadow, you have to test their DNA. We did this for meadows of ribbon weed
seagrass called
Posidonia australis in the shallow sun-drenched waters of the
Shark Bay World Heritage Area, in Western Australia.
The result blew us away: it was all one plant. One single plant has expanded
over a stretch of 180 km making it the largest known plant on Earth.
We collected shoot samples from ten seagrass meadows from across Shark Bay, in
waters where the salt levels range from normal ocean salinity to almost twice
as salty. In all samples, we studied 18,000 genetic markers to show that 200
km² of ribbon weed meadows expanded from a single, colonising seedling."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
