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[deleted] t1_j9hxt1i wrote

How is this provable? How did the avocado plants know that they were being eaten by large herbivores in order to increase seed size?

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senorbolsa t1_j9i0wjm wrote

It's just a well considered hypothesis for why the seeds are so large.

There's a lot of selective pressures on all kinds of attributes of plants. One would imagine the size of seeds avocados had before we domesticated them had the best odds of surviving being consumed and "distributed" by megafauna like giant sloths. I don't know exactly how we know that they ate these fruits but I assume it's better than a guess.

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MarcusForrest t1_j9mawu5 wrote

> It's just a well considered hypothesis for why the seeds are so large.

Actually, it isn't even related to the method of distribution, but the direct competition they face in jungles and forests - for a plant to grow amongst multiple rivals, the seed needs to be pretty big to contain enough nutrients so the plant has a chance to grow over/before its rivals, and then live off the soil, sun light, water, air and all

 

Also, although they were still pretty big back then, big seeds were not as large as they are today - they are this large today due to human interaction and selection - the seeds are bigger, but the proportion of flesh vs seed is also growing bigger, too! Because that's what we like

 

Modern avocados are alive due to human efforts - fun fact: the most popular cultivar, the HASS AVOCADO is not even 100 years old yet!

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senorbolsa t1_j9mc5jg wrote

That's where I wanted to get I just didn't have the time to spend on it. very interesting and makes a lot more sense.

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JollyRabbit t1_j9jtsjv wrote

They don't "know" anything. Evolution is not like spending experience points in a video game to level up their Seed Size stat. Rather, mutation and random combinations of genes through the shuffling of sexual reproduction resulted in different results. The ones which tended to help the plants reproduce, like by making a seed a local animal carried to favorable locations tended to survive and those with genes which negatively impacted their odds of reproducing tended to not pass on their genes.

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