A 410-million-year-old soil shows extensive rhizome traces of Drepanophycus, an early vascular plant related to modern club mosses. Photo credit: Jinzhuang Xue, Peking University |
Evolution and ecology are one and the same really because ecology is all about how species adapt and interrelate to form a complete system of interdependent organisms. Without evolution none of the interdependent organism could fit into their particular niche and compete with other organisms for resources. So, evolution created ecosystems and ecosystems drive evolution.
But in the early days of life on Earth, before life emerged from the oceans where it had first evolved and diversified, there was no ecosystem as such on land, so how did the first emerging life manage to eke out an existence and what reason did it have to go there in the first place?
Now scientists believe they may have found how an early plant, related to the club mosses, may have created its own ecosystem by interaction between its rhizomes and silt-laden floods. Rhizomes are