How do plants learn to look like the insects they want to attract?

Question

Many plants look like the insects they want to attract, just how do they learn this? i understand it is due to evolution but how, they do not think about it or do they ?

Answer 1

I think that this is amazing too and it often seems too much for evolution alone to explain! What you've got to remember is that these plants and insects probably co-evolved (evolved at the same time) over millions of years - I guess individuals that looked a little bit like the insect were more successfull and they just got better and better at it, but I don't know of any modern plants that could be inbetween - eg. looking a bit like an insect - that makes that theory a bit harder to believe! I guess trial and error any millions of times eventually leads to it but still just seems amazing to me!!!

BTW some v strange answers above!!! An individual cell mutating will not cause a change in the whole plant! The plants aren't imitating insects to eat them ("the pray") and they don't imitate them so that they can find out what the insects look like!!! Insects don't secrete DNA to communicate with plants, though some do secrete chemicals/hormones but not to aid evolution or nothing like that - gen just to stimulate gall growth for them to nest in! lol some truely bizar ideas! :)

Answer 2

Plants do not learn to look like the insects they want to mimic. Every time a cell ( and plants are made from millions of cells) divides, there is a chance that the genes will change - called a mutation. 1 in 10 divisions result in mutated genes. These mutations may manifest themselves as differences in the appearance of the plant/ flower. Natural selection then works on these changes and eliminates those plants that are less competitive and favours those that are more competitive. The latter tend to survive and the former are more likely to perish. Over time - long periods - the plants gradually change to look more like the mimicked insect. There are many many more disadvantageous changes which cause the individual plant to get wiped put but a few advantageous ones that get selected. Given time and millions of mutations, you get the new looking plant. Think slowly and long to see how it works. Not anti religious - who creates the laws that apply to the universe? Jimenyboy

Answer 3

The plants evolve together with the animals and the environment in which they live. Now the need for survival makes all creatures develop some mechanisms with which survival is possible.

Since plants don`t have eyes, in order to see their prey and imitate it, I quess the answer would be that the insects secrete some special chemicals which the plant cell recognises, (traces of DNA and other substances) and then natural selection does all the rest.

But generally, THE PREY IS ALWAYS MADE FOR ITS PREDATOR AND THE OPPOSITE

Answer 4

Those that are found to be more attractive by the insects will get a better chance of reproducing. The same thing happens with commercial horticulture, Flowers that are attractive in bouquets are bred for seed by the growers so that there will be more of them in the next crop, over a few generations they may displace less attractive flowers entirely.

Answer 5

At first is was one feature at a distance, by chance. That plant had a slight advantage that the insect spead its pollen. In the successive generations, the ones that looked more insect-like had ever increasing reproductice advantage. Over millions of years, the resemblance became extremely refined. There was no plan; just natural selection and lots of time.

Answer 6

The plant that looks more like the insect gets pollinated more, which produces more of that type. Then of those types, the one that looks even more like the insect, gets pollinated even more, to produce even more of that type, etc etc etc.

Answer 7

It's nothing to do with evolution!
(Evolution is a philosophical idea promoted by secular humanists who will believe anything except allow the possibility of God.)

You are right to question how this could come about by evolution - very hard to explain - well infeasible to explain.

The kind of mutual dependence you describe is good evidence for a Creator.

Answer 8

Have a read of Darwin's theory of evolution

Answer 9

only fools believe in evolution