Weird flora on the islands?
Thryan
Italy Join Date: 2015-10-17 Member: 208543Members
Italy Join Date: 2015-10-17 Member: 208543Members
i will never understand why on the same island there are: mushrooms, tropical like plants and roses, i mean i know that we are on another planet but most of them also look very similiar to the plants we have on the hearth, what do you guys think? also if you look at the concept art the flora looks very differnt, more mediterranean i would say.
Comments
More like what are trees from Russia and Africa doing on an alien planet.
Plants evolved slowly from Phytoplankton (photosynthetic plankton) to mosslike organisms to ferns, to Gymnosperms (things like pines), to Angiosperms (things that have a true flower). This progression seems pretty natural, as mosses require water to reproduce, as they haven't evolved a method of transporting reproductive cells that doesn't include water. Ferns have a slightly more efficent method of reproduction, gymnosperms add in wind pollination, and angiospems have good (or bad) smelling colorful (not always to us) flowers that invite organisms to inadvertently carry their pollen around (instead of hit or miss wind blown pollen). The mosses are kind of the "first step" out of water, which means the plants in subnautica's islands have already seemingly gone through the difficulty of reproducing in a non-aqueous environment. Now the "trees" in Subnautica closely resemble something would consider a Salix species (because of the weeping habit), which makes a lot of sense as they are typically found near water, which would make sense why this species would have evolved first from gymnosperms instead of Magnolia-esque trees, but....
Speaking of Gymnosperms, I don't think I've seen any. Which is usually an indication that the climate is either very warm or very humid, but then I remembered a trip to the southern U.S. where swamplands were full of these things which looked similar to Salix, but were pine trees which had Tillandsia usneoides (Spanish moss) hanging off of them.
So the world where subnautica takes place is obviously very humid, because high moisture is a requirement of moss reproduction. And moss is lower on the evolution chain due to its primitive tissue structure. This also makes sense as ferns are some of the first vascular plants, appearing shortly before gymnosperms in the Jurassic
So what does this mean? Well this means that evolutionary wise, subnauticas islands are much more like a "rainforest". Specifically the costal rainforests of Mesozoic era, which is also congruent with species of this time, which on land was limited to mainly Arthropods, Reptiles, and amphibians, while oceanic life was getting more an more diverse, and HUGE snakelike predators, also congruent with Earth's Mesozoic era. So basically Subnautica is following our "best" knowledge of evolution, and appears to be near the Mesozoic period.
But so far we don't know for sure if this is moss on a tree, or perhaps a co-evolution of mosses and "trees" in some sort of symbiotic relationship, like a lichen (which is a symbiotic relationship between Fungi and moss). And I don't know a lot about fungi, but almost every habitat has them as most are saphrophagic, so something needs to fill that role in Subnautica to nutrient cycle. I mean fruiting bodies of fungi don't have a symbiotic relationship with animals (as far as I know) in the real world, so that's different at least. Also most aquatic fungi that I've seen don't have the stereotypical "mushroom" fruiting bodies like they do in subnautica, so that's different (as far as I know) as well. And actually most fungi on earth don't have the "mushroom" fruiting bodies (a lot of fungi that I deal with is just a white, blue, or black discoloration of the xylem, roots, or phloem).
So basically (if you want to skip my ramblings which may not make perfect sense because I get derailed and can't be bothered to go back and amend or abridge my post): Plants need to overcome the hardship of reproduction on land in stages, from requiring water, to being carried by the wind, to the much more reliable and accurate organism based pollination. And because of the similarities to subnautica's environment and climate and the Mesozoic era's environment and climate, it's likely that they haven't evolved beyond needing the archaic systems of reproduction, so they haven't had time to diversify and adapt to the more unique environment of subnautica, making them look much different. Granted who knows, maybe instead of plants in Subnautica ever gaining a cell wall, it simply stays a membranous eukaryote and plants are "squishy" like humans, or create chitinous armor like arthropods. but all of that would likely be secondary to being able to reproduce more and more efficiently. So my best guess is it looks similar because it's just not that evolved, or perhaps a meteorite containing Earthlike extremophiles so that the initial stages of evolution were somewhat similar (as well as the transition from water) but the end results were more adapted for the planet's gravity/environment.
@Naali thanks a lot For the clarification
You're right; that was boring! (just teasing
You ain't kiddin' I'm still waiting for someone to wake me up
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like the whole explanation but Thryan might have a point although the evolutionary path you describe is probably right there are 2 plants that don't really make sense.
first one being the European like tree. this one just seems out of place inside (what I assume to be) tropical biome. just plainly it doesn't seem right and i can't really say why.
the second one is the tulip/rose flower. this is just because it doesn't make sense the there would only be one plant species with such advanced flowers on the entire island especially since there is (so far) no animal capable of going between the flowers and because there is no need to go long distances since the island isn't actually big enough for that. (unless of course there are more islands and floaters have more impact on the rocks they carry then it seems.
also how didn't anyone notice that there are paths on the island. something made those so where is that something?
Evolution stand on a lot of different thing, gaz rate on the atmosphere, salt rate on ocean, heights, insect etc etc... a slight difference and every thing change
For exampl if we do not have insect on Earth, the flora will be entirely different, and by extension the animal feeding on, and by extension all the one feeding on those animal.
@Chris1217 is right. Any small thing could drastically change the way an organism would look. Gravity, Oxygen content in the air, Salinity of the ocean, % landmass and even how that mass is arranged (Big supercontinent? smaller continents spread out? Two islands?). If insects didn't exist our world would be in deep poop (literally. warning, link shows some poop). Insects are detritovores (eats "wastes"), pollinators, food for other animals, they keep forests healthy by creating a disturbance regime, they can vector diseases, parasitize each other or other animals, even change the entire ecosystem by their presence or absence. Fungi and plants are like this too, and even top teir predators have a great affect on what survives and can go on to breed and improve the survivability of prey species. Thought there is one thing that is universally reliable as far as living organisms are concerned, and that's a carbon base.
Carbon can accept TONS of different combinations (the hussy) of single, double, or even a triple bond (or up to 4 different atoms), which means its SUPER versatile when it comes to doing different things. For instance in "pure" forms of carbon you can get structures that slough off of each other in sheets, which gives you the graphite in your pencil, or you can have a crystalline structure that's so extremely hard we use it to cut almost anything else (diamond).
Carbon is also the backbone for all the major compounds/molecules for life. It's in our DNA, it's in our protiens as well as carbohydrates and even our fats.
Silicon is the only thing that comes close to being able to create all those structures, but then it gets weird, because silicon is a semi-conductor and has different properties and forms than carbon. As far as I've read and heard life without carbon is pretty much impossible/very improbable.
i did not know that my good sir
Agree but if insects does not exist other creaturs will do ther job (ex: bacteria, végétal and mushroms for poop and scavenging, and wind, bird's, but also carnivores and herbivores help to pollinate carrying pollen with ther coat) thats the way nature works the point is: our planet will be completly different.
And remember "Life always find a way"
edit: giant insects should by cool in subnautica
Or even a modern dragonfly larvae which throws its jaws forward like the 2nd set of jaws on some of the aliens in the movie with the same name:
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I've always felt that there could be semi-reasonable explanations for the origins of life-forms in Subnautica.
Yes. Even the Crash.
The 'exploding' trick might be part of its reproductive cycle, or the 'rock' that launches this fish is actually the intelligent female component of a hermaphroditic binary life-form. There's equally strange stuff right here on Good Ol' Terra. Trust me on this.
The Crash itself might have a rudimentary form of intelligence, in the same way that 'smart' missiles are programmed to behave in a certain way (ECM avoidance, proximity detonation, predictive flight-paths, etc.) The Crash could well be just a semi-aware biological missile, and the sessile 'rock' component of the organism simply grows another Crash as required. Crash Powder (or whatever they are calling it this week
As for The Survivor inadvertently getting caught up in this whole wacky Circle of Life thing... Tough break.
Large, Menacing Shape looming over egg-clutch = Immediate threat = Sexytime for Crash.
That's precisely what I've already said.
actually if you were to remove all insect of earth on after 2 years no life would be able to be substained above the water and probably almost no life in fresh water.
also @Bugzapper
the crash is probably exactly what you say and would track "threats" with movement detection and probably something like the thing sharks use to feel the electric field generated by living animals.(ampulles of lorenzi I think but don't quote me on that and ignore the bad writing)
No thanks.
How about 'read more words before commenting'?
(Not saying the below against anyone here just saying it in general)
"K"eep
"I"t
"S"imple
"S"tupid
Quoted from what my grandparents always said everytime something went wrong.
Somtimes you cant explain things *simple* beause people are just to stupid to understand.
There are suicidal animals that explode to defend the nest/others. In ants/termites it's called Autothysis, and it sends nasty chemicals toward predators.
There's also the Pea aphid which explodes in an attempt to kill of ladybird beetle predators, or at least deter them from the rest of the aphids.