seagrass
Seagrasses are flowering plants that uniquely inhabit marine environments, having evolved from terrestrial ancestors 70-100 million years ago. This extraordinary adaptation demonstrates the remarkable evolutionary plasticity of flowering plants and their capacity to colonize radically different ecological niches under extreme environmental constraints. Studying seagrasses reveals fundamental principles of plant evolution, adaptation mechanisms, and the adaptive limits of flowering plant physiology.
open_in_new WikipediaPubMed · 2026-04-15
Red knots—shorebirds thought to depend entirely on shellfish—can successfully switch to eating plant material. A captive experiment showed the birds adapted to a plant-based diet within days, with digestive system changes supporting the shift.
Birds lost 14% of body mass in the first days after switching to the plant diet before recovering and stabilizing at a new, lower baseline.
Fecal output shifted from green (a sign of starvation) to brown and increased in volume on the plant diet, indicating active digestion of plant material.
Gut adjustments—including changes to digestive anatomy and gut microbiome—occurred within just a few days of the diet switch.
