COMPUTER MODELS OF EARLY LAND PLANT EVOLUTION.pdfVIP

Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 2004. 32:47–66 doi: 10.1146/annurev.earth.32.092203.122440 c Copyright 2004 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved First published online as a Review in Advance on November 10, 2003 COMPUTER MODELS OF EARLY LAND PLANT EVOLUTION Karl J. Niklas Department of Plant Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca New York 14853; email: kjn2@ Key Words adaptive evolution, computer simulations, morphology optimization, vascular plants, paleobotany Abstract Computer models are used to mimic the early evolution of ancient vascular plants (tracheophytes). These models have three components: (a) an N- dimensional domain of all mathematically conceivable ancient morphologies (a mor- phospace); (b) a numerical assessment of the ability (fitness) of each morphology to intercept light, maintain mechanical stability, conserve water, and produce and dis- perse spores; and (c) an algorithm that searches the morphospace for successively more fit variants (an adaptive walk). Beginning with the most ancient known plant form, evolution is simulated by locating neighboring morphologies that progressively perform one or more tasks more efficiently. The resulting simulated adaptive walks in- dicate that early tracheophyte evolution involved optimizing the performance of many tasks simultaneously rather than maximizing the performance of one or only a few tasks individually, and that the requirement for optimization accelerated the tempo of morphological evolution in the Silurian and D