A recent study: Flowering plants were the reason for the diversity of life on land

The plants that we eat and drink or use to make our needs belong to the types of flowering plants called angiosperms, meaning that their seeds are covered.

According to a report published by Science Alert, "more than a million species of modern insects owe their livelihood to angiosperms," ​​states paleobotanist Peter Welf of Pennsylvania State University in the United States.

In turn, these insects are also food for other creatures in the food chain, such as spiders, lizards, birds and mammals.

Millions of years ago, the diversity of organisms was confined to the oceans, which makes sense since bodies of water cover more than 70% of our planet's surface. Today, however, we are witnessing a shift in this diversity, as most life forms are seen on land. When did this shift happen and why?

According to a reference study published in the New Phytologist on October 26, scientists believe that this biodiversity on land was driven by flowering plants, and that it occurred about 100 million years ago.

Botanical revolution

This biodiversity coincided with the time when many of the families of plants we know today flourished. This also involved a massive increase in the size of fruits and seeds, which is the main driver for the evolution of more fruit-eating animals.

In the statement issued by the university, Michael Benton, a paleobiologist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom and lead of the study , says that "a diversity of flowering plants has been around for some time, but it became common in the Cretaceous period, that is, in the last 70 million years of the age of dinosaurs."

The team called this event the "Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution." Scientists believe we neglected this event because of the catastrophic extinction event that took the lives of the non-flying dinosaurs. The asteroid impact caused the extinction of many species, including 70% of marine species. And when life revived again, the insects, birds, mammals and reptiles on land were victorious.

Major evolutionary events

The team believes that the evolutionary events witnessed by flowering plants were the driving force behind the diversity of life on land, through 4 main ways:

• The spread of flowering plants in different habitats caused their development and transformation into a wonderful group of new forms. These new species have opened up new opportunities for life to develop around them.

"This diversity of angiosperms has created enormous niches for plants and other animals," says Benton. "We found dozens of species on every hectare of the Earth's surface, which would not have happened if the angiosperms were absent."

• The increase in the diversity of organisms indicates that these plants were absorbing more energy.

This is confirmed by Hervé Suquet, an evolutionary biologist at Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens and co-author of the study, saying that these plants "can absorb a lot more sun energy than the conifers and their relatives. This extra energy is passed through the entire ecosystem."

• The resulting new food sources have created many interrelationships between plants and animals, which in turn open up a series of new opportunities for biodiversity.

"The evolution of insects that pollinate the angiosperms has been driven by the angiosperms themselves. Angiosperms can build complex forests that are home to thousands of species," Suquet explains.

• Finally, the abundance and increase of these flowering plants has affected their local climate. Increased production means more water is consumed from the soil, and then passed into the atmosphere, which changes the climate and water cycles and creates more humid tropical environments, thus expanding suitable habitats for other species such as frogs, fungi and even other plants such as ferns.