Orchids are a type of flowering plant How would biologists e

Orchids are a type of flowering plant. How would biologists explain how a living orchid species lacking leaves evolved from an ancestral orchid species that had leaves?

Solution

A plant loses a feature means this feature is a kind of disadvantage in its environment.
Meanwhile, what it gets from the lost feature can be got from its environment. A change in leaf morphology monopodial growth habit, and aeration complexes for gas exchange in photosynthetic roots seem to be the most important characters in making the evolutionary transition to leaflessness.

The species no longer required broad leaves for transpiration . The leaves are not favourable for the survival of the plant species. In fact, having them makes it harder for the species to survive as energy is invested to keep them strong and alive.

maybe it\'s a dark place, and hard for plants to do their photosynthesis, and the orchids can get carbon and water from the environment, for example, from soil, instead of leaves, from which orchids usually got carbon and water.

may be only orchid species that lacked these leaves were able to sustain environmental changes at the time, so leaves were selected out of the population.