The findings, published Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, make the colony of Posidonia australis, or ribbon weed, the largest known plant on Earth, scientists said. “It’s quite bizarre when you think about it, there’s this plant in one end of the bay and then you move 100 kilometers down to the other end and it’s the same plant,” Sinclair said. Scientists say the meadow of ribbon weed is all genetically identical after cloning itself to cover an area three times larger than Manhattan. Like other delicate oceanic structures, namely corals, seagrass meadows are susceptible to climate change. A severe heat wave in 2010 and 2011 sparked widespread damage to the Shark Bay meadows, killing about a third of the seagrasses.

Source: Huffington Post June 01, 2022 21:59 UTC