Water repellency as the first step to life on land a billion years ago
Water droplets simply roll off - and clean the surface and reduce infestation with fungal spores, for example. But not only plants have the "lotus effect," which Professor Wilhelm Barthlott of the University of Bonn discovered four decades ago. Land living Cyanobacteria (Hassallia byssoidea) also use extreme water repellency to protect themselves from water films and competitors. That’s according to a research team led by Barthlott in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.
Plants and other organisms have evolved structures and mechanisms for colonizing land for nearly half a billion years. ...
