Citation: Zander, R.H. Lineages of Fractal Genera Comprise the 88-Million-Year Steel Evolutionary Spine of the Ecosphere. Plants 2024, 13, 1559. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/plants13111559 Academic Editor: Marta Puglisi Received: 26 April 2024 Revised: 29 May 2024 Accepted: 3 June 2024 Published: 5 June 2024 Copyright: © 2024 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). plants Article Lineages of Fractal Genera Comprise the 88-Million-Year Steel Evolutionary Spine of the Ecosphere Richard H. Zander Missouri Botanical Garden, 4344 Shaw Blvd., St. Louis, MI 63110, USA; rzander@mobot.org Abstract: Fractal evolution is apparently effective in selectively preserving environmentally re- silient traits for more than 80 million years in Streptotrichaceae (Bryophyta). An analysis simulated maximum destruction of ancestral traits in that large lineage. The constraints enforced were the preservation of newest ancestral traits, and all immediate descendant species obtained different new traits. Maximum character state changes in ancestral traits were 16 percent of all possible traits in any one sub-lineage, or 73 percent total of the entire lineage. Results showed, however, that only four ancestral traits were permanently eliminated in any one lineage or sub-lineage. A lineage maintains maximum biodiversity of temporally and regionally survival-effective traits at minimum expense to resilience across a geologic time of 88 million years for the group studied. Similar processes generat- ing an extant punctuated equilibrium as bursts of about four descendants per genus and one genus per 1–2 epochs are possible in other living groups given similar emergent processes. The mechanism is considered complexity-related, the lineage being a self-organized emergent phenomenon strongly maintained in the ecosphere by natural selection on fractal genera. Keywords: adaption; complexity theory; extinction; fractal evolution; minimally monophyletic genus; phylogeny; Streptotrichaceae; tadpole lineage “Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.” —Richard P. Feynman 1. Introduction In several recent works [1,2], the concept of genus was redefined in terms of complexity analysis, that is, of emergent phenomena and the stabilizing features of fractal evolution. In the present paper, the lineage is redefined in the same context, as parallel branching series of minimally monophyletic groups, each lineage as a whole preserving resilient traits across more than 80 million years of environmental perturbation. The modern bryoflora first appeared in mid to late Cretaceous times [3–5], about 80–100 mya. It is called “modern” because genera and species recognizable as fossils are still extant. How have these lineages survived such a long time? It may be postulated that natural selection encourages traits that stabilize floras through long-term environmental perturbations. The modern flora has, in the past 80 my, survived, at least partially, such environmental crises as extremes of global temperature, boloid impacts, supervolcanoes, glaciations, inundations, Milankovitch events, and orogenies. Is there evidence that extant species include traits making them resistant and resilient [6] to major environmental changes? Why are those traits not overwritten with each speciation event? For investigation, we can use the minimally monophyletic genus, which has several valuable properties. The microgenus is here defined as the smallest unit of monophyly based on taxonomically important expressed traits. As the basic unit of evolution [2], it clearly represents empirically based emergent phenomena, i.e., taxa higher than the species rank, in analysis, and which are not the immediate result of a clearly defined process Plants 2024, 13, 1559. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13111559 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/plants