9. The species diversity of plants (22 per cent) is much less than that of animals (72 per cent). What could be the explanations to how animals achieved greater diversification?
Animals have achieved greater diversification than animals due to following reasons:
1. Animals possess a nervous system to receive stimuli and show a response against them.
2. Animals are motile and they can avoid competition thus leading to greater diversification.
3. Animals are subjected to less seasonal variations as compared to plants.
Plants are fixed and they require more evolutionary adaptations in order to obtain their requirements of water, minerals, sunlight, avoiding of herbivory etc. Thus, there is higher diversity among animals than plants.