The success of its ancestor in the desert and savanna areas has been carried along to the stickyball-crown shrub. The stickyball-crown shrub gets its name from the shape that the stickyballs form. Besides the size and larger number of stickyballs in a patch, the stickyball-crown shrub has something else that sets it apart. When attacked, the stickyball-crown shrub releases a chemical that makes it taste very bad to most herbivores and omnivores. Besides being a defense mechanism, this chemical causes all nearby shrubs to release their own chemicals. Though not a real form of communication, these little balls show the potential to eventually do so, many mutations down the line.
Living Relatives (click to show/hide)
These are randomly selected, and organized from lowest to highest shared taxon. (This may correspond to similarity more than actual relation)