Common or scientific name acceptable. Kathleen Pryer’s lab showed that a chimeric photoreceptor entered into this lineage via horizontal gene transfer. The 2021 discovery that colonies of an organism in this lineage subdivide water capture and storage was the first evidence of eusociality among plants. The neochrome receptor underlies this mostly terrestrial lineage’s strong red phototropism, which enabled its diverse order Polypodiales to thrive under angiosperm canopies during this lineage’s Cretaceous-era radiation. “Allies” of this lineage include lycophytes and horntails. This is the most speciose plant lineage to have separate, free-living sporophyte and gametophyte generations. These plants may show dimorphism between sterile and fertile leaves, the latter of which display brown clumps called sori on their undersides. For 10 points, name these seedless vascular plants that reproduce by releasing spores from their fronds. ■END■
ANSWER: ferns [accept Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta until “Polypodiales”; accept staghorn fern or elkhorn fern or Platycerium bifurcatum; accept Pteridophyta; accept Pteridopsida or Polypodiidae or leptosporangiate ferns; accept Polypodioides or Polypodiaceae until “Polypodiales”; accept Monilophyta; accept eusporangiate ferns; prompt on cryptogams]
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= Average correct buzz position