What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses: Updated and Expanded Edition by Daniel Chamovitz

Author:Daniel Chamovitz [Chamovitz, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science, Life Sciences, Botany, nature, Plants, General, Gardening
ISBN: 9780374600006
Google: FJv_DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2020-10-06T00:21:49.361523+00:00

Yovel, a physicist by training, used the advanced acoustic recording and playback abilities in his study of bat navigation to record the sounds of the flapping wings of hawk moths and bees. We played back these sounds to plants and checked their nectar. To our delight, plants that were exposed to the sounds of the pollinators produced nectar that had more sugar than plants that were kept in silence.

While these results show that a beach evening primrose can rapidly respond to a specific, ecologically relevant sound, it leaves open the question of what part of the plant actually senses the sound waves. In anthropomorphic language, where’s the ear? At this point, we simply do not know, nor do we understand how the plant translates the acoustic signal through its cells to influence nectar quality. Some very recent work from the laboratory of Professor Hanhong Bae and his group at Yeungnam University in South Korea indicates that at least in arabidopsis sound waves can induce changes in gene expression. But we are still a long way from understanding how acoustic signals influence plant physiology. The exact answers to these questions are unfortunately going to have to wait for additional studies.

This research raises the possibility that plants have varied responses to a number of different sounds but that we’ve been looking in the wrong place.

Where things start getting very strange is when you consider that plants also generate noises. Roman Zweifel and Fabienne Zeugin from the University of Bern in Switzerland have reported ultrasonic vibrations emanating from pine and oak trees during a drought. These vibrations result from changes in the water content of the water-transporting xylem vessels. Gagliano and Mancuso recorded “clicks” emanating from young corn roots. While these sounds are passive results of physical forces (in the same way that a rock falling off a cliff makes a noise), perhaps they do have an adaptive value. Could the ultrasonic vibrations be used as a signal by other trees to prepare for dry conditions? Is there information included in the corn root clicks?

If so, this opens up the possibility that plants can not only respond to auditory signals but perhaps also generate them! In other words, maybe plants vocalize.

Clearly, there’s more going on here than we ever imagined. If only five years ago in the first edition of this book I wrote, “For hundreds of millions of years plants have thrived on Earth, and the nearly 400,000 species of plants have conquered every habitat without ever hearing a sound,” I now need to reevaluate my position; plants may indeed respond to acoustic signals.

This is the strength of the scientific method and what separates science from pseudoscience. Pseudoscience seeks confirmations, while science seeks falsifications. As a scientist, I clearly realize that my hypotheses and conclusions are at best tentative, waiting to be shot down by some future study. The pseudoscientist on the other hand is convinced that his conclusions have been proven true. A pseudoscientist won’t let contradictory results get in the way of his opinion.

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