SCYNAPSIS
#plants
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Image credit by Tawatchai Khid-arn, 123RF
Image credit by Tawatchai Khid-arn, 123RF
Image credit by Tawatchai Khid-arn, 123RF
Pablo Ávalos Prado
Pablo Ávalos Prado
Pablo Ávalos Prado
Neuroscientist & Medical Writer
Neuroscientist & Medical Writer
Neuroscientist & Medical Writer
March 31, 2023
March 31, 2023
March 31, 2023
What do stressed plants sound like? A vegetal “Morse code” to ask for water
What do stressed plants sound like? A vegetal “Morse code” to ask for water
What do stressed plants sound like? A vegetal “Morse code” to ask for water
Plants have no mouth nor vocal cords to speak, but under stress conditions they can change their color, shape and smell – and emit ultrasound signals like a Morse code to inform other plants or animals when they need water, according to a new work published in Cell.
Plants have developed a number of mechanisms in response to stress, like changing of color or producing smells that can be interpreted by other organisms as alert signals about the environment where they live. Among these mechanisms, sounds might be another way to inform about their (de)hydration state. Indeed, drying plants produce vibrations inside the stem through cavitation, a process where air bubbles expand and collapse, making very a fine “noise”.
The authors of this work “stressed” tobacco and tomato plants either by cutting their stem or leaving them without water during several days and recorded them in both isolated acoustic boxes and greenhouses. They observed that plants emitted very few sounds in the ultrasound range (20 KHz – 150 KHz) when watered, but the numbers of sounds increased in the following ~5 days until it decreased as the plants dried up.
This is how they sounded like, after down sampling to the audible range:
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0092867423002623-mmc2.mp3
Most of these “popcorn - like sounds” were emitted when the volume of water in the soil was very low, whereas almost no noise was produced at good levels of hydration, confirming that plants could “tell” when they needed water.
Given the very specific frequency of these noises it is likely other organisms have selectively evolved responding to the stress signal, like larvae residing on tomato plants. It also may be that other plants, able to detect the ultrasound frequency, could potentially respond adaptively to this alarm signal from their drying neighbors increasing their drought tolerance. Plant “bioacoustics” may also be useful one day for a more efficient and sustainable agriculture: more precise irrigation of fields could save up to 50 % of water.
Original article:
Plants have no mouth nor vocal cords to speak, but under stress conditions they can change their color, shape and smell – and emit ultrasound signals like a Morse code to inform other plants or animals when they need water, according to a new work published in Cell.
Plants have developed a number of mechanisms in response to stress, like changing of color or producing smells that can be interpreted by other organisms as alert signals about the environment where they live. Among these mechanisms, sounds might be another way to inform about their (de)hydration state. Indeed, drying plants produce vibrations inside the stem through cavitation, a process where air bubbles expand and collapse, making very a fine “noise”.
The authors of this work “stressed” tobacco and tomato plants either by cutting their stem or leaving them without water during several days and recorded them in both isolated acoustic boxes and greenhouses. They observed that plants emitted very few sounds in the ultrasound range (20 KHz – 150 KHz) when watered, but the numbers of sounds increased in the following ~5 days until it decreased as the plants dried up.
This is how they sounded like, after down sampling to the audible range:
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0092867423002623-mmc2.mp3
Most of these “popcorn - like sounds” were emitted when the volume of water in the soil was very low, whereas almost no noise was produced at good levels of hydration, confirming that plants could “tell” when they needed water.
Given the very specific frequency of these noises it is likely other organisms have selectively evolved responding to the stress signal, like larvae residing on tomato plants. It also may be that other plants, able to detect the ultrasound frequency, could potentially respond adaptively to this alarm signal from their drying neighbors increasing their drought tolerance. Plant “bioacoustics” may also be useful one day for a more efficient and sustainable agriculture: more precise irrigation of fields could save up to 50 % of water.
Original article:
Plants have no mouth nor vocal cords to speak, but under stress conditions they can change their color, shape and smell – and emit ultrasound signals like a Morse code to inform other plants or animals when they need water, according to a new work published in Cell.
Plants have developed a number of mechanisms in response to stress, like changing of color or producing smells that can be interpreted by other organisms as alert signals about the environment where they live. Among these mechanisms, sounds might be another way to inform about their (de)hydration state. Indeed, drying plants produce vibrations inside the stem through cavitation, a process where air bubbles expand and collapse, making very a fine “noise”.
The authors of this work “stressed” tobacco and tomato plants either by cutting their stem or leaving them without water during several days and recorded them in both isolated acoustic boxes and greenhouses. They observed that plants emitted very few sounds in the ultrasound range (20 KHz – 150 KHz) when watered, but the numbers of sounds increased in the following ~5 days until it decreased as the plants dried up.
This is how they sounded like, after down sampling to the audible range:
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0092867423002623-mmc2.mp3
Most of these “popcorn - like sounds” were emitted when the volume of water in the soil was very low, whereas almost no noise was produced at good levels of hydration, confirming that plants could “tell” when they needed water.
Given the very specific frequency of these noises it is likely other organisms have selectively evolved responding to the stress signal, like larvae residing on tomato plants. It also may be that other plants, able to detect the ultrasound frequency, could potentially respond adaptively to this alarm signal from their drying neighbors increasing their drought tolerance. Plant “bioacoustics” may also be useful one day for a more efficient and sustainable agriculture: more precise irrigation of fields could save up to 50 % of water.
Original article: