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Researchers: Plants can choose how to respond to competitors. Do they think?

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Potentilla reptans, simulated sparse vegetation/Udi Segev

From ScienceDaily:

Biologists from the University of Tübingen have demonstrated that plants can choose between alternative competitive responses according to the stature and densities of their opponents. A new study by researchers from the Institute of Evolution and Ecology reveals that plants can evaluate the competitive ability of their neighbors and optimally match their responses to them. The results were published in Nature Communications.

Animals facing competition have been shown to optimally choose between different behaviors, including confrontation, avoidance and tolerance, depending on the competitive ability of their opponents relative to their own. For example, if their competitors are bigger or stronger, animals are expected to “give up the fight” and choose avoidance or tolerance over confrontation.

Plants can detect the presence of other competing plants through various cues, such as the reduction in light quantity or in the ratio of red to far-red wavelengths (R:FR), which occurs when light is filtered through leaves. Such competition cues are known to induce two types of responses: confrontational vertical elongation, by which plants try to outgrow and shade their neighbors, and shade tolerance, which promotes performance under limited light conditons. Some plants, such as clonal plants, can exhibit avoidance behavior as a third response type: they grow away from their neighbors. “These three alternative responses of plants to light competition have been well-documented in the literature,” says Michal Gruntman, lead author of the paper. “In our study we wanted to learn, if plants can choose between these responses and match them to the relative size and density of their opponents.”

Note: Clonal plants: “Clonal plants are those that reproduce asexually by means of vegetative offspring that remain attached to the parent, at least until they establish. Clonal plant species are widespread, dominate a variety of habitats and probably play key roles in the maintenance of biodiversity, ecosystem function and biological invasion. For example, many of the most invasive introduced plants in the world are clonal. (NCBI)”

To answer this question, the researchers used the clonal plant Potentilla reptans in an experimental setup that simulated different light-competition settings. They used vertical stripes of transparent green filters that reduce both light quantity and R:FR and could therefore provide a realistic simulation of light competition. By changing both the height and density of this simulated vegetation, the researchers could present different light-competition scenarios to the plants.

The results demonstrated that Potentilla reptans can indeed choose its response to competition in an optimal way. When the plants were under treatments simulating short-dense neighbors, which presented competitors that where too dense to avoid laterally but could be outgrown vertically, Potentilla reptans showed the highest confrontational vertical growth. However, under simulated tall-dense neighbors, which could not be outgrown either vertically or laterally, plants displayed the highest shade tolerance behavior. Lastly, under tall-sparse neighbors, which could only be avoided laterally, plants exhibited the highest lateral-avoidance behaviors.

The findings of this study reveal that plants can evaluate the density and competitive ability of their neighbors and tailor their responses accordingly. “Such an ability to choose between different responses according to their outcome could be particularly important in heterogeneous environments, where plants can grow by chance under neighbors with different size, age or density, and should therefore be able to choose their appropriate strategy” says Gruntman. This study provides new evidence for the ability of plants to integrate complex information about their environment and respond to it in an optimal way. Paper. (public access) – Michal Gruntman, Dorothee Groß, Maria Májeková, Katja Tielbörger. Decision-making in plants under competition. Nature Communications, 2017; 8 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02147-2 More.

Most interesting. What does it mean to say that plants have decision-making abilities? Are these abilities encoded without being conscious (and possibly an instance of design in nature)? Or are we saying here that even rocks have minds (and that conscious decision-making consciousness is an illusion in humans)?

Design theory (the capacity is encoded) makes more sense here than naturalism.

Note also: 

Life forms communicate with each other to a degree that often surprises researchers. Prey animals, for example, warn predators of the danger of eating them or advise other prey that a hiding place is taken.But evidence suggests that plants can communicate too. The Scientist tells us:

Researchers are unearthing evidence that, far from being unresponsive and uncommunicative organisms, plants engage in regular conversation. In addition to warning neighbors of herbivore attacks, they alert each other to threatening pathogens and impending droughts, and even recognize kin, continually adapting to the information they receive from plants growing around them. Moreover, plants can “talk” in several different ways: via airborne chemicals, soluble compounds exchanged by roots and networks of threadlike fungi, and perhaps even ultrasonic sounds. Plants, it seems, have a social life that scientists are just beginning to understand.

So while communication, like purpose, is everywhere, the degree to which a life form is conscious of itself in communication with another life form is still elusive.

One thing these types of findings will require is that we define our terms more clearly: What do we mean by decision-making? Thinking? Consciousness? What, exactly, is the role of a brain?

See also: What can we hope to learn about animal minds?

and

Does intelligence depend on a specific type of brain?

Comments
No. I dn't think so. It's the spirit of God in His panentheist mode, favoured by Einstein. Panentheism differs from pantheism in that the great, designing and creating Spirit is distinct from his living creation. I've noticed a similar 'tribal' communication between insects. Even inter-species anomalies, such as a shared sense of humour. They seem to pass on information to each other. The 'common or garden' variety is easily recognisable in squirrels, birds and cats, etc. What is it in their brains (?!) that prompts birds to swoop down past a window a cat is watching from, and is evidently almost demented with the frustration of his predatory blood-lust by the window-pane. And the bird is evidently doing it deliberately to wind up the cat.... Venus fly-traps are a little extraordinary, aren't they?Axel
December 30, 2017
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