Plant Sensing Communication

The news that a flowering weed—mousear cress (Arabidopsis thaliana)—can sense the particular chewing noise of its most common caterpillar predator and adjust its chemical defenses in response led to headlines announcing the discovery of the first “hearing” plant. As plants lack central nervous systems (and, indeed, ears), the mechanisms behind this “hearing” are unquestionably very different from those of our own acoustic sense, but the misleading headlines point to an overlooked truth: plants do in fact perceive environmental cues and respond rapidly to them by changing their chemical, morphological, and behavioral traits. In Plant Sensing and Communication, Richard Karban provides the first comprehensive overview of what is known about how plants perceive their environments, communicate those perceptions, and learn. Facing many of the same challenges as animals, plants have developed many similar capabilities: they sense light, chemicals, mechanical stimulation, temperature, electricity, and sound. Moreover, prior experiences have lasting impacts on sensitivity and response to cues; plants, in essence, have memory. Nor are their senses limited to the processes of an individual plant: plants eavesdrop on the cues and behaviors of neighbors and—for example, through flowers and fruits—exchange information with other types of organisms. Far from inanimate organisms limited by their stationary existence, plants, this book makes unquestionably clear, are in constant and lively discourse.

Research is showing that plants are in constant and lively discourse--they communicate, signaling to remote organs within an individual, eavesdropping on neighboring individuals, and exchanging information with other organisms ranging from other plants to microbes to animals. Plants lack central nervous systems, and the mechanisms coordinating plant sensing, behavior, and communication are quite different from the systems that accomplish similar tasks in animals. But they are no less impressive from an evolutionary perspective. In "Plant Communication, "Karban puts an ear to the ground to reveal the world of plant communication and information sensing. He reveals their sensory capabilities, the learning capacity of plants, sensory signaling and communication, the different responses to pollinators and predators, and the mechanisms that undergird this impressive behavioral repertoire. The book shows that plants are hardly the inanimate organisms limited by their stationary existence."

This updated and expanded edition explores key methodologies to study the fascinating phenomenon of how plants readjust their growth toward gravity. In addition to the protocols delivering broad applications for gaining insight into other plant physiological processes, this new volume also focuses on techniques involving plants in space or the use of microgravity analogs to study plant biological phenomenon. Written for the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and cutting-edge, Plant Gravitropism: Methods and Protocols, Second Edition serves as an ideal guide for researchers studying the cellular, molecular, and biochemical networks that plants use to translate environmental stimuli into a growth response.

This is the first comprehensive monograph on all emerging topics in plant signaling. The book addresses diverse aspects of signaling at all levels of plant organization. Emphasis is placed on the integrative aspects of signaling.

The eighteenth-century naturalist Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) argued that plants are animate, living beings and attributed them sensation, movement, and a certain degree of mental activity, emphasizing the continuity between humankind and plant existence. Two centuries later, the understanding of plants as active and communicative organisms has reemerged in such diverse fields as plant neurobiology, philosophical posthumanism, and ecocriticism. The Language of Plants brings together groundbreaking essays from across the disciplines to foster a dialogue between the biological sciences and the humanities and to reconsider our relation to the vegetal world in new ethical and political terms. Viewing plants as sophisticated information-processing organisms with complex communication strategies (they can sense and respond to environmental cues and play an active role in their own survival and reproduction through chemical languages) radically transforms our notion of plants as unresponsive beings, ready to be instrumentally appropriated. By providing multifaceted understandings of plants, informed by the latest developments in evolutionary ecology, the philosophy of biology, and ecocritical theory, The Language of Plants promotes the freedom of imagination necessary for a new ecological awareness and more sustainable interactions with diverse life forms. Contributors: Joni Adamson, Arizona State U; Nancy E. Baker, Sarah Lawrence College; Karen L. F. Houle, U of Guelph; Luce Irigaray, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris; Erin James, U of Idaho; Richard Karban, U of California at Davis; André Kessler, Cornell U; Isabel Kranz, U of Vienna; Michael Marder, U of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU); Timothy Morton, Rice U; Christian Nansen, U of California at Davis; Robert A. Raguso, Cornell U; Catriona Sandilands, York U.

This Special Issue reprint focuses on the exquisite and cognitive plant behaviors emerging from their complex relationship with a constantly changing environment, including the vast network of communications that link plants to other plants and different organisms. More and more evidence has demonstrated that plants are not merely stimulus-response reactive objects, responding passively to the external environment. On the contrary, they have their own plant-specific agency, and their interactions with the variable environment involves directed and intentional actions that are regulated by sophisticated processes of sensing and signaling. Such interactions form communication networks with neighboring plants that also interfere positively or negatively in the way each individual thrives.

Communication is an essential factor underpinning the interactions between species and the structure of their communities. Plant-animal interactions are particularly diverse due to the complex nature of their mutualistic and antagonistic relationships. However the evolution of communication and the underlying mechanisms responsible remain poorly understood. Plant-Animal Communication is a timely summary of the latest research and ideas on the ecological and evolutionary foundations of communication between plants and animals, including discussions of fundamental concepts such as deception, reliability, and camouflage. It introduces how the sensory world of animals shapes the various modes of communication employed, laying out the basics of vision, scent, acoustic, and gustatory communication. Subsequent chapters discuss how plants communicate in these sensory modes to attract animals to facilitate seed dispersal, pollination, and carnivory, and how they communicate to defend themselves against herbivores. Potential avenues for productive theoretical and empirical research are clearly identified, and suggestions for novel empirical approaches to the study of communication in general are outlined.

This book provides a convincing argument for the view that whole cells and whole plants growing in competitive wild conditions show aspects of plant behaviour that can be accurately described as 'intelligent'. Trewavas argues that behaviour, like intelligence, must be assessed within the constraints of the anatomical and physiological framework of the organism in question. The fact that plants do not have centralized nervous systems for example, does not exclude intelligent behaviour. Outside the human dimension, culture is thought largely absent and fitness is the biological property of value. Thus, solving environmental problems that threaten to reduce fitness is another way of viewing intelligent behaviour and has a similar meaning to adaptively variable behaviour. The capacity to solve these problems might be considered to vary in different organisms, but variation does not mean absence. By extending these ideas into a book that allows a critical and amplified discussion, the author hopes to raise an awareness of the concept of purposive behaviour in plants.

This book provides an in-depth coverage of the most recent developments in the field of wireless underground communications, from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The authors identify technical challenges and discuss recent results related to improvements in wireless underground communications and soil sensing in Internet of Underground Things (IOUT). The book covers both existing network technologies and those currently in development in three major areas of SitS: wireless underground communications, subsurface sensing, and antennas in the soil medium. The authors explore novel applications of Internet of Underground Things in digital agriculture and autonomous irrigation management domains. The book is relevant to wireless researchers, academics, students, and decision agriculture professionals. The contents of the book are arranged in a comprehensive and easily accessible format. Focuses on fundamental issues of wireless underground communication and subsurface sensing; Includes advanced treatment of IOUT custom applications of variable-rate technologies in the field of decision agriculture, and covers protocol design and wireless underground channel modeling; Provides a detailed set of path loss, antenna, and wireless underground channel measurements in various novel Signals in the Soil (SitS) testbed settings.

Plant neurobiology is a newly emerging field of plant sciences. It covers signalling and communication at all levels of biological organization – from molecules up to ecological communities. In this book, plants are presented as intelligent and social organisms with complex forms of communication and information processing. Authors from diverse backgrounds such as molecular and cellular biology, electrophysiology, as well as ecology treat the most important aspects of plant communication, including the plant immune system, abilities of plants to recognize self, signal transduction, receptors, plant neurotransmitters and plant neurophysiology. Further, plants are able to recognize the identity of herbivores and organize the defence responses accordingly. The similarities in animal and plant neuronal/immune systems are discussed too. All these hidden aspects of plant life and behaviour will stimulate further intense investigations in order to understand the communicative plants in their whole complexity.