Plants can sense and react to temperature changes, harsh winds, and even human touch. But can they hear?
They have no specialized structure to perceive sound like we do, but a new study has found that plants can discern the sound of predators through tiny vibrations of their leaves — and beef up their defenses in response.
It is similar to how our own immune systems work — an initial experience with insects or bacteria can help plants defend themselves better in future attacks by the same predator. So while a mustard plant might not respond the first time it encounters a hungry caterpillar, the next time it will up the concentration of defense chemicals in its system that turn its once-delicious leaves into an unsavory, toxic meal.
Now, biologists from the University of Missouri have found that this readying process, called “priming,” can be triggered by sound alone. For one group of plants, they carefully mimicked what a plant would “hear” in a real attack by vibrating a single leaf with the sound of a caterpillar chewing. The other group was left in silence.
When later faced with a real caterpillar, the plants that heard chewing noises produced a greater amount of insecticide-like chemicals than the silence group. They also seemed able to pick out those vibrations signaling danger; playing wind noises or insect mating calls did not trigger the same chemical boost.
Although the mechanism of how plants can discern sounds is not known, a deeper investigation could lead to advances in agriculture and natural crop resistance — as opposed to spraying costly and harmful pesticides.
“We can imagine applications of this where plants could be treated with sound or genetically engineered to respond to certain sounds that would be useful for agriculture,” said study author and biologist Heidi Appel.
The study was published online Tuesday in the journal Oecologia.
Despite not having brains or nervous systems in the traditional sense, plants are surprisingly sophisticated. They can communicate with each other and signal impending danger to their neighbors by releasing chemicals into the air. Plants constantly react to their environment — not only light and temperature changes, but also physical stimuli.
Two famous examples are the Venus’ flytrap, which snaps shut when an unsuspecting bug contacts one of its trigger hairs, and the touch-me-not plant (Mimosa pudica), which shrinks and closes its leaves upon even a slight touch.
“Plants certainly have the capacity to feel mechanical loads,” said plant biologist Frank Telewski, who was not involved in the research. “They can respond to gravity, wind, ice or an abundance of fruit.”
But trying to prove that plants can sense sound has been difficult.
Thank you Arvind Singh, Tohid Nooralvandi and Nirmala S.V.S.G for responding my query.
Yes , Plants have intelligence and they do respond to music or sound ,I am interested in the mechanism of sound perception in plants.Its very interesting discussion what chemical changes ,molecular arrangements etc. in their own system or surrounding system and how they communicate .
Dr. T. C. Singh, Head, Department of Botany, Annamalai University, India, worked experientially with the effect of musical sounds on the growth rate of plants. His results are very interesting, the experimental plant (balsam plant) increased by 20% in height and 72% in biomass (whole weight) by exposed to music. He done experiments with classical music and later, with raga music and also he tried with different instruments like flute, violin, harmonium and found to have similar effects. I think You will get his research article by search.