Did you know that plants talk to each other?
Well according to University of California scientist Professor Richard Karban, the inhabitants of the vegetable kingdom are, “capable of more sophisticated behaviour than we imagined.”
Professor Karban says his findings challenge the notion that plant behaviour is simpler than animals. He says his experiments show that plants communicate by sending chemical messages through the air, warning of predators. When another plant hears the message, it boosts its defences against the caterpillar, grasshopper or other invader.
In his experiments, published in the journal Ecology Letters, he clipped away at leaves and stems using scissors, to damage them in the same way a hungry grasshopper would. Then he planted some damaged and undamaged plants in a field and measured levels of predation on their neighbours.
The leaves of the plants which have been damaged suffered the least grasshopper damage. Professor Karban suggests that even though plants lack a central nervous system, they exhibit many similar behaviours as animals.
Source:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120089298/abstract
Retrieved 24/6/09