Plants can tell who's who
It's not just animals that can tell siblings from strangers.
Telling apart relatives from strangers is crucial in many animal species, helping them to share precious resources or avoid inbreeding. Now it seems that plants can perform the same trick.
Comments
I do not Know much about chemistry or biology.
But,I do believe that all
living things on this planet can detect strangers
(or unknown,I meant by chemical or biological,it is not only us (humans)can detect or show who is who.
The article to me is very interserting.
Posted by: Eric Johnson | June 13, 2007 09:43 AM
Chemical signature recognition seems to have been ruled out before:
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/050809_plant_roots.html
Another hadache for our philosophers who wrote so much on identity.
Sincerely,
Damir Ibrisimovic
Posted by: Damir Ibrisimovic | June 13, 2007 11:33 AM
The explanation given to the observed phenomenon does not make sense to me. The growth of stronger roots among 'strangers' is more likely caused by reduced resource competition which in turn is due to better niche separation. Siblings are more likely to require similar resources than are strangers.
Posted by: Lianhong Gu | June 13, 2007 12:06 PM
Resource competition does seem a more parsimonious explanation. One obvious thing to look for is the timing of when the plant absorbs the most water. If siblings all operate at the same schedule, they'll use available resources (water, CO2, other nutrients) less efficiently than strangers that operate on slightly different schedules.
Posted by: Glen Raphael | June 13, 2007 02:38 PM
After so much is known about the unknowns of any organisms genetic regulations and its adaptation to its environments, it is dangerous to come to such conclusions. That the strangers and siblings are separated, they are not anymore the same in their genetic regulation although sharing the same genomes. And the smallest differences in their genetic tools can have a profound outward differences.
Posted by: Kranthi Mandadi | June 13, 2007 03:34 PM
"Nothing of this sort has been found before."
LOL.
Try reading "The Secret Life of Plants", by Peter Tompkins and Christopher
Bird, sometime.
http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Plants-Peter-Tompkins/dp/0060915870
Posted by: Michael Pohoreski | June 13, 2007 06:08 PM
Try reading the book, the Secret Life of Plants.
http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Plants-Peter-Tompkins/dp/0060915870
On another note, because researchers are looking for a purely "biological basis" they are excluding the bigger picture. Everything that is living possesses an energy field. The fact that a plant knows what it is supposed to look like is easily demonstrated with Kirlian photography. When animals regrow their limbs they are merely filling a pre-estabilished energy pattern, which demonstrates a kind of energy genetics. (Which is why phantom limb affects people - because their energy influences their physical being.) By the same token, there is an energy field of the plant that is able to interact with other energy fields and differences in energy can easily provide methods of communication, resulting in physical changes. Perhaps researchers should first look to expand their own basis of reality if they want to find the answers they are seeking.
Posted by: Emmanuel Pohoreski | June 13, 2007 08:03 PM
Can we take the results to mean that the "plant recognized strangers"? It might only be that the stranger used in experiment occupies less soil space, uses less nutrients, water. Thereby, the plant will be able to grow more roots amongst strangers.
Posted by: Shaili Raina | June 14, 2007 04:44 PM
how did the authors come to the conclusion that a plant can 'know' or 'recognize' another of it's own or a different species? plants exist in this world in such a different way than our own, that it seems to be a huge assumption that these concepts should even apply to them - even remotely given that they don't have organs which correspond to the one we use to perform 'knowing' and 'recognition'. the only conclusion i can come up w/ for this experiment is 'some plants grow stronger roots when growing inter-species than intra-species.' big woop.
Posted by: pete veilleux | June 17, 2007 05:58 AM
Niche separation would explain this nicely. Particularly in view of the fact that the total biomass of plants grown with kin were smaller (even if not significantly) than those grown with strangers (Fig. 1b).
Further, why was biomass stimulated so substantially by "competition" of any sort? This would seem an artefact to me, probably due to larger pot size and presumably more available nutrients.
Posted by: Mark Hovenden | June 18, 2007 03:23 AM
One can look at it as a genuine 'healthy competition'!
Posted by: Imtiaz Mulla | June 18, 2007 05:30 PM
An explanation for this is that Plants growing with strangers had to deal with allelopathic substances and those growing with siblings not.
So plants growing with strangers had to develop more tissue to stop this menace. This explanatin is more parsimony than the one of social recognition
Posted by: Sandra Chediack | June 18, 2007 07:25 PM
Or maybe plants can't tell the difference between siblings and themselves...
Posted by: Jeff Freeman | June 18, 2007 08:08 PM
Is this not just self-recognition? Of course, a plant senses where its own roots are (??)and does not grow roots where it already has some. If a plant is cut in two pieces (cloned), the two pieces are different plants, but they probably still recognize each other as 'self'. Close relatives are not much different from cloned plants - so the plant still `thinks` that they are `self`.
Posted by: Otto Albrecht | June 19, 2007 01:48 AM
I believe that plants are "alive", but to tell the difference...
I hope that my flowers will grow only in my presence, since I give them so much love..
Posted by: Sara Calkic | June 19, 2007 08:52 AM
Processes such as allelopathy and chemical communications could potential explain this phenomenon.
Posted by: Sharmila Pathikonda | June 21, 2007 06:46 PM
Processes such as allelopathy and chemical communications could potentially explain this phenomenon.
Posted by: Sharmila Pathikonda | June 21, 2007 06:48 PM