“A whole world waiting to be discovered.” Surprising study showed that moth females avoid laying eggs on tomato feet if they emit stress noises. Some animals seem to hear the screams we didn’t hear.
An investigation in Elife magazine suggests that animals react to the sounds emitted by plants, opening the possibility of a invisible ecosystem among them.
In the first evidence of this genre, a team from the University of Telavive, Israel, found that moth females avoided laying eggs on tomatoes if they emitted noise that the moths associated with stress, indicating that they could not be healthy – but yes, yes, yes, yes, but tomatoes scream When they are thirsty, and what other plants can hear them.
The sounds are out of reach of human hearing, but can be perceived by many insects, bats and some mammals.
“This is the first demonstration of an animal to respond to sounds produced by a plant,” says Yossi Yovel, a professor at the University of Telavive.
“It is speculative at this stage, but it is hypothesized that all types of animals make decisions based on the sounds they hear from plants, such as deciding whether to pollinate, hide in them or eat them.”
Researchers performed a number of carefully controlled experiments to ensure that the moths were effectively responding to sound, not the appearance of plants. They now intend to investigate the sounds that different plants make, and if other species make decisions based on these sounds.
“It is possible to design that there are many complex interactions, and this is just the first step,” says Yovel.
Another area of investigation is intended to realize if plants can transmit information among themselves through sound and act in conformity – For example, retaining water in drought conditions, according to Lilach Hadany, also a professor at the University of Telavive. “This is an interesting question,” he told BBC News.
“If a plant is under stress, the most interested body are other plants, and they can react in many ways,” said the researcher.
The investigators stress that the Plants are not sentient beings (which perceives something through the senses). Sounds are produced through physical effects caused by changes in their local conditions. What the discovery shows now is that these sounds can be useful for other animals, and possibly other plants that can perceive them.
If this is the case, then plants and animals will have co-evolved the ability to produce and hear sounds for mutual benefitaccording to Hadany.
“Plants could evolve to produce more intense sounds or sounds if it were beneficial to them, and the hearing of animals could evolve in accordance so that they could capture this huge amount of information,” he said. “This is a vast and unexplored field – a whole world waiting to be discovered.”
In the experience, the researchers focused on female moths, which usually lay their eggs in tomatoes so that the larvae can feed on them as soon as they hatch.
The assumption was that the moths look for the best possible place to lay eggs – a healthy plant, capable of properly nourishing the larvae. So when the plant signals that it is dehydrated and under stress, the question was: would the moths pay attention to the warning and avoid placing eggs in it?
The answer was affirmative: they did not put eggsdue to the sound the plants were emitting.
