Do Plants Practice Grid Computing?

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to Nature, plants appear to 'think' and seem to optimize their 'breathing' by conducting simple calculations through a distributed computing scheme. "David Peak and co-workers at Utah State University in Logan say that plants may regulate their uptake and loss of gases by 'distributed computation' -- a kind of information processing that involves communication between many interacting units." Nature adds this is similar to signals exchanged by ants to find the best source of food for an ant community. In their paper, the researchers added that their results were "consistent with the proposition that a plant solves its optimal gas exchange problem through an emergent, distributed computation performed by its leaves." This overview contains more details and references. It also includes a picture of the tiny pores on the surface of a cactus leaf, called stomata, which permit the plant to breathe when they're opened."

Comments

Re:Evolved?

[bar-agent]

This system under discussion is not especially complex, and has nothing to do with other species or with pollinators.

The pollination example you gave is similar to the tired creationist argument of the eye, which asserts that the eye is too complex to have evolved piece by piece. This is, of course, incorrect. Scientists have determined how the eye could have evolved, and have found examples of each stage.

Pollinators could have evolved like this (though IANA botanist):

1. A plant evolves wind-borne pollination.
   
2. A flying insect likes the taste of a plant's sugars. It pierces or chews leaves to get to them.
   
3. Pollen happens to catch on the insect's hairs. Since the insect likes this plant, it visits many in the area, of both sexes.
   
4. The reproductive success of this accidental pollen-spreading is decent enough so that evolution does not favor getting rid of the sweet sugars or developing a repellent for this insect.
   
5. In fact, even sweeter sugar accidentally evolves. That plant branch (no pun intended) attracts more insects and becomes more successful.
   
6. Since the food is richer at these plants than at other plants, insects that spend time at other plants get less food for the time invested. They are selected against.
   
7. Another branch develops a bit of color near the pollen generation sites. The insects are attracted to the color. This branch has more of its pollen collected, compared to other branches. This branch is selected for.
   
8. Etc.

There's no stretch of imagination here. It's a clear progression of small changes, each reinforcing the earlier change.