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Plants 'Recognize' Their Siblings
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that according to a recent study, Biologists have found that plants are able to recognize their own relatives. "Researchers at McMaster University have found that plants get fiercely competitive when forced to share their pot with strangers of the same species, but they're accommodating when potted with their siblings. [...] Though they lack cognition and memory, the study shows plants are capable of complex social behaviours such as altruism towards relatives, says Dudley. Like humans, the most interesting behaviours occur beneath the surface."
Maybe they can't recognize siblings at all. Maybe the genetics are close enough so that the plant can not distinguish its own root from that of its siblings.
Just a thought.
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I too become fiercely competitive when forced to share my pot with strangers
See? I was right! Plants have feelings, too! Eating plants is MURDER!
I'm a nilegan for life! I won't harm another thing in this world, just to advance myself!
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
They *hate* it when you do that!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Why should anyone believe your statement that they lack cognition and memory?
Well they asked the plants if they had cognition and memory, and the plants said "no". Then they asked if they meant they didn't have either or just didn't have both, and the plant said "both of what?" So there ya go.
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This is certainly consistent with the selfish-gene explanation for selfless behaviour: there is an evolutionary advantage, from the perspective of the genes, to co-operating with your siblings because your siblings also bear some of your genes.
This is the same reason hy such "nepotism" exists elsewhere in biology; there's no reason why one would expect plants to be any different, though I imagine the problem of recognizing your siblings is somewhat harder.
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/biology_lette rs/RSBL20070232.pdf
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/biology_lett
So, does this mean PETA will fuck off and die now?
Great, now we'll have the extreme left nut jobs chaining themselves to plants and committing vegetable rights terrorism in their war to save plants from the evils of corporations, America and that most loathsome enemy of all, worthy of destruction for the good of plants and animals alike, humanity!!!
Though they lack cognition and memory, the study shows plants are capable of complex social behaviours such as altruism towards relatives, says Dudley.
Nonsense, the study showed that plants grow aggressively when they encounter foreign root systems. It is probably to the plant's advantage to increase its root growth rate in an environment when it might be crowded out by other plants. Identifying a mechanism which allows plants to respond to their environment is interesting but it is in no way a "social behaviour."
My white blood cell count increases when I'm exposed to disease. I suppose that means my cells are capable of complex social behavior such as territorial aggression?
"Researchers at McMaster University have found that plants get fiercely competitive when forced to share their pot with strangers of the same species, but they're accommodating when potted with their siblings"
Ya right. I suggest they stop smoking the plants they are studying.
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Seems to me this is the same as how one is more likely to achieve compatibility or lower rejection-rates with closer relatives in terms of organ-transplants, etc
They don't recognise "relatives," they just see material that is close enough to not be considered an intruder.
It doesn't quite work the same with people, as "relatives" or "siblings" can in fact be imported (re-marriage) or separated (divorce, adoption) and thus unrecognized.
Disclaimer : I'm not a plant biologist. I'm a physical biochemist.
The process of biochemically detecting neighboring organisms is not new. Bacteria use quorum sensing biochemical pathways to "communicate" various things about environment such as population density -- molecules are exchanged and recognized in the extracellular environment.
What is interesting here is that presummably there are different signals for siblings and non-siblings. A more interesting result, in my opinion, would be to find the biochemical connection to this selective quorum sensing. The answer could be complicated : it could include libraries of biochemicals (in varying concentrations) and differences in bacterial flora between plants.
I had the same thought (reading way too much into this). Perhaps roots of related plants are toxic to each other and that's why the roots don't spread. Roots of unrelated plants are not toxic to each other. This could be an evolutionary adaptation that encourages cross-breeding of unrelated plants.
Regardless, there are a number of possible reasons for the effect.
Best regards.
More deeply rooted plants are more resistant to drought. I wonder if it would make sense to do a sacrificial second sowing with a different batch of seeds to encourage root development as a hedge against drought?s -selling-solar.html
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Since most (all?) plants lack anything resembling a nervous system, and it's widely recognized that higher-order memory and cognitive functions can only occur in the presence of an organized nervous system, it stands to reason that plants aren't capable of memory and cognition.
This isn't to say that plants can't "remember" things, for instance, plant immune response to pathogens, injury, etc. They can habituate to hormones, chemicals, and so forth. It simply means that the "memory" and "learning" being done is low-order physiological homeostasis maintenance and not an insightful act. Intracellular messaging systems account for a lot of "emergent" behavior from these organisms, but it's a far jump from that up to something that can actively plan its actions before it does them.
Do a google before you post next time so you don't look so ignorant.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
When pollen from another plant arrives to stigma, some plants can find out whether the pollen grain is their own or belongs to another genetically distinct plant (of the same species). The pollen grain carries a certain protein on its coat, the type of which is determined by the parent ("father") of the pollen grain. Now, if the protein on the pollen is the same as the one the "mother" plant produces (it means that they are close relatives), it does not allow the pollen grain to fertilize the egg.
Basically, it proves that there is a way for a plant to distinguish between self (maybe close relative?) and more distantly related ones.
Don't even mention that plants can feel pain. What are the vegans going to eat?
I have read the articles written making this claim, and examined the evidence presented. It is not even remotely compelling.
The whole of the argument was this:
1) Things that respond to injury feel pain.
2) Plants respond to injury.
3) Therefore plants feel pain.
Premise 1 has been experimentally disproven. There are many tissues in the body which humans do not feel and that heal when injured. There are cases of humans born with malformed nervous systems such that they cannot feel pain, and yet their limbs heal. Surgical removal of parts of the nervous system was performed on some animals, and their tissues healed just fine afterwords. The ability to respond to injury is not a sufficient condition of the ability to feel pain.
Furthermore, "feeling pain" is defined in terms of a chain of events within a central nervous system. Plants don't have one.
The whole concept seems to have came around just to piss off a bunch of vegetarians and try to provide some weird moral justification for eating meat (as if a moral justification was needed). The implied argument was to the effect of: if plants feel pain, and it is okay to eat them, then it is okay to eat anything that feels pain (ever heard of a "dicto simplicter" fallacy?).
So, in sum, the best biological information we have to date clearly indicates that plants do not feel pain (but they do respond to injury).
This is a perfect example of the difference between psychological altruism (what we normally think of as "altruism", as describes a sort behavior) and evolutionary altruism (which is a precise technical term in biology which describes a property of heritable traits, not behavior).
Psychological altruism is performing behavior which requires for motivation only the benefit (however broadly you are to construe benefit) of a person other than the one performing the action. So, if I'm inclined to do something nice for you, even if I don't get anything out of it, then I am an altruistic person, and such nice things are altruistic behavior.
Evolutionary altruism is having heritable traits which increase the reproductive fitness of others without increasing the reproductive fitness of the individual who has that trait. Sterility is evolutionarily altruistic (in social animals at least), and yet clearly not psychologically altruistic (you don't choose what genes you're born with).
These plants are evolutionarily altruistic. They are not psychologically altruistic, because they have no psychological traits at all.
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