Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Plants Communicate Using Fungi

Posted by samzenpus on from the shroom-phone dept.

Shipud writes "In response to aphid attacks, some plants produce chemicals that repel the aphids and attract wasps, the aphids' natural enemies. Researchers at the University of Aberdeen have shown that plants attacked by aphids can communicate that information to neighboring plants via existing networks of fungi in the soil. Thus fungal symbiosis with plants is shown to be taken one step further: not only do they provide nutrients to plants, they also function as communication hardware."

11 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Some day... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The vegetarians will be slaughtered for their terrible crimes aginst plantkind.

    1. Re:Some day... by Immerman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not at all. Fruit is in many (most?) cases an evolutionary "bargain" - the fruit provides a calorie-rich meal for an animal, while the animal then transports the seeds and deposits them in a pile of fertilizer at a distance much. Not all the seeds survive the process, but enough to be a viable way for the plant to spread. Just one of many examples of how plants harness animals to do their bidding.

      Besides which vegetables are typically harvested from the adult plant, it's only fruits, nuts, and grains that include seeds.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  2. This topic is relevant to my interests... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Anybody else overcome by Alpha Centauri nostaliga at the notion of large, initially hidden, fungus-based communications networks?

    Also, given that we've discovered several enormous fungi (I think the largest known spreads across some 2,200 acres), I wonder if this sort of thing is actually much more common than we currently know. Ping would probably suck; but there is a lot of (fungal) fiber in the ground.

  3. Welcome to three months ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Old news

  4. Fungi = planet brain? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's amazing to investigate fungi. In all of our space search for intelligent life, we stand on top of a living world that's far more complex than we can imagine. When we beings were evolving from very simple biology, at some point we split, and in one direction eventually became plants, and the other eventually became animals. After that split, there was another split. On that split, one direction eventually became animals, and the other direction eventually became fungi. In each split, as it were, there was a fundamental difference; each time a split occurs, one can associate one side with being more or less complex than the other side. Looking at this as one would look at a tree in nature, one can assume that each split can be represented as a node point, and at each node point, there is a stem, and a main branch that continues. Each stem represents less complexity. In our case, as humans, we split before the fungi did, so they're more advanced than humans are.

    I once asked my daughter about a Venus FlyTrap, as it ate a frog. I asked, "How does the plant know to close like that, and eat the thing inside? We have brains, but how does the plant do it? Where's the plant's brain?" Her answer, "The roots are the brain". She's 6.

    1. Re:Fungi = planet brain? by SpaceManFlip · · Score: 4, Interesting
      This, I think is the secret of fungi. The structures of mushrooms more closely resemble the brain of mammals than almost anything.

      It's a trippy concept to think of weird plant brains living under the soil everywhere, and popping up brain pods / mushrooms in random places from their mycelium.

      Then when you think about the ones that contain chemicals that allow mammals to have transcendent spiritual experiences, it makes you think about the Plant Brain / Planet Brain thing on a deeper level.

    2. Re:Fungi = planet brain? by Ellis+D.+Tripp · · Score: 4, Informative

      Mushrooms aren't "brain pods", they are the reproductive organs, releasing spores into the soil and air.

      Not that fungal genitalia popping up everywhere is any less freaky if you think about it...

      --
      Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
  5. yep by Connie_Lingus · · Score: 3, Funny

    fungi in the soil > facebook

    --
    never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
  6. I wonder by Black+Parrot · · Score: 3, Funny

    How long before some geeky boffin demonstrates that you can use this for computations?

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  7. Documentary Video On This Topic by Freshly+Exhumed · · Score: 4, Informative

    Watch Dr. David Suzuki's "The Nature Of Things" episode called "Smarty Plants: Uncovering the Secret World of Plant Behaviour":

    http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episode/smarty-plants-uncovering-the-secret-world-of-plant-behaviour.html

    --
    I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
  8. Re:Pandora? by VortexCortex · · Score: 3, Funny

    What would suck is if cats could communicate not just vocally, but also via cat posture semaphore in web video and imagery, and had developed a symbiotic virus that infects humans to enslave them to better communicate with each other.

    I'm glad that could never happen.