Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative • Hacker News Board

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#141

Post by jenadine » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 7:43 AM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #98

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that line of thinking. But I still fail at giving a good explanation of that concept. Maybe it's intuitive for me due to having learned about cellular automata during my youth. I know I'm entering esoteric and new age territory but something tells me this can even be applied to phenomena like quantum entanglement. My idea is that if there is an information receivable and possibly even emittable by a biological…

The rule of thumb in evolutionary biology is if it has a cost and lasts through evolutionary time, it is beneficial. Because otherwise a similar organism that doesn't waste that time/energy on the useless thing/behavior will outcompete. Here's some odd and obvious examples. Religion has a cost (lots of resources and time are spent on them) and they have lasted through time, therefore it is evolutionarily beneficial.…

The argument is flawed. You defend. "if it has a cost and lasts through evolutionary time, it is beneficial."

But to conclude your conclusion, you must also show that:

- emitting noise has cost (fairly believable)

- and that something listening to it is the only way to make it beneficial, which is far from obvious. (Could just be a way to dissipate energy, or to send signal within the plant, or to get rid of some chemicals, or many other beneficial things that doesn't involve something listening)

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#142

Post by layer8 » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 7:53 AM UTC

svara wrote: post #30

Informative here meaning that you can deduce something about a plant's condition from faint sounds emitted by it. It's not implying that the plants use those sounds for the purpose of transmitting information. From the article: "These results demonstrate the potential in studying plant bioacoustics, suggest that plant acoustic emissions may play an important role in ecology and evolution, and may have direct implicat…

From the introduction:

> Recently, plants were also demonstrated to respond to sounds,13,28,29,30 e.g., by changing the expression of specific genes,29,30 or by increasing sugar concentration in their nectar.31 Thus, if plants emit airborne sounds, these sounds can potentially trigger a rapid response in nearby organisms, including both animals and plants.

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#143

Post by tboerstad » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 8:13 AM UTC

ecosystem wrote: post #2

Sounds tuned to human range: https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/979177

Thank you. I don’t know what I expected to hear, but it wasn’t that

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#144

Post by rukuu001 » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 8:31 AM UTC

I’m curious that this is surprising?

Tree pheromone communication is well know.

Plant -> fungus communication as well.

Here’s a writeup that covers both: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering...

Is sound too shocking a step?

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#145

Post by timeon » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 8:51 AM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #18

Does this throw out the whole moral panic about animal welfare? If plants suffer too, isn't it wrong to eat them as well? Or there should be real focus in humane treatment and harvesting them?

Not really. You are missing whole world there between your absolute poles.

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#146

Post by timeon » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 8:52 AM UTC

steponlego wrote: post #32

Vegans are going to have to re-evaluate their life choices. It might be much more cruel to harvest a field of soybeans than it is to kill a cow.

> It might be much more cruel to harvest a field of soybeans than it is to kill a cow.

How? Unlike cows, soybeans are harvested at the end or near to the end of it's lifecycle.

Also huge amount of cows now require vast amounts of soybeans. So if you want to decrease harvesting of soybeans you need to first decrease farming of cows. So vegans are already in favor of decreasing soybean production.

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#147

Post by yread » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 8:54 AM UTC

canadiantim wrote: post #47

svara wrote: post #30

Informative here meaning that you can deduce something about a plant's condition from faint sounds emitted by it. It's not implying that the plants use those sounds for the purpose of transmitting information. From the article: "These results demonstrate the potential in studying plant bioacoustics, suggest that plant acoustic emissions may play an important role in ecology and evolution, and may have direct implicat…

If the signal is being sent, you can be pretty sure that due to the intrinsic efficiency-maximization that biological systems perform then most likely the mechanism for detecting and acting upon it has been evolved by other organisms, especially for something as fitness-critical as stress.

There is some reserach that trees already communicate indirectly via a network of fungi around their roots using sugars so it's not that far fetched

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering...

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#148

Post by tsimionescu » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 8:59 AM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #109

evantbyrne wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By a trait being "beneficial" you mean that it prolongs the existence of some gene specifically, right? My understanding of evolution is that traits aren't necessarily beneficial to those who posses it in the colloquial sense. For example, animals that perish due to reproduction. Also, isn't saying a trait exists so it must be beneficial a bit of an over simplification? Couldn't a relatively useless trait hypothetica…

Yes, beneficial refers to those genes continuing on into the future. The operative descriptive word describing those "useless traits" is cost. If nothing else, they have a cost of the energy and resources required to produce the relevant cells or whatever. Another organism that does not waste that energy and resources will out-compete the one building the useless trait. Natural selection will make it go away.

That assumes that natural selection is a perfect process, and that we are at some "end" of it. In truth, the cost of generating useless noise could be small enough that it just doesn't matter and it hangs around. Maybe it will disappear in a few more billion years.

Any organism we see today may very well have unnecessary traits that evolution is in the process of removing.

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#149

Post by entwife » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 9:15 AM UTC

svara wrote: post #30

Informative here meaning that you can deduce something about a plant's condition from faint sounds emitted by it. It's not implying that the plants use those sounds for the purpose of transmitting information. From the article: "These results demonstrate the potential in studying plant bioacoustics, suggest that plant acoustic emissions may play an important role in ecology and evolution, and may have direct implicat…

The sounds emitted by the plants are between 20 and 80 kHz, which is within the auditory range of some mammal, such as mice. Although the normal range of hearing in humans is said to be 100 Hz to 20 kHz, when I was a grad student in my early 20s I could detect sounds up to 28 kHz in the sound booth.

I wonder whether there are people who can hear these sounds, even faintly.

Re: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative

#150

Post by wruza » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 9:28 AM UTC

canadiantim wrote: post #47

svara wrote: post #30

Informative here meaning that you can deduce something about a plant's condition from faint sounds emitted by it. It's not implying that the plants use those sounds for the purpose of transmitting information. From the article: "These results demonstrate the potential in studying plant bioacoustics, suggest that plant acoustic emissions may play an important role in ecology and evolution, and may have direct implicat…

If the signal is being sent, you can be pretty sure that due to the intrinsic efficiency-maximization that biological systems perform then most likely the mechanism for detecting and acting upon it has been evolved by other organisms, especially for something as fitness-critical as stress.

Sometimes signal is just there regardless.

If you hit your tissue hard enough, it becomes blueish for a while (a bruise, a hemorrhage). It may benefit something by accident, but a bruise just can’t stay as pink as the rest of you, due to the physics of the process.

(From tfa) Plants exposed to drought stress have been shown to experience cavitation – a process where air bubbles form, expand and collapse in the xylem, causing vibrations

In other words, dry wood cracks.