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Boquila trifoliolata mimics leaves of an artificial plastic host plant (2021)

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Re: Boquila trifoliolata mimics leaves of an artificial plastic host plant (2021)

#31

Post by ncmncm »

danwills wrote: post #2

I found this fascinating! I have no ability to vet the paper for science I'm afraid, but on an intuitive level, and especially given all the different biological sensing and animal-cleverness results that have been reported in recent years, I would not be at all surprised if the 'vision' hypothesis holds in the end. Cuttlefish (maybe even perhaps their skin independently of the brain?) can do this type of pattern-sen…

Plants, by not being in a hurry, can disperse their information processing machinery in a way that makes it both resistant to damage and, anatomically, indefinitely hard to identify.

They also can get by, for the same reason, with radically less of it, because the same machinery can worry at all stages of the problem, serially, one after another, not all at once as animals must.

Finally, because slow processing demands such a small fraction of their energy budget, they can afford to support a great deal more of it than animals can.

Plants can afford to be very, very intelligent. If we have not found examples of it, we might just not be looking correctly. What a plant could usefully do with intelligence might be decidedly non-obvious to such as ourselves, but it would be idiotic to conclude no such use is likely.

(Octopus, incidentally, are able to mimic colors their eyes are believed not equipped to perceive.)

Re: Boquila trifoliolata mimics leaves of an artificial plastic host plant (2021)

#32

Post by ncmncm »

termios wrote: post #21
foooobaba wrote: post #16

I’ve been trying to find a place to buy this plant (Texas, USA) for 3 years. Every place online I have found is always out of stock. Right now is actually the season to plant it, so I’ve been looking for it again. Has anyone found a place to buy it that is not out of stock and ships to the US?

why do you want to potentially introduce a plant from the chilean rainforest into texas? there are plenty of interesting plants here already.

Maybe because it is unique, to our knowledge?

Nobody expects it to survive and propagate outdoors.

Re: Boquila trifoliolata mimics leaves of an artificial plastic host plant (2021)

#33

Post by foooobaba »

culi wrote: post #22
foooobaba wrote: post #16

I’ve been trying to find a place to buy this plant (Texas, USA) for 3 years. Every place online I have found is always out of stock. Right now is actually the season to plant it, so I’ve been looking for it again. Has anyone found a place to buy it that is not out of stock and ships to the US?

Given its native range,[0] I highly doubt you'd be able to recreate it's native environment very well. Year-round rain, very hummus-rich soil, yet up to 2 weeks of snow per year. It's also dioecious so you'll need both male and female flowers for it to reproduce. Not to mention that it's a parasitic plant and likely has very specific relationships with its most common hosts. Also many plants from areas like this have…

Yeah I would be growing this indoors in my home lab, where I can control the environment with a growth chamber.

I just want to study it more as it is a pretty fascinating plant.

Re: Boquila trifoliolata mimics leaves of an artificial plastic host plant (2021)

#34

Post by foooobaba »

termios wrote: post #21
foooobaba wrote: post #16

I’ve been trying to find a place to buy this plant (Texas, USA) for 3 years. Every place online I have found is always out of stock. Right now is actually the season to plant it, so I’ve been looking for it again. Has anyone found a place to buy it that is not out of stock and ships to the US?

why do you want to potentially introduce a plant from the chilean rainforest into texas? there are plenty of interesting plants here already.

I don’t want to do that, but I do want to grow it in a climate controlled growth chamber and study it. It’s a fascinating plant.

Re: Boquila trifoliolata mimics leaves of an artificial plastic host plant (2021)

#35

Post by webmaven »

vmception wrote: post #25
nycdatasci wrote: post #3

From Wikipedia: “In a 2022 paper, it was suggested that the plant has some sort of vision using ocelli. This hypothesis was presented on the basis of experiments in which the vine appeared to mimic plastic vines and artificial plants. However, the only control used was the lower leaves on the same plants, with an opaque shelf over them which could have influenced light exposure. The lack of control plants climbing an…

Seems like it would be nice if there was peer review on an experiment's setup before papers were released. The current process is wasting everyone's time.

Study preregistration accomplishes some of this, though the main aim is to preclude p-hacking and similar motivated data exploration.

Re: Boquila trifoliolata mimics leaves of an artificial plastic host plant (2021)

#36

Post by termios »

foooobaba wrote: post #34
termios wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do you want to potentially introduce a plant from the chilean rainforest into texas? there are plenty of interesting plants here already.

I don’t want to do that, but I do want to grow it in a climate controlled growth chamber and study it. It’s a fascinating plant.

oh gotcha, apologies for jumping to conclusions.
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