Ученые обнаружили способность растений копировать форму листьев соседей

Ha ha, meaty overlords, take your punishment » « Putting on my prophet hat again The secret abilities of plants Today I learned something that surprised me: plants that mimic other plants. The question is…how? Seven years ago, Gianoli and Carrasco-Urra reported on their discovery of Boquila trifoliolata (Lardizabalaceae), a woody vine from temperate rainforests of southern Chile, capable of complex leaf mimicry, when leaves of up to three different host plants were mimicked by leaves of one B. trifoliolata plant. However, according to a side-by-side published commentary, the absence of any plausible hypothesis for such a phenomenon makes this report unexplainable and mysterious. Gianoli and Carrasco-Urra preferred some chemical volatile signals released from the host plants, which would allow the B. trifoliolata to mimic leaves of host plants. As an alternative proposal, they also speculated that horizontal gene transfer between host plant and Boquila vine, mediated perhaps via airborne microbes, might allow this leaf mimicry. They proposed this scenario because B. trifoliolata leaves mimic the nearest foliage, irrespective if these leaves are from the host plants or some other neighboring plants. Interesting ideas, and I find them very reasonable. Sure, horizontal gene transfer, of the diffusion of morphogenetic signals — that seems plausible, initially, when I didn’t know the degree of mimicry. These plants copy the shapes of leaves, and the degree and pattern of venation. That seems a bit much to attribute to the chance transfer of multiple genes, or picking up signals that change or modify the plant’s intrinsic signals. The authors of this paper propose a surprising alternative: the plants are watching other plants in their neighborhood, and copying them visually. No way, I thought. Plants don’t have eyes. How do they see? Let’s skip right past that minor anatomical difficulty — maybe we can return to that issue another day — and instead block the possibility of genetic or developmental signaling. They came up with a delightfully simple experiment. we have been given a rare opportunity to test plant vision in more detail. The simplest way to test the vision hypothesis with the B. trifoliolata would be to see if it would mimic a non-living leaf shape from an artificial plant. In this study, B. trifoliolata was exposed to the artificial plastic plant with a characteristic leaf shapes. The results of this study show that this is indeed the case as leaves of B. trifoliolata mimicked leaves of the artificial plant. Hopefully, this report will stimulate more experiments in future to improve our understanding of the plant sensory abilities. Surprise! Organic Boquila leaves copied plastic leaves to varying degrees! Leaf shapes in Boquila trifoliolata. (a) Non-mimic leaf, with three lobes, dense vascular network. (b) Mimic leaf, with a single lobe in the apex, less dense vascular network. Red asterisks shows examples of free-ending veinlets. Now I’m confused…how do they do that? I haven’t thought of any alternatives, yet. I welcome your speculations. Until I have a better explanation, though, I’m going to have to cover the houseplants. Share this:PrintEmailShare on TumblrTweet Ha ha, meaty overlords, take your punishment » « Putting on my prophet hat again PZ Myers Science Log in to comment haemolytica says Speaking of vision… Red asterisks on green leaves? Really??? Great. Thanks. Can’t see a single one. Didn’t even know there were asterisks present until I read the description. I’m a plant biologist (PhD). Was very excited to see this paper. Not anymore. Reminds me of the time I was a visiting Prof and I explained to a student practicing for a senior thesis presentation that some members of the audience may be colorblind and not to rely too heavily on reds and greens to distinguish significant data. A tenured colleague (who I, in hindsight, suspect was jealous of my rapport with the students) immediately shot down my advice and told the student not to worry about it- that it wasn’t a big deal to accommodate a colorblind audience member. Seriously, why red? Black (or even better, white asterisks with a thin black outline) would have been perfect, especially for people with atypical color vision. This needs to be taught in data presentation / scientific communication classes and seminars. I’ve been griping about this ever since red/green became standard for microarrays. But I was most upset that a colleague would so flippantly dismiss a real concern- in front of a room of students, no less. Tethys says @silentbob No, I read the linked paper. The leaves pictured in the OP aren’t evidence of anything except the variability of leaf shapes of Boquila trifoliolata. They don’t show the plastic plant it’s supposedly mimicking. Plenty of plants have variable leaf shapes depending on age/sun exposure/climate etc… All of the variations shown in the paper are basically ovate. I might believe it’s evidence the plant can “see” it if it grew palmate leaves or round leaves. Leaves are photoreceptors so they can obviously detect light and shadows. The most interesting bit is where the leaves of the same vine do change as it grows into different host plants. John Morales says Since the topic has drifted into fantasy, i note https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midworld is the obvious work that Avatar ripped off. But then, there are progenitors: Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest (1972) and Harry Harrison’s Deathworld (1960). That’s part of my problem; so much seems derivative these days. But the thing is all are about the unsuspected powers of plants, (Comic book version: Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing; insect version, Frank Herbert’s The Green Brain) Pierce R. Butler says … B. trifoliolata leaves mimic the nearest foliage, irrespective if these leaves are from the host plants or some other neighboring plants. Grow some in isolation, and see what their non-imitative leaves look like. Grow some in proximity to basic geometric shapes, asymmetric shapes, Rorschach blot cut-outs, variegated leaves, Picasso prints… Hemidactylus says Perhaps a bit more advanced trick than when Daniel Dennett was reflecting on the intentional stance per trees on the Philosophy Bites podcast: “Recently, we’ve learned that many varieties of trees have a capacity that gives them quasi-colour vision. When the light on them is predominantly reflected from green things they change the proportion of their energy that goes into growing tall. We might say that they have sensed the competition and are taking a reasonable step to deal with the competition.” From Philosophy Bites Again by David Edmonds & Nigel Warburton