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Can plants hear?
Flora may be able to detect the
sounds of flowing water or munching insects
Pseudoscientific claims that music helps plants grow have
been made for decades, despite evidence that is shaky at
best. Yet new research suggests some flora may be capable
of sensing sounds, such as the gurgle of water through a pipe
or the buzzing of insects.
In a recent study, Monica Gagliano, an evolutionary
biologist at the University of Western Australia, and her
colleagues placed pea seedlings in pots shaped like an
upside-down Y. One arm of each pot was placed in either
a tray of water or a coiled plastic tube through which water
flowed; the other arm had dry soil. The roots grew toward the
arm of the pipe with the fluid, regardless of whether it was
easily accessible or hidden inside the tubing. “They just knew
the water was there, even if the only thing to detect was the
sound of it flowing inside the pipe,” Gagliano says. Yet when
the seedlings were given a choice between the water tube
and some moistened soil, their roots favored the latter. She
hypothesizes that these plants use sound waves to detect
water at a distance but follow moisture gradients to home in
on their target when it is closer.
The research, reported earlier this year in
Oecologia, is
not the first to suggest flora can detect and interpret sounds. A
2014 study showed the rock cress
Arabidopsis can distinguish
between caterpillar chewing sounds and wind vibrations –
the plant produced more chemical toxins after “hearing” a
recording of feeding insects. “We tend to underestimate plants
because their responses are usually less visible to us. But
leaves turn out to be extremely sensitive vibration detectors,”
says lead study author Heidi M. Appel, an environmental
scientist now at the University of Toledo.
(Marta Zaraska. www.scientificamerican.com, 17.05.2017.)
No trecho do terceiro parágrafo “the rock cress Arabidopsis
can distinguish”, o termo em destaque tem sentido semelhante, em português, a
