Plants emit sounds when stressed, and moths use these sounds to decide where to lay their eggs
Some plants emit a mournful melody using ultrasonic clicks when they become dehydrated or stressed, and it turns out that some moths can detect this melody and use it to decide where to lay their eggs.
Female Moths Incorporate Plant Acoustic Emissions into Their Oviposition Decision-Making Process | bioRxiv
When They Hear Plants Cry, Moths Make a Decision - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/science/moths-hearing-plant-sounds.html
In December 2019, a research team from Tel Aviv University in Israel published a research paper titled 'Plants emit ultrasonic screams when exposed to stress.' In the paper, they subjected plants such as tomatoes and tobacco to stresses such as 'water shortages' and 'cutting the stems,' and investigated the sounds the plants emitted. As a result, it was revealed that plants emit different sounds depending on the type of stress.
Research reveals that stressed plants emit 'ultrasonic screams' - GIGAZINE
by fetcaldu
The research team, led by Leah Seltzer, an entomologist at Tel Aviv University, suspected that insects might hear the cries that plants make when they are stressed and use them as a guide for their behavior, so they began a new investigation. The findings were published in November 2024 on bioRxiv , a medical and biological preprint server. 'This is a new discovery. Plants make sounds, and insects hear them. Insects tune into certain sounds and understand and take into account their meaning,' Seltzer said of the new paper.
The research team used a moth called the Egyptian cotton leaf moth, which can hear the plant's screams, to investigate whether the moth uses the plant's screams to decide where to lay its eggs. 'The larvae of the Egyptian cotton leaf moth grow up where the mother lays her eggs. In other words, the mother needs to lay her eggs in a place that is suitable for the larvae to grow,' said Seltzer.
The research team first demonstrated that female Egyptian cotton leaf beetles prefer to lay eggs on lush vegetation, which is more likely to provide enough food for the newly hatched larvae than on dry vegetation. Next, they devised another experiment to see whether the Egyptian cotton leaf beetles use the plant's screams to decide where to lay their eggs.
In this experiment, 'healthy tomatoes with plenty of moisture' were planted at both ends of the experimental field, and a recording of 'the sound made by a dehydrated tomato' was played near one of the tomatoes. As a result of the experiment, it was found that the Egyptian cotton leaf beetle had a strong preference to lay eggs on the tomato that was not making the 'sound made by a dehydrated tomato.'
Seltzer pointed out that female Egyptian cotton bugs not only recognize the sound made by tomatoes as information that 'tomatoes are nearby,' but also as information that 'the tomatoes making the sound are not hydrated.'
As a next step, Seltzer and his team want to investigate whether this concept also occurs in nature. 'This is really interesting because what happens in the lab can be different from what happens in nature,' Seltzer said.
'More insects may be hearing the ultrasound, and more plants may be making sounds under stress. We believe this is happening with more insects and more plants,' said Seltzer.
'They've done an incredible job,' said Jodi Sedlock, a sensory ecology researcher at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. 'I think this paper provides very strong evidence that the Egyptian cotton moth pays attention to the sounds that certain species of plants make.' However, she noted that 'it's still not entirely clear why the moths pay attention to the sounds that plants make.'
Meanwhile, Francesca Barbero, a zoologist at the University of Turin, gave the paper a cautious assessment, saying, 'It's missing some important details that are needed to determine whether the hypothesis is proven or not.' However, Barbero also expressed hope for the paper, saying, 'It could pave the way for further research into plant bioacoustics.'
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