EAVESDROPPING UNDER GREEN COVER

STUDY SHOWS IT IS UNLIKELY THAT PLANTS WOULD EVOLVE TO WARN OTHER PLANTS OF IMPENDING ATTACK. INSTEAD OF USING THEIR COMMUNICATION NETWORKS TO TRANSMIT WARNING SIGNALS, IT IS MORE LIKELY THAT PLANTS 'EAVESDROP' ON THEIR NEIGHBOURS

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Plants communicate, express, and share information among each other! This communication may be about a range of stress factors such as disease, temperature changes, herbivory, and injury, they may encounter, for which nature devised several sophisticated, ingenious modes for plant life, which have themselves developed some sort of system for their survival.

Hence, plant communication encompasses communication using volatile organic compounds, electrical signaling, and common mycorrhizal networks between plants and a host of other organisms such as soil microbes, other plants (of the same or other species), animals, insects, and fungi. In most cases, the communication is to protect against, or ward off impending dangers.