Eavesdropping Under Green Cover

Plants communicate, express, and share information among each other!

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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.

Volatile organic compounds Plants communicate through a host of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can be separated into four broad categories, each the product of distinct chemical pathways: fatty acid derivatives, phenylpropanoids/benzenoids, amino acid derivatives, and terpenoids.

Due to the physical/chemical constraints, most VOCs are of low molecular mass (< 300 Da), are hydrophobic, and have high vapor pressures. The responses of organisms to plant-emitted VOCs vary from attracting the predator of a specific herbivore to reduce mechanical damage inflicted on the plant to the induction of chemical defenses of a neighboring plant before it is being attacked. In addition, the host of VOCs emitted varies from plant to plant, where, for example, the Venus Fly Trap can emit VOCs to specifically target and attract starved prey.