Plants use a common ‘language’ for emergency alerts

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According to their research, published Sept. 23 in Current Biology, plants actually do have a way of talking to each other. Their messages come embedded in the form of airborne chemicals known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which transfer information among plants.

The big finding in the study is what Kessler calls “open-channel communication.” Based on their genotypes, different plants have different smells. But when plants come under attack from pests like the goldenrod leaf beetle, their smells – carried by VOCs – become more similar.

“So they kind of converge on the same language, or the same warning signs, to share the information freely,” Kessler said. “The exchange of information becomes independent of how closely related the plant is to its neighbor.”

The research found that neighboring plants pick up on warning VOCs and prepare for the perceived threat, such as an oncoming insect pest. Said Kessler: “A (VOC) emitted by one plant can be picked up by another plant, and they can either ready their defenses or they may actually directly induce those defenses.”

However, their goodwill toward plant neighbors only works on an if-you-see-something-say-something basis and when, as a result of the communication, pest pressure is equally distributed across the plant population. Plants in populations without herbivores do not freely share information with their neighbors. Instead, they maintain a private channel with their closest kin through VOC emissions that induce resistance – but only in those relatives or plant parts distant from the damage site on the same plant.

“We code our language if we want to keep it private, and that’s exactly what happens there, but on a chemical level,” Kessler said. “That analogy is striking and not what we expected.”

read more….

Insect Herbivory Selects for Volatile-Mediated Plant-Plant Communication

Cotton Seeds Spring to Life on the Far Side of the Moon

Cotton seeds carried by China’s Chang’e 4 lunar lander have germinated on the far side of the moon, becoming the first plant shoots to grow there in what mission chiefs said was laying the foundation for a base on Earth’s only natural satellite.

A photo released on Tuesday by the China National Space Administration showed cotton shoots were growing well along with other germinated plants.

When Chang’e 4 landed on the far side of the moon on January 3, its cargo included an airtight container which carried bioscience test loads, including one called a “moon surface micro-ecological circle”. … more

Elowan: A plant robot hybrid

Plants working as light sensors is exactly what Elowan was designed to convey—Deep integration of technology with our nature. One small capability such as response of plants to light shows how plants could be harnessed for our physical devices or interaction purposes.

This leads to applications such as sensing a surrounding environment through a plant or tree signals or routing those signals through our interactive devices. The plants could be used as sensing platforms for monitoring their own health, minute changes in the environment or to give rise to new organic interactive devices.

I think such a process of hybridizing with nature leads us to think about how we design our future devices. The way we have seen environment and sustainability efforts have been much more passive and always about saving while we are the back foot, but if we start looking at capabilities in the environment, we align ourselves with the development, as opposed to being divergent from it. I called this new type of interaction design as convergent design.

Elowan

Dandelion vortexes

Surprisingly, dandelion seeds use a method of flight previously thought impossible.

Abstract
Wind-dispersed plants have evolved ingenious ways to lift their seeds1,2. The common dandelion uses a bundle of drag-enhancing bristles (the pappus) that helps to keep their seeds aloft. This passive flight mechanism is highly effective, enabling seed dispersal over formidable distances3,4; however, the physics underpinning pappus-mediated flight remains unresolved. Here we visualized the flow around dandelion seeds, uncovering an extraordinary type of vortex. This vortex is a ring of recirculating fluid, which is detached owing to the flow passing through the pappus. We hypothesized that the circular disk-like geometry and the porosity of the pappus are the key design features that enable the formation of the separated vortex ring. The porosity gradient was surveyed using microfabricated disks, and a disk with a similar porosity was found to be able to recapitulate the flow behaviour of the pappus. The porosity of the dandelion pappus appears to be tuned precisely to stabilize the vortex, while maximizing aerodynamic loading and minimizing material requirements. The discovery of the separated vortex ring provides evidence of the existence of a new class of fluid behaviour around fluid-immersed bodies that may underlie locomotion, weight reduction and particle retention in biological and manmade structures.

Dandelion seeds fly using ‘impossible’ method never before seen in nature
Nature, Revealed: the extraordinary flight of the dandelion
Paper, A separated vortex ring underlies the flight of the dandelion
Research Gate project, The form and function of the dandelion fruit

Dandelion pollen
2018 PhotoMicrography Competition

Dandelion fiber
2018 PhotoMicrography Competition

Royal Society of Open Science publishes Terraforming the Biosphere

Ecosystems are complex systems, currently experiencing
several threats associated with global warming, intensive
exploitation and human-driven habitat degradation. Because
of a general presence of multiple stable states, including
states involving population extinction, and due to the intrinsic
nonlinearities associated with feedback loops, collapse in
ecosystems could occur in a catastrophic manner. It has been
recently suggested that a potential path to prevent or modify
the outcome of these transitions would involve designing
synthetic organisms and synthetic ecological interactions that
could push these endangered systems out of the critical
boundaries. In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of the
simplest mathematical models associated with four classes
of ecological engineering designs, named Terraformation motifs
(TMs). These TMs put in a nutshell different ecological
strategies. In this context, some fundamental types of
bifurcations pervade the systems’ dynamics. Mutualistic
interactions can enhance persistence of the systems by means
of saddle-node bifurcations. The models without cooperative
interactions show that ecosystems achieve restoration through
transcritical bifurcations. Thus, our analysis of the models
allows us to define the stability conditions and parameter
domains where these TMs must work.

download the paper

If everyone does a little bit, great things can happen