[HN Gopher] Plants hear their pollinators, and produce sweet nec...
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Plants hear their pollinators, and produce sweet nectar in response
Author : marojejian
Score : 178 points
Date : 2025-06-07 19:27 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| marojejian wrote:
| What most surprised me in this interview is, not only do plants
| increase sugar for 'efficient' pollinators, but:
|
| >In contrast they respond to the sound of nectar-stealing non-
| pollinators by cutting back on sugar.
|
| So there is some discrimination in their hearing.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| What is an example of a nectar-stealing non-pollinator? Doesn't
| anything rooting around in there end up moving around some
| pollen?
| creaturemachine wrote:
| I'd guess hummingbirds.
| gus_massa wrote:
| No, hummingbirds also pollinate some plants. Random link
| from a Google search: https://www.nps.gov/articles/hummingb
| irds.htm#:~:text=Hummin...
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Some is not all, and hummingbirds may well steal nectar
| from less tubular flowers.
| nemo wrote:
| Some plants actually have evolved to be pollinated by
| hummingbirds, they have long thin tube shaped flowers that
| a hummingbird beak can travel up. The Sword-billed
| hummingbird has an incredibly long beak due to mutual
| evolution with flowers that grew deep tubes.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Some carpenter bees will bite straight through the flower
| bypassing the stamens and stigma.
|
| Sometimes it's just an anatomy mismatch - like very small bee
| species and big open flowers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nectar_robbing
| nemo wrote:
| Take a look at the Flowerpiercers:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowerpiercer
|
| They're true parasites, piercing the flower to drink nectar
| without any chance of pollination.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| The most common example are ants. Moths are often guilty of
| this as well.
| jbotz wrote:
| Plants are our cousin eucaryotes, and they've been evolving as
| long as we animals have and so there is likely to be equivalent
| information processing complexity to be found in them, we just
| don't know how to recognize it because it's so different from
| animal intelligence. There might even be something comparable
| to animal consciousness, not at the level of an individual
| plant, but more collectively, even including multiple species,
| whole ecosystems of plants and fungi together having an
| awareness and intelligence that can not only rival ours, but
| even transcend it, having lifespans in the thousands of years.
| jmcgough wrote:
| Another possibility is that this is a non-conscious trait.
| Luring pollinators is an evolutionary advantage, but there is
| survival cost to giving nectar indiscriminately, so natural
| selection will favor plants that can mechanically
| differentiate between the two.
| Jabrov wrote:
| "... so there is likely to be equivalent information
| processing complexity to be found in them"
|
| This sounds like a really wild take. Just because something
| has been evolving for millions of years doesn't necessarily
| mean it's evolving information processing capabilities. It's
| patently obvious to me that the information processing
| capabilities of animals (eg. just vision alone) are far
| beyond those of plants.
| deadbabe wrote:
| This would make things quite complicated for vegans.
| cjbenedikt wrote:
| Link to study?
| Jackim wrote:
| The study is ongoing, the researcher presented their findings
| so far at a conference. Here's an article:
| https://phys.org/news/2025-05-nectar-production-response-pol...
| and a link to the study abstract:
| https://www.hfsp.org/node/74710
| ramijames wrote:
| I've been listening to Quirks and Quarks for more than 20 years
| now. What an absolutely amazing show. If you haven't, and like
| science podcasts, you're really missing out.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| This is the first time I'm hearing about this show. Could you
| highlight any specific episode that stands out?
| raffael_de wrote:
| Seems like there is no paper yet. Best I could find:
|
| https://acousticalsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Pro...
| (page 194): Flower visitors, including
| pollinators, produce characteristic sounds through flapping wing
| movements during flight. Recent research underscores the value of
| studying these acoustic signals to develop non-invasive,
| efficient tools for monitoring pollinator communities.
| Additionally, these sounds may provide key information to
| flowering plants, potentially influencing their resource
| allocation to attract pollinators, thus impacting their fitness.
| In this study, we investigated the acoustic properties of
| airborne sounds generated by recording different flying visitors
| to Antirrhinum flowers in the field. The audio recordings were
| annotated according to the observed flying behaviors and analyzed
| using nonlinear time-series analysis. We also conducted playback
| experiments to evaluate how plants respond to the buzzing sounds
| of insects. Our results reveal that distinct flying behaviors,
| such as hovering, landing, and takeoff, produce unique acoustic
| signatures. Furthermore, plants exhibit reactions to the
| vibroacoustic stimuli from pollinators, suggesting potentially
| adaptive responses. These findings provide valuable insight for
| developing passive acoustic monitoring tools for flying insects
| and may inspire further research in the field of plant-pollinator
| interaction.
|
| Link should be this: https://phys.org/news/2025-05-nectar-
| production-response-pol...
| Maxion wrote:
| There is a paper, here it is:
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.13331
| raffael_de wrote:
| Seems like this is not _the_ paper but (as you write
| yourself) _a_ paper dealing with the same question. I assume
| that _the_ paper will provide further insights otherwise the
| presentation wouldn't be justified.
| altruios wrote:
| If plants make decisions, and have preferences. Then ethically,
| are we not bound to consider those preferences?
|
| Then again: nothing wants to be eaten...
|
| Lab grown meat can't come fast enough: ethical flesh to consume.
| AstroBen wrote:
| > Lab grown meat can't come fast enough
|
| Yeah, but 6 US states have now banned it
|
| Humans are a billion miles away from considering plant
| preferences
| nashashmi wrote:
| The plant is happy to give nectar with sugar to pollinators.
| That means they are ok with being eaten. They are likely not ok
| with being damaged.
|
| So go ahead and take the apple because it will drop otherwise.
| And take the fruits. If you want to go all out, go with a Jain
| diet system where carrots and mushrooms are not ok but mints
| and herbs are a-ok.
| gbjw wrote:
| Fruit is plant flesh that is meant (designed?) to be eaten.
| srameshc wrote:
| I never thought about it, but it is pretty surprising to learn
| that nature has evolved this system. I'm amazed by how this
| scientist was able to find a correlation and tell how things work
| in this instance. There is so much synch in the nature that is't
| hard to notice how connected everything is.
| IshKebab wrote:
| This sounds somewhat implausible. What mechanism do plants have
| to "hear" sounds? And to respond differently to the sounds of
| different insects? Hmm.
|
| I would definitely wait for a peer reviewed article before paying
| any attention to this. People _love_ "plants can hear things"
| stories.
| tough wrote:
| isn't sound vibration?
|
| aren't plants well suited with all their small and moving parts
| to some-what percieve that from their envirorment, even if its
| not literal hearing?
| roywiggins wrote:
| Plants definitely can sense pressure and motion to some extent,
| that's what Venus flytraps do, and how creeping vines find and
| follow surfaces.
|
| Hearing pollinators does seem somewhat unlikely but still
| plausible.
| calibas wrote:
| > What mechanism do plants have to "hear" sounds?
|
| Mechanoreceptors:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanoreceptors_(in_plants)
| thinkling wrote:
| If you find this interesting, I strongly recommend the book _The
| Light Eaters_ by Zoe Schlanger [0]. She discusses this finding as
| well as other sense-abilities of plants. Recent science has found
| pretty amazing things.
|
| If I recall correctly: flowers are often shaped like dish
| antennas to collect sound vibration, and plants can distinguish
| the frequency of wing beats of their preferred pollinator from
| frequencies of other insects, and will act only for their
| pollinators.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Light-Eaters-Unseen-Intelligence-
| Unde...
| marojejian wrote:
| I listened to that book and enjoyed it. But that said, I'm torn
| between friendliness to the general concept, and skepticism
| based in part on the bias of proponents to deeply _desire_
| plants to display something like intelligence (a bias I share).
|
| For example the most amazing claims in the book were around the
| ability of Boquila trifoliolata to dynamically mimic other
| plants.
|
| see this old HN thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31301454
|
| But when one looks more closely the research, the behavior
| isn't as dramatic as Zoe made it sound, and the research may
| not be so strong, e.g. :
|
| https://press.asimov.com/articles/plant-vision
| igorbark wrote:
| i definitely agree that it would've been nice to have images
| in the book as it was hard to get a sense of exactly how well
| Boquila was mimicking neighbouring plants!
|
| but in reference to the linked article, i will say that the
| researchers interviewed in the book (and i got that sense for
| Zoe as well) were in agreement with you that the research
| didn't support a vision-based mechanism. but everyone agrees
| that the imitation is going on. the researchers in the book
| suggest a gene transfer-based mechanism instead! (mentioned
| briefly in your linked article)
| csours wrote:
| Daft Punk is pollinating at my house! (My House!)
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