Plants can be selfless?
Plants can be altruistic? It seems so. A study published in the '
Sunday, January 10, 2010
American Journal of Botany
a eseperimento has shown that plants also have altruistic behavior towards "
relatives."
relatives."
The concept of altruism has long been debated in philosophical circles, and, more recently, evolutionary biologists have joined the debate. From the perspective of natural selection, any action that improves the survival probability of a relative increases the chance of reproduction of individuals of the same species. Social behaviors, such as the recognition of relatives, and altruism are well known in the animal kingdom, however, even if the plants have the ability to perceive and respond to other plants, their ability to recognize relatives and selfless act was been the subject of few studies to date.
In an article published in the November issue of the Journal of Botany 
Guillermo Murphy and Dr. Susan Dudley found that the plant Impatiens pallida
Guillermo Murphy and Dr. Susan Dudley found that the plant Impatiens pallida
Dudley Murphy and selected seeds of Impatiens pallida and have them planted in different pots, each of which could hold the seeds of plants of the same family of plants genetically distant, then manipulated the light radiation and its intensity to see if the strategy to capture more light depended on the degree of relatedness of neighboring individuals. The researchers found different responses from dell'Impatiens depending on whether the plant had grown up with the "relatives" or with foreign plants. To be precise, the two biologists have discovered that the plants which were inbred to common vessels, altered their morphology modeling the growth of its branches so as not to shade nearby plants. An example of how plants have worked with relatives in an attempt to acquire the land and the environment in which to grow all the necessary resources without depriving other plants of the same species of all that they needed to grow. The Impatiens pallida is a plant that typically located in the undergrowth of forests, where the light may be poor, but the soil is usually rich in nutrients. As the plants of Impatiens plants grown together with strangers, they had increased the size of their leaves so as to shade the plants with which they had to compete. Thus, these plants not only have a positive effect on its growth by strengthening their ability to acquire a limited resource, but also negatively affected the growth of their competitors by making shadows and reducing the ability of competitors to capture the light. However, these differences in response based on the presence of relatives or strangers were observed only in those plants grown at close range, to indicate that communication between the roots may be necessary to the recognition of relatives. This study shows that the plants are social organisms, and show that altruism among plants is possible. The I.pallida
recognize relatives from strangers using this information to the so-called kin selection, the set of altruistic behavior among relatives in order to increase the fitness of a GroupThe of individuals who share similar genomes.
recognize relatives from strangers using this information to the so-called kin selection, the set of altruistic behavior among relatives in order to increase the fitness of a GroupThe of individuals who share similar genomes.
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