Plant bioacoustics: on the emission and reception of airborne sounds by plants, and their adaptive value.

The communication of plants with their environment is crucial for their survival. Plants are known to use

light, odours, and touch to communicate with other plants, with pollinators, seed dispersers and herbivores.

However, one sensory modality acoustic communication is almost unexplored in plants, despite its

potential adaptive value. This is the focus of the current proposal.

Our long-term goal is to understand the roles of acoustic communication in the life of plants: what plants

hear, and what they say. The proposed research builds on recent results that strongly suggest the use of

airborne sound in plants: We have demonstrated that flowers increase their nectar concentration within

minutes in response to the sound of a bees wingbeat. Furthermore, we have shown that different species of

plants emit brief ultrasonic signals with acoustic characteristics that vary under different conditions. Towards

general understanding of plant bioacoustics we will investigate:

1.Plant hearing. We will investigate plant responses to pollinator sounds to uncover their temporal

dynamics, mechanism, and evolution.

2.Plant sound emission. We will record the sounds emitted by different plants under different conditions,

and use advanced AI to interpret these sounds.

3.Functionality of plant sounds. We will test if and when other organisms both plants and animals -

response to plant sounds, and the potential adaptive value of these responses.

The proposed project has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of plants and plant communication.

Our results are expected to open entirely new avenues of research such as the evolution of sound

communication by plants, and the bio-mechanics of sound emission and sound reception in plants. Our

results might also have great applicative implications in precision agriculture, including remote plant

monitoring and functional sound emission. These may play a role in fighting the global food-security

problem and pollination crisis.