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Plants ‘talk to’ each other through their roots
Plants use their roots to “listen in” on their neighbours,
according to a research that adds to evidence that plants have
their own unique forms of communication. The study found that
plants in a crowded environment secrete chemicals into the
soil that prompt their neighbours to grow more aggressively,
presumably to avoid being left in the shade.
“If we have a problem with our neighbours, we can just
move on,” said Velemir Ninkovic, an ecologist at the Swedish
University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala and lead author.
“Plants can’t do that. They’ve accepted that and they use
signals to avoid competing situations and to prepare for future
competition.” Ninkovic and colleagues simulated the touch of
a nearby plant by stroking the leaves for a minute each day
using a makeup brush.
The possibility that plants communicate has surfaced
periodically as an eccentric idea – in the 1980s it was suggested
that trees send out electrical pulses, called W-waves, when
their neighbours were chopped down. However, in recent
years, fresh evidence has emerged that plants are constantly
sending and receiving signals that scientists are now learning
to eavesdrop on.
(Hannah Devlin. www.theguardian.com, 02.05.2018. Adaptado.)
In the excerpt from the second paragraph “Plants can’t do that”, the underlined word refers to
