"plant communication" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It refers to the ways in which plants exchange information and interact with each other, often through chemical or physical signals. Example: In recent years, scientists have discovered fascinating methods of plant communication, including the release of pheromones to attract pollinators and the use of underground networks to send warning signals about pests.
Research on plant communication may someday benefit farmers and their crops.
"This stuff has been enormously contentious," he says, referring to the early days of research into plant communication, work that is now generally accepted.
I first met Karban at a scientific meeting in Vancouver last July, when he presented a paper titled "Plant Communication and Kin Recognition in Sagebrush".
Karban told me that, in the nineteen-eighties, people working on plant communication faced some of the same outrage that scientists working on plant intelligence (a term he cautiously accepts) do today.
The first important discoveries in plant communication were made in the lab in the nineteen-eighties, by isolating plants and their chemical emissions in Plexiglas chambers, but Rick Karban, the U.C. Davis ecologist, and others have set themselves the messier task of studying how plants exchange chemical signals outdoors, in a natural setting.
In addition, they are key elements in plant communication with several rhizosphere organisms.
Once thought to be a simple means of nutrient exchange, they are now beginning to look like complex systems of inter-plant communication: a "collective fungal consciousness", according to mycologist Paul Stamets.
Volatile-mediated plant-plant communication is well documented [7], [55].
Here, we show that CMNs mediate plant-plant communication between healthy plants and pathogen-infected tomato plants (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill).
Further studies on plant-plant communication will promote our understanding of systemic defence in natural ecosystems, which in turn may provide clues to manipulate plant defences in agroecosystems.
Although there is increasing evidence of plant-plant communication, the majority of the studies conducted so far have focused on signals transferred from the sender to the receiver by air.
