Information theory and plant ecology

Abstract

To survive, all organisms must sense and respond to information from their environment. This is true of many organisms, including plants, which need to do all the things that other organisms do while operating under the limitations of being sessile and lacking a central nervous system. In this article, we explore how information theory can apply to plants and briefly review the types and sources of information and the mechanisms that plants use to perceive and respond to their environment. We identify and describe three primary modes by which a plant receives information: chemical, electromagnetic and mechanical. We describe how plants integrate information to detect the state of their neighbors, capture resources and regulate growth and metabolism. Overall, we find that plants interpret information from their surroundings as an emergent property of distributed information processed by a network of cells. We end with a prospectus of directions for future research including decoding signal from noise, storage of information, additional means of information transmission and two‐way information signaling with biotic partners.

Melatonin administration decrypts the inferential determinants of idiosyncratic foliar nastic movements

“…Most biologists refer to this as plasticity. However, infrequently, researchers have openly used theory and models from animal behavioural ecology to construct ideas regarding plant plasticity (Brooker et al 2022;Jessup et al 2022;Mu et al 2022). They possess systems that allow them to encode and decode this information within their cells and tissues if they are to display adaptive plasticity in response to environmental signals.…”

Special issue: Ecology of information enters the Anthropocene

“…group‐living) may also increase the opportunities for pathogen transmission, leading to tradeoffs between both and the eco‐evolutionary consequences thereof, which are likely to be a major factor shaping the social structure in animal societies. Next, Jessup et al (2022) provide a synthesis of recent advances on information use in plants, describing how plants use and integrate information from multiple sources to capture resources and regulate growth, and provide a prospectus for future research on plant information ecology. Little et al (2022), which2022 is not included in this issue but add to the overall context here, provide the important first step for the incorporation of information into meta‐ecosystem theory, by synthesizing the existing evidence on how information flow in time and space affects ecosystem connectivity and functioning, as well as identifying methodological challenges and presenting new hypotheses for developing a robust information meta‐ecology.…”