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| This investigation, published in Scientific Reports, is carried out in collaboration with the Office of Naval Research of the US Department of Defense | A study led by researchers from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Murcia (UMU) sheds light on the intelligence of plants.
The experimental results have just been published in the journal Scientific Reports and support that climbing species can control the movement to approach a support.
Does the climber come upon the support by chance and once made contact does it screw up or is it a controlled and non-accidental approach maneuver? This is the question that the UMU researchers want to answer through the climbing bean (Phaseolus vulgaris).
"Basically we want to know if these plants control the way of approaching a support, be it a pole or a trellis", explains Paco Calvo, promoter of the project, "For this we engrave beans in booths with and without a pole, but How can we tell if the movement we see is being controlled in some way? First experimental results The results obtained show that the approximation does not depend on any ad hoc criteria or zoomorphic biases, one of the main problems when it comes to understanding the intelligence of plants.
This is the first experimental result launched from the MINTLab (Minimal Intelligence Lab) laboratories, located in the Department of Philosophy and in the CAID building of the University of Murcia (UMU), in collaboration with the Research Office n Naval of the United States Department of Defense (USA) under the project "Plant Intelligence for Robotics and AI".
Controlled adaptive behavior Researchers have detected three traces of the plant's goal-oriented and controlled adaptive behavior: harmonicity, predictability, and complexity.
Under these parameters they study the dynamics of plant movement.
On the one hand, the observed patterns of circumnutation are the result of non-linear processes.
On the other hand, we see that when the stick is present, the complexity and predictability of the pattern of cycling increases (movement of the stem as it grows).
These results support the idea that it is an oriented growth pattern influenced by the presence of the support, that is, when the stick is found in the environment, the movement of the climbing plant exhibits a non-linear organization.
more predictable and complex The experiment is conceived by Paco Calvo, professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at UMU and Vicente Raja, a former UMU student and current postdoctoral researcher at the Rotman Institute of Philosophy, in Canada.
It was developed in collaboration with Iranian researcher Roghaieh Holghoomi, during her time at UMU, and Paula Silva from the Cincinnati Department of Psychology.
"Much remains to be done, this has only just begun, but what we have is a robust methodology with which to begin to attack the more general underlying problem: trying to understand plant behavior in you.
proactive and intelligent terms ", highlights Paco Calvo.
In the future they are already considering combining observation techniques with timelapse, used in this article, with electrophysiological analysis to provide clearer ideas about the proactivity of plants, in contrast na more reactive behaviors, and therefore in principle less intelligent.
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Source: Universidad de Murcia
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