Plant Behavioral Ecology

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Protection and Biotic Interactions".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2025 | Viewed by 1703

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
1. Department of Environmental Ecology and Landscape Management, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, 842 15 Bratislava, Slovakia
2. Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, 845 06 Bratislava, Slovakia
Interests: behavioral ecology
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Plant behavioral ecology is a rapidly emerging field focused on our understanding of the adaptive behaviors and responses exhibited by plants in their interactions with other organisms and their environment. This fascinating field has been somewhat underestimated by researchers, even though Darwin's pioneering experiments on plant behavior date back more than 100 years. We now know that plants can communicate with each other both through aboveground and underground organs, display intelligence, recognize individuals of their own species, actively signal resources, and even deceive pollinators. They also exhibit sensitivity to human disturbance and urbanization and compete or cooperate with other plants for resources. These discoveries challenge the perception of plants as passive organisms.

Considering plants as models for studying behavior is highly advantageous because, unlike animals, plants are free from anthropomorphism, allowing for a more objective generalization of results. This Special Issue aims to summarize recent progress in plant behavior, encompassing all possible behavioral domains. We are particularly interested in works that explore the evolutionary causes of plant adaptive responses based on laboratory and/or field data, although reviews and innovative ideas are also welcomed.

Prof. Dr. Pavol Prokop
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • plant movement
  • plant behavior
  • flower–pollinator interaction
  • adaptive behavior
  • plant–herbivore interactions

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 2574 KiB  
Article
Ascent and Attachment in Pea Plants: A Matter of Iteration
by Silvia Guerra, Giovanni Bruno, Andrea Spoto, Anna Panzeri, Qiuran Wang, Bianca Bonato, Valentina Simonetti and Umberto Castiello
Plants 2024, 13(10), 1389; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13101389 - 16 May 2024
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1259
Abstract
Pea plants (Pisum sativum L.) can perceive the presence of potential supports in the environment and flexibly adapt their behavior to clasp them. How pea plants control and perfect this behavior during growth remains unexplored. Here, we attempt to fill this gap [...] Read more.
Pea plants (Pisum sativum L.) can perceive the presence of potential supports in the environment and flexibly adapt their behavior to clasp them. How pea plants control and perfect this behavior during growth remains unexplored. Here, we attempt to fill this gap by studying the movement of the apex and the tendrils at different leaves using three-dimensional (3D) kinematical analysis. We hypothesized that plants accumulate information and resources through the circumnutation movements of each leaf. Information generates the kinematical coordinates for the final launch towards the potential support. Results suggest that developing a functional approach to grasp movement may involve an interactive trial and error process based on continuous cross-talk across leaves. This internal communication provides evidence that plants adopt plastic responses in a way that optimally corresponds to support search scenarios. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plant Behavioral Ecology)
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