Plants hear their pollinators, and produce sweet nectar in response

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-51-quirks-and-quarks/clip/16150976-plants-hear-pollinators-produce-sweet-nectar-response

by marojejian • 1 year ago

297 62 1 year ago

cbc.ca

marojejian2• 1 year ago

What most surprised me in this interview is, not only do plants increase sugar for 'efficient' pollinators, but:

In contrast they respond to the sound of nectar-stealing non-pollinators by cutting back on sugar.

So there is some discrimination in their hearing.

xhkkffbf• 1 year ago

What is an example of a nectar-stealing non-pollinator? Doesn't anything rooting around in there end up moving around some pollen?

creaturemachine• 1 year ago

I'd guess hummingbirds.

Aloisius• 1 year ago

Some carpenter bees will bite straight through the flower bypassing the stamens and stigma.

Sometimes it's just an anatomy mismatch - like very small bee species and big open flowers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nectar_robbing

nemo2• 1 year ago

Take a look at the Flowerpiercers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowerpiercer

They're true parasites, piercing the flower to drink nectar without any chance of pollination.

HelloMcFly• 1 year ago

The most common example are ants. Moths are often guilty of this as well.

jbotz• 1 year ago

Plants are our cousin eucaryotes, and they've been evolving as long as we animals have and so there is likely to be equivalent information processing complexity to be found in them, we just don't know how to recognize it because it's so different from animal intelligence. There might even be something comparable to animal consciousness, not at the level of an individual plant, but more collectively, even including multiple species, whole ecosystems of plants and fungi together having an awareness and intelligence that can not only rival ours, but even transcend it, having lifespans in the thousands of years.

jmcgough• 1 year ago

Another possibility is that this is a non-conscious trait. Luring pollinators is an evolutionary advantage, but there is survival cost to giving nectar indiscriminately, so natural selection will favor plants that can mechanically differentiate between the two.

Jabrov• 1 year ago

"... so there is likely to be equivalent information processing complexity to be found in them"

This sounds like a really wild take. Just because something has been evolving for millions of years doesn't necessarily mean it's evolving information processing capabilities. It's patently obvious to me that the information processing capabilities of animals (eg. just vision alone) are far beyond those of plants.

deadbabe• 1 year ago

This would make things quite complicated for vegans.

nkrisc• 1 year ago

Plants are our cousin eucaryotes, and they've been evolving as long as we animals have

That is true. And look how different we’ve become.

and so there is likely to be equivalent information processing complexity to be found in them

That’s quite a leap. I think precisely because plants and animals have evolved separately for so you can’t make that assumption. Maybe plants hasn’t not simply because they don’t need to, as a fundamental consequence of their differing physiology.

cjbenedikt2• 1 year ago

Link to study?

Jackim• 1 year ago

The study is ongoing, the researcher presented their findings so far at a conference. Here's an article: https://phys.org/news/2025-05-nectar-production-response-pol... and a link to the study abstract: https://www.hfsp.org/node/74710

voxelghost• 1 year ago

Noting that the researchers use terms as 'responds to vibroacoustic signals' rather than the term 'hear' used in the article of the post. Hearing to me implies some kind of auditory processing, this seems to be a more passive 'biomechanical' response.

cjbenedikt2• 1 year ago

Thanks

ramijames2• 1 year ago

I've been listening to Quirks and Quarks for more than 20 years now. What an absolutely amazing show. If you haven't, and like science podcasts, you're really missing out.

navigate8310• 1 year ago

This is the first time I'm hearing about this show. Could you highlight any specific episode that stands out?

ramijames2• 1 year ago

Not really. There are literally hundreds. They mostly bring on and interview science experts from recent discoveries. Whatever is interesting, recent, and relevant. The vast majority of it is under the radar and having the discoverers come and talk about their work is usually very interesting. I listen almost every week. They take the summer off.

raffael_de2• 1 year ago

Seems like there is no paper yet. Best I could find:

https://acousticalsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Pro... (page 194):

  Flower visitors, including pollinators, produce characteristic sounds through flapping wing movements during flight. Recent research underscores the value of studying these acoustic signals to develop non-invasive, efficient tools for monitoring pollinator communities. Additionally, these sounds may provide key information to flowering plants, potentially influencing their resource allocation to attract pollinators, thus impacting their fitness. In this study, we investigated the acoustic properties of airborne sounds generated by recording different flying visitors to Antirrhinum flowers in the field. The audio recordings were annotated according to the observed flying behaviors and analyzed using nonlinear time-series analysis. We also conducted playback experiments to evaluate how plants respond to the buzzing sounds of insects. Our results reveal that distinct flying behaviors, such as hovering, landing, and takeoff, produce unique acoustic signatures. Furthermore, plants exhibit reactions to the vibroacoustic stimuli from pollinators, suggesting potentially adaptive responses. These findings provide valuable insight for developing passive acoustic monitoring tools for flying insects and may inspire further research in the field of plant–pollinator interaction.

Link should be this: https://phys.org/news/2025-05-nectar-production-response-pol...

Maxion• 1 year ago

There is a paper, here it is:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.13331

raffael_de2• 1 year ago

Seems like this is not _the_ paper but (as you write yourself) _a_ paper dealing with the same question. I assume that _the_ paper will provide further insights otherwise the presentation wouldn't be justified.

altruios2• 1 year ago

If plants make decisions, and have preferences. Then ethically, are we not bound to consider those preferences?

Then again: nothing wants to be eaten...

Lab grown meat can't come fast enough: ethical flesh to consume.

AstroBen• 1 year ago

Lab grown meat can't come fast enough

Yeah, but 6 US states have now banned it

Humans are a billion miles away from considering plant preferences

sorcerer-mar• 1 year ago

cancel culture is out of control these days

nashashmi• 1 year ago

The plant is happy to give nectar with sugar to pollinators. That means they are ok with being eaten. They are likely not ok with being damaged.

So go ahead and take the apple because it will drop otherwise. And take the fruits. If you want to go all out, go with a Jain diet system where carrots and mushrooms are not ok but mints and herbs are a-ok.

gbjw• 1 year ago

Fruit is plant flesh that is meant (designed?) to be eaten.

nradov3• 1 year ago

There's nothing unethical about eating meat, and lab grown "meat" isn't any more ethical than the real thing.

kseistrup5• 1 year ago

In my opinion, “I'ma eat you, coz I am more entitled to live that you are” is unethical. But then again, I also chose a plantbased diet.

It is impossible for more complex organism to live on Earth and not feast on other organisms, so you could say I should avoid eating plants too. Correct, but since I cannot avoid killing other beings, I have chosen the path of less overall suffering.

srameshc• 1 year ago

I never thought about it, but it is pretty surprising to learn that nature has evolved this system. I'm amazed by how this scientist was able to find a correlation and tell how things work in this instance. There is so much synch in the nature that is't hard to notice how connected everything is.

IshKebab3• 1 year ago

This sounds somewhat implausible. What mechanism do plants have to "hear" sounds? And to respond differently to the sounds of different insects? Hmm.

I would definitely wait for a peer reviewed article before paying any attention to this. People love "plants can hear things" stories.

tough• 1 year ago

isn't sound vibration?

aren't plants well suited with all their small and moving parts to some-what percieve that from their envirorment, even if its not literal hearing?

kseistrup5• 1 year ago

The way I see it, it's just a matter of terminology: When we detect vibrations through the air (“sound waves”) we call it hearing, and humans have dedicated organs to accomplish the task. When vibrations are detected (i.e., felt) in solid stuff, they're just called vibrations.

roywiggins• 1 year ago

Plants definitely can sense pressure and motion to some extent, that's what Venus flytraps do, and how creeping vines find and follow surfaces.

Hearing pollinators does seem somewhat unlikely but still plausible.

calibas2• 1 year ago

What mechanism do plants have to "hear" sounds?

Mechanoreceptors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanoreceptors_(in_plants)

IshKebab3• 1 year ago

The examples there are for direct contact - feeling not hearing.

thinkling• 1 year ago

If you find this interesting, I strongly recommend the book _The Light Eaters_ by Zoë Schlanger [0]. She discusses this finding as well as other sense-abilities of plants. Recent science has found pretty amazing things.

If I recall correctly: flowers are often shaped like dish antennas to collect sound vibration, and plants can distinguish the frequency of wing beats of their preferred pollinator from frequencies of other insects, and will act only for their pollinators.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Light-Eaters-Unseen-Intelligence-Unde...

marojejian2• 1 year ago

I listened to that book and enjoyed it. But that said, I'm torn between friendliness to the general concept, and skepticism based in part on the bias of proponents to deeply desire plants to display something like intelligence (a bias I share).

For example the most amazing claims in the book were around the ability of Boquila trifoliolata to dynamically mimic other plants.

see this old HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31301454

But when one looks more closely the research, the behavior isn't as dramatic as Zoe made it sound, and the research may not be so strong, e.g. :

https://press.asimov.com/articles/plant-vision

igorbark• 1 year ago

i definitely agree that it would've been nice to have images in the book as it was hard to get a sense of exactly how well Boquila was mimicking neighbouring plants!

but in reference to the linked article, i will say that the researchers interviewed in the book (and i got that sense for Zoe as well) were in agreement with you that the research didn't support a vision-based mechanism. but everyone agrees that the imitation is going on. the researchers in the book suggest a gene transfer-based mechanism instead! (mentioned briefly in your linked article)

csours• 1 year ago

Daft Punk is pollinating at my house! (My House!)

Huxley1• 1 year ago

I never really thought of plants as responding to sound like this. I always imagined them reacting to light, chemicals, or maybe touch, but the idea of them picking up vibrations from specific insects is kind of mind blowing.

It makes me wonder how many other forms of input plants might be sensing that we simply don’t recognize yet. Nature keeps surprising me the more I read about this kind of stuff.

lutusp2• 1 year ago

Plants hear their pollinators, and produce sweet nectar in response

This is called "anthropomorphizing," the assignment of human traits to non-human entities without evidence. Assigning human traits to non-human processes tends to distort evidence to fit a preconceived narrative.

Look at the title. The terms "hear," "produce," and "in response" all imply human motivations to a process that may instead be an unsentimental evolutionary process in which nature blindly selects an outcome based only on fitness.

This is why Charles Darwin was reluctant to publish his theory -- it implied that nature blindly created outcomes solely based on fitness, not recognizable human qualities as this article suggests. Darwin believed people would reject his theory because it was unsentimental, unromantic, sometimes cruel. And he was right -- people accepted natural selection only after evidence prevailed over sentiment.

This doesn't imply that nature isn't beautiful, it only argues that nature isn't modeled after people. And those who think nature has no sense of humor ... haven't heard about the Platypus.

sethammons4• 1 year ago

Plants don't like being anthropomorphized. Btw, I disagree with your definition.

You are inserting "sentiment" to "hear," "produce," and "in response." These are physical actions. Or do you assert trees don't produce fruit in response to good growing conditions?

In response to the rock falling, a large sound was produced, and it startled a fox that heard it. No anthropomorphism.

Anthropomorphism is assigning human qualities onto non-humans. Like my first sentence.

lutusp2• 1 year ago

Or do you assert trees don't produce fruit in response to good growing conditions?

That's correct -- it's not a response as that term is defined, indeed use of the word "response" implies a misunderstanding of natural selection and suggests inheritance of acquired traits.

In a population of trees in the same environment, some produce more fruit due to random genetic variations between individuals. For chemical and biological reasons those specific trees blindly ascend over other genotypes and are over time more likely to prevail over those less fit. That's not a response as we understand the word, it's a product of mathematics and genetics.

In response to the rock falling, a large sound was produced, and it startled a fox that heard it. No anthropomorphism.

In fact, assuming we assign a human emotion to the fox, as you did, that would be an example of anthropomorphizing.

ingohelpinger• 1 year ago

so talking good to them and playing music helps, lol.

Plants hear their pollinators, and produce sweet nectar in response

Related Stories