Year: 2022

COMPETITIVE POTS. "Plants with competitors and heterogeneous soil nutrient distributions reduced their root growth only modestly. These data, although conflicting with the data from Broz et al. (2010), indicate that plant responses to its neighbours are heavily governed by the availability of the nutrient resources in soil." https://lnkd.in/d_tsqB7 View in LinkedIn

COMPETITIVE ROOT RESPONSE. "Recent evidence also indicates that allocation patterns in some plants differ if their roots encounter relatives compared with strangers. In general, plants grew roots or stems more aggressively when strangers were encountered compared with kin." http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1756/20123062.short View in LinkedIn

ROOT KIN RECOGNITION. "Here we show in the annual plant Cakile edentula, allocation to roots increased when groups of strangers shared a common pot, but not when groups of siblings shared a pot. Our results demonstrate that plants can discriminate kin in competitive interactions and indicate that the root interactions may provide the cue for kin recognition." http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/4/435.short View in LinkedIn

SIBLING ROOT PATTERNS. "We found that kin groups allocated less to their fine root mass than did stranger groups when they competed below ground, indicating that these plants could discriminate relatives. Root allocation did not differ between kin and stranger groups grown in isolated pots, indicating that the cues for kin recognition lie in root interactions. Siblings were less competitive than strangers, which is consistent with kin selection." http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/4/435.short View in LinkedIn

PROFOUND FINDING. "If kin discrimination via root–root interactions proves widespread, it will profoundly change how we view competition in plants. Our results, because we used maternal sibships, indicate a genetic or maternally derived mechanism for kin recognition involving root communication. However, the mechanism is probably different from the self/non-self mechanism, because plants recognize genetically identical individuals as non-self." http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/4/435.short View in LinkedIn

EXPECTED ELSEWHERE. "Having found kin discrimination once, we expect to find kin discrimination elsewhere in plants, since variable dispersal, variable competitive situations, and increases in fitness when competing with kin, are found in other plants. Other competitive traits, such as stem elongation and apical dominance, are the most probable candidates to exhibit plastic responses contingent on kinship of neighbours." https://lnkd.in/d7SNVuH View in LinkedIn

CHEATING. "The stability of cooperative interactions among different species can be compromised by cheating. In the plant-mycorrhizal fungi symbiosis, a single mycorrhizal network may interact with many plants, providing the opportunity for individual plants to cheat by obtaining nutrients from the fungi without donating carbon. Here we determine whether kin selection may favour plant investment in the mycorrhizal network, reducing the incentive to cheat when relatives interact with a single network." https://lnkd.in/gAWcQQc View in LinkedIn

LEAF ORIENTATIONS. "When plants of Arabidopsis thaliana are cultivated in rows of coetaneous kin neighbours (plants of the same accession) the growth of their leaves is horizontally reoriented towards the empty spaces out of the row, increasing self-shading and reducing mutual shading among plants. This growth pattern is not observed among nonkin plants." https://lnkd.in/gD_46dv View in LinkedIn

LIGHT SIGNALS. "Plants recognized kin neighbours and horizontally reoriented leaf growth, a response not observed when plants were grown with nonkin. Plant kin recognition involved the perception of the vertical red/far-red light and blue light profiles. Light signals from neighbours are known to shape a more competitive plant body. Here we show that photosensory receptors mediate cooperative rather than competitive interactions among kin neighbours by reducing the competition for local pools of resources." https://lnkd.in/gA-pj6A View in LinkedIn

CHANGES IN TRAITS. "Plants recognize their kin and respond to growing with relatives with changes in functional traits." https://lnkd.in/ghemavh View in LinkedIn