Category: Uncategorized

PETIOLE AND PULVINUS. "These same two organs are also able to move the lamina out of the direct plane of sunlight if the light becomes too intense and becomes damaging. Within canopy openings, not only leaf position but branch polarity is constructed to align with the primary orientation of diffuse light." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00114-005-0014-9 View in LinkedIn

JUGGLING EFFICIENCY. "Future shoot formation and light foraging indicate intelligent behavior. The morphology of many plants is constructed so as to minimize self shading. Leaves possess two light sensitive organs (the petiole and the pulvinus) that control the direction of the leaf lamina, ensuring it is intelligently placed at 90° to the prevailing polarity of incident sunlight thus capturing maximum energy." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00114-005-0014-9 View in LinkedIn

HISTORICAL MAP. "There is no convincing evidence that plants possess the ability to convey sufficient information from sensors to any processing units to enable a meaningful spatial map to be constructed. The only map that a plant as a whole makes of its environment is recorded in its morphology, anatomy and chemistry. It is a map of past events, not of future plans." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/93/4/345.full View in LinkedIn

DODDER video. In fast motion, Dodder resembles an alien attack. https://youtu.be/tZpjKemWalk View in LinkedIn

FEDERATION OF PLANT ORGANS. "Each organ has some extra information derived from the overall integrative state of the plant. This extra information is available from the summed activities of all members of the federation of organs, but such exotic information is rarely complex. Some extra specific information might also be available to certain cells from chemical signals emanating from non‐adjacent cells." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/93/4/345.full View in LinkedIn

STATISTICAL MOVEMENTS. “These initiation sites (“hypotheses”) are widespread throughout the damaged mound, and as repair progresses, these compete with one another for workers to “sustain” the hypothesis. In the end, the “winning” hypothesis will be the sites that can recruit enough workers to drive repair building most rapidly to the formation of a plug that blocks the passage. “Correctly” interpreting the distorted AC perturbation field in the damaged mound turns, therefore, on ensuring that plug formation takes place at the focal point of the distorted AC perturbation field.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-016-9256-5 View in LinkedIn

THE HYPOTHESIS GRADIENT. “The statistical character of the transient perturbation field means that doing so is not a simple matter of swarms of termites migrating “up the gradient” to the site of injury. Rather, there is a complex swarm decision-making process at work, where different groups of termites each generate a multiplicity of “hypotheses” for where the site of damage is. A “hypothesis” is “posed” when a termite is exposed to a transient perturbation of some threshold intensity, which prompts the termite to deposit a dollop of wet clay.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-016-9256-5 View in LinkedIn

INJURY TEST. “A breach in the mound also alters the shape of the mound’s AC perturbation field. Whereas the undisturbed mound has a field that is distributed roughly uniformly with respect to the mound surface, the field in a damaged mound now has a focus at the site of injury, where wind-induced transient perturbations will be most intense. Once an unexpected AC perturbation has drawn a termite swarm from the nest into the mound, the distorted AC field must be interpreted so that repair efforts are ultimately focused at the site of injury.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-016-9256-5 View in LinkedIn