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"MEMORY does exist in plants at least on the cellular level, even by our strict criterion." The assessment of the skeptical enquiry. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.4161/psb.4.5.8276#abstract View in LinkedIn

MEMORY CANDIDATE. "One promising candidate, as long as we attribute individuality also to cells, would be auxin canalization, i.e., gradual tuning of auxin transport across cells and tissues, based on their previous experience and resulting in increased auxin flow in cells that already have transported auxin. This phenomenon, which has been proposed as a major factor determining e.g., the topology of leaf venation." http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.4161/psb.4.5.8276#abstract View in LinkedIn

PRESENT AND FUTURE ASSESSMENT. "Thus, at each setting of the environment, the individual plant can access information that it can use to construct a response and to ensure that overall, maximal fitness will be achieved. The implication is that the difference between the optimal niche/phenotype and the present environment and present phenotype can be measured." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/1/1.full View in LinkedIn

NEIGHBOR EFFECTS. "The response of an individual along a resource gradient is very strongly influenced by its neighbours. While negative interactions through competition for the basic resources of space, light, minerals and water, and interactions through allelopathy, are well established." (Allelopathy is the production of chemicals to influence the growth of nearby plants.) http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/1/1.full View in LinkedIn

VAST DATA INPUT. "If there are about 15 environmental factors acting in differing degrees and affecting the perception of each other then the combination of possible environments in which any individual can find itself and to which it must respond is enormous. Thus, the necessity for learning rather than rote behaviour. Moreover, long‐ and short‐term responses to environmental variables will be different." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/1/1.full View in LinkedIn

PLASTICITY AND FITNESS. "Individual plants that express plasticity will more nearly approach the fitness objective than individuals that do not. But the error‐correcting mechanism must involve complex negative feedback mechanisms with versions of trial and error; that is, learning." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/1/1.full View in LinkedIn

NOT RIGID REFLEXES. "Phenotypically plastic mechanisms are not reflex responses...but depend on an ability to assess not only what tissues should alter (with the assessment influencing very early tissue development), but an ability to stop plasticity when sufficient change towards the optimal goal has been made." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/1/1.full View in LinkedIn

NICHE MEMORY. "Measurements show that the niche is individual to the genotype, not the species. On that basis it is likely that each individual plant will possess a unique niche memory to which it will attempt to match growth and development. The important feature is that information, which describes the fundamental niche, is present in the organism and can be accessed, thus representing a kind of long‐term (life cycle) memory." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/1/1.full View in LinkedIn