ArticleOecologia2017
Tuned in: plant roots use sound to locate water.
Article in Oecologia, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed.
- Influence of sound vibrations on plant holobionts: physiological pathways linking root function and rhizospheric microbial interactions.Plant signaling & behavior · 2026Review
- Growth Inhibition and Allelopathy Enhancement ofPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The complex interaction between plants and acoustic signals: friends or foes?Die Naturwissenschaften · 2025Article
- Seed germination: influence of non-traditional regulating factors.Communicative & integrative biology · 2025Review
- Expression responses ofPlant signaling & behavior · 2024Article
- Understanding the mechanobiology of phytoacoustics through molecular Lens: Mechanisms and future perspectives.Journal of advanced research · 2024Review
- Monitoring soil fauna with ecoacoustics.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Sound Matrix Shaping of Living Matter: From Macrosystems to Cell Microenvironment, Where Mitochondria Act as Energy Portals in Detecting and Processing Sound Vibrations.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Can Plants Perceive Human Gestures? Using AI to Track Eurythmic Human-Plant Interaction.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Forces on and in the cell walls of living plants.Plant physiology · 2023Article
- Review
- The role of sound stimulation in production of plant secondary metabolites.Natural products and bioprospecting · 2023Article
- Plants detect and respond to sounds.Planta · 2023Review
- Article
- Is There a Role for Sound in Plants?Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Our sisters the plants? notes from phylogenetics and botany on plant kinship blindness.Plant signaling & behavior · 2021Article
- A tuning point in plant acoustics investigation.Plant signaling & behavior · 2021Review
- Application of naturally occurring mechanical forces inPlant signaling & behavior · 2021Review
- Anaesthetics and plants: from sensory systems to cognition-based adaptive behaviour.Protoplasma · 2021Article
- Demonstration of laser biospeckle method for speedy in vivo evaluation of plant-sound interactions with arugula.PloS one · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Because water is essential to life, organisms have evolved a wide range of strategies to cope with water limitations, including actively searching for their preferred moisture levels to avoid dehydration. Plants use moisture gradients to direct their roots through the soil once a water source is detected, but how they first detect the source is unknown. We used the model plant Pisum sativum to investigate the mechanism by which roots sense and locate water. We found that roots were able to locate a water source by sensing the vibrations generated by water moving inside pipes, even in the absence of substrate moisture. When both moisture and acoustic cues were available, roots preferentially used moisture in the soil over acoustic vibrations, suggesting that acoustic gradients enable roots to broadly detect a water source at a distance, while moisture gradients help them to reach their target more accurately. Our results also showed that the presence of noise affected the abilities of roots to perceive and respond correctly to the surrounding soundscape. These findings highlight the urgent need to better understand the ecological role of sound and the consequences of acoustic pollution for plant as well as animal populations.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.