
Insects Use Plant Like a "Telephone" - nreece
http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2008/04/019899.htm
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pj
This is not communication. The subterranean insects probably know nothing at
all about the above ground insects feeding on the leaves.

Thinking about it evolutionarily in two ways 1) plants into which the
subterranean insects unknowingly inject their distasteful chemicals live
longer because above ground insects do not eat them to death, thus the
subterranean insects live longer and propagate more.

2) in A Walk In the Woods, I read about trees that when chewed upon by an
outside force, will produce a chemical that will drive the predator away. They
can even send signals to other trees. This same chemical may be the one that
fends off the above ground predators, but the subterranean ones are immune.

Anyway, there are many explanations for this phenomenon that do not include
the conscious "use" of the plant to communicate with other animals of other
species.

The article is misleading at best. using a telephone is a process which
implies that the caller believes to some degree that someone else will answer
the phone and a conversation can be had.

There's nothing of that sort going on here...

~~~
jrockway
Well said.

I think they are trying to use the word "telephone" to mean any sort of
communication or signaling between two entities, and that's just not a correct
use of the word.

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markessien
This is something that is going to happen very quickly:

You have a forest full of plants. These plants have insects living in their
roots which are feeding on them. At some point in time, insects arrive and
settle on the leaves of the plants. They start feeding, and the plants die on
or two weeks later. So these insects move to other plants nearby - soon, all
the plants in the field are dead, and then all the insects in the field are
dead.

But let's say there is a single insect underground that feeds in such a way
that the chemical composition of the plant is mildly changed from the standard
plant. The above ground insects will avoid this plant, because it smells a bit
different, and so this plant will be one of the last to die. As a result, it
will be the dominant plan in the next generation of plants. In the next
generation, the plant that emphasizes this trait will continue to win, and in
a few generations, the evolution will occur.

This ties in with my theory that evolution can only occur under very high
pressure, and it happens very suddenly. This slow evolution theory that is
common now is wrong, in my opinion. I believe that mutation is common, but
singificant changes happen only under immense pressure.

That's why humans are no longer evolving. That's why women still have to
suffer at childbirth - midwives have removed the pressure.

