It is proven that plants and insects interact by sound, said researchers from Tel Aviv on Tuesday, opening a new border in the study of acoustic communication in nature.
The study, published in the Elife journal, suggests that females detect ultrasonic distress signals issued by dehydrated tomato plants and use this information to decide where to lay their eggs.
Butterflies generally lay their eggs on tomatoes to provide food to their larvae after their hatching.
The research was carried out by Rya Seltzer and Guy Zer Eshel in the laboratories of Yossi Yovel and Lilach Hadany, both professors of the Sage of the Life Sciences of the University.
“We revealed the first proof of acoustic interaction between a plant and an insect,” the team said in a statement.
The results are based on previous research from the group, which has revealed that plants emit ultrasonic sounds when under stress.
The discovery could have implications for agriculture and the antiparasitic control, opening the possibilities of management of the health of cultures and the behavior of insects through sound.
Although the ultrasonic noises emitted by plants are not outside the human hearing range, they can be picked up by many insects and certain mammals, such as bats.
Investigating this preference, the researchers presented female mites with two healthy tomato plants – one with a speaker playing sounds recorded in a drying plant and a silencer.
Night butterflies preferred the silent option, suggesting that they use these indices to identify optimal sites to lay eggs.
Other experiments have confirmed that the choices of butterflies were guided specifically by sound and only by the sounds of plants.
“Here we have seen that there are animals capable of giving meaning to these sounds,” said Hadany.
“We believe that this is only the beginning. So many animals can respond to different plants.”
