Flowering plants may have a secret power for knowing when to lure pollinators.
They could act as antennas for bees’ electrical signals and transmit those signals through the soil, biophysicist Daniel Robert reported March 6 in Minneapolis at the American Physical Society meeting. The finding offers a possible clue to how floral neighbors share information about when to produce nectar, saving energy for when pollination looks promising.
If a bee’s flapping wings trigger even a small voltage difference in plants, it could be “an interesting demonstration of communication,” says Víctor Ortega-Jiménez, a biomechanics researcher at the University of Maine in Orono who was not involved in the study.