Plant rapid responses to airborne sounds: can plants hear their pollinators?

Lilach Hadany ¹ Marine Veits ¹ Itzhak Khait ¹ Uri Obolski ¹ Eyal Zinger ¹ Arjan Boonman ² Aya Goldshtein ² Kfir Saban ¹ Rya Seltzer ² Udi Ben‐dor ¹ Paz Estlein ¹ Areej Kabat ¹ Dor Peretz ¹ Ittai Ratzersdorfer ¹ Slava Krylov ³ Daniel Chamovitz ¹ Yuval Sapir ¹ Yossi Yovel ²

¹Plant Sciences and Food Security, Tel Aviv University, Israel
²Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Israel
³Mechanical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Israel

We found that Oenothera drummondii flowers, exposed to playback sound of a pollinator or to synthetic sound signals at similar frequencies, produce sweeter nectar within 3 min, potentially increasing the chances of cross pollination. We also found that the flowers vibrated mechanically in response to these sounds, suggesting a plausible mechanism where the flower serves as an auditory sensory organ for the plant. Both the vibration and the nectar response were frequency‐specific: the flowers responded and vibrated to pollinator sounds, but not to higher frequency sound. Our results document for the first time that plants can rapidly respond to airborne sounds in an ecologically relevant way. Potential implications include plant resource allocation, the evolution of flower shape and the evolution of pollinators sound. Finally, our results suggest that plants may be affected by other sounds as well, including anthropogenic ones.