Ig Nobel: Prize for the plant that disguises itself as plastic – 09/17/2024 – Science

In 2019, a Brazilian decided to test whether a plant could mimic another plant, but made of plastic, and placed nearby. It worked, and in 2024, biologist Felipe Yamashita won the Ig Nobel Prize for the idea and the research.

The Brazilian biologist was studying biological sciences at Unesp (Universidade Estadual Paulista) when the Chilean Ernesto Gianoli published his first article on the strange fact of species. Imitate the leaves of the plants around you. The work was published in Cell Press in May 2014.Since then, Gianoli has been trying to find an explanation for the phenomenon—and Yamashita, now a PhD in plant cell biology from the University of Bonn, Germany, and a 2024 IG Nobel Prize winner, is on hand to help.

“The big question is how they do it, because the reasons are more obvious: they camouflage themselves to escape predators, and they try to blend in with others that don’t attract herbivores,” Yamashita says in an interview with .

Fascinated by the mechanisms behind mimicry, he had the idea to test a controversial, and in some ways, controversial, hypothesis within science: that plants, somehow, could see what was around them.

In the scientific journal Plant Signaling and Behavior it is shown that It is able to mimic the leaves of plastic plants. The experiment was conducted in the United States between 2019 and 2020, with the help of independent researcher Jacob White, and opens the possibility of confirming the theory of visual perception in plants.

“It’s not human-like vision, but it could be a kind of primitive vision,” says the biologist. The idea is that plants’ sense of vision is in the outer layer of cells on leaves, called the epidermis, which acts like a lens. This epidermis, along with a potential photoreceptor, would form the potential “eyes” of plants, called ocelli. “All living things have some kind of vision, even single-celled organisms have some kind of photoreceptor, so these vision structures haven’t been discovered in other organisms, like plants, but it’s plausible that they exist,” says the researcher.

The scientists used four potted Poquila plants. They left them next to plastic plants, purchased from a regular home-decor store, and noticed that after about two weeks, the leaves of the South American species looked like their plastic neighbors—down to the details. Yamashita acknowledges that the number of plants is small, so the experiment needs to be repeated to verify the results more strongly.

Until then, there were two hypotheses about how the pukela mimicked its neighbors. The first was that it was able to absorb volatiles (which are released into the air) from nearby plants, thus mimicking their shape. Genetic modification in Bukiela By microbes that move through the air from one plant to another, thus changing the shape of the leaves. Giannulli himself has recorded both ideas in articles published in recent years.

But the first theories about plant vision and eyes date back to the early 20th century and were developed by Austrian botanist Gottlieb Haberlandt and Francis Darwin, son of Charles Darwin. For Yamashita, the discovery that Bokella can mimic other leaves is “a rare opportunity to test plant vision in more detail,” the biologist wrote in his paper.

Known for nearly two centuries, this species is endemic to Chile and Argentina and has always been used by local indigenous communities in crafts and, in some cases, as medicine. “It’s ironic, but there are reports that indigenous people used the decayed leaves as eye drops,” says the researcher.

Implications

This year, the work won the Ig Nobel Prize in the Plants category. The event is a satirical play that celebrates creativity in science and recognizes research that first provokes laughter and then thought.

Yamashita has won the Ig Nobel Prize for Animation and sees it as an opportunity to make the subject more popular. “I didn’t know [o Ig Nobel]But it’s interesting to get the award because it gives visibility to our work.”

At the time of his article’s publication, he and his colleagues studying the field were getting a lot of criticism. “A lot of people don’t believe us at all,” says the biologist. “But like everything new in science, thinking outside the box is not well-received, and we can only keep working, keep publishing, and keep doing science.”

Recently, in addition to his experiment with 3D plastic plants, he tested Boquilla’s simulation with images of leaves printed on paper, in other words, in 2D. The results have not yet been published, but Yamashita is optimistic. “Boquilla is just an example,” he says. “There could be many other similar plants with the same mechanism.”

The Brazilian is looking for postdoctoral fellowship opportunities to continue studying communication and the senses in plants. Among the people he has reached out to is Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso, author of the scientific popularization book “The Plant Revolution” published by Oppo, in which he explores the means of communication between plants and what we can learn from them. In 2021, the author participated in FLIP (Paraty International Literary Festival).