Latzel Vít, Rendina González Alejandra P, Rosenthal Jonathan
Institute of Botany of Czech Academy of Sciences Průhonice, Czech Republic.
Ecological Research Institute, Kingston NY, USA.
Front Plant Sci. 2016 Aug 31;7:1354. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2016.01354. eCollection 2016.
Environmentally induced epigenetic change enables plants to remember past environmental interactions. If this memory capability is exploited to prepare plants for future challenges, it can provide a basis for highly sophisticated behavior, considered intelligent by some. Against the backdrop of an overview of plant intelligence, we hypothesize: (1) that the capability of plants to engage in such intelligent behavior increases with the additional level of complexity afforded by clonality, and; (2) that more faithful inheritance of epigenetic information in clonal plants, in conjunction with information exchange and coordination between connected ramets, is likely to enable especially advanced intelligent behavior in this group. We therefore further hypothesize that this behavior provides ecological and evolutionary advantages to clonal plants, possibly explaining, at least in part, their widespread success. Finally, we suggest avenues of inquiry to enable assessing intelligent behavior and the role of epigenetic memory in clonal species.
环境诱导的表观遗传变化使植物能够记住过去的环境相互作用。如果利用这种记忆能力让植物为未来的挑战做好准备，那么它可以为某些人认为的高度复杂行为（即智能行为）提供基础。在对植物智能进行概述的背景下，我们提出以下假设：（1）植物参与这种智能行为的能力会随着克隆性所带来的额外复杂程度而增强；（2）克隆植物中表观遗传信息更忠实的遗传，再加上相连分株之间的信息交换与协调，可能使该类群植物表现出特别先进的智能行为。因此，我们进一步假设这种行为为克隆植物带来了生态和进化优势，这可能至少部分地解释了它们广泛成功的原因。最后，我们提出了一些探究途径，以便能够评估克隆物种中的智能行为以及表观遗传记忆的作用。
