Can plants be altruistic? You bet, study says



The researchers looked at corn, in which each fertilized seed contained two "siblings"—an embryo and a corresponding bit of tissue known as that feeds the embryo as the seed grows, said CU-Boulder Professor Pamela Diggle. They compared the growth and behavior of the embryos and endosperm in seeds sharing the same mother and father with the growth and behavior of embryos and endosperm that had genetically different parents.


A paper on the subject was published during the week of Jan. 21 in the . Co-authors on the study included Chi-Chih Wu, a CU-Boulder doctoral student in the ecology and department and Professor William "Ned" Friedman, a professor at Harvard University who helped conduct research on the project while a faculty member at CU-Boulder.


"One of the most of nature is that if you are going to be an altruist, give it up to your closest relatives," said Friedman. " only evolves if the benefactor is a close relative of the beneficiary. When the endosperm gives all of its food to the embryo and then dies, it doesn't get more altruistic than that."






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Citation: Can plants be altruistic? You bet, study says (2013, February 1) retrieved 17 July 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2013-02-altruistic.html

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Feb 01, 2013
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Feb 01, 2013
This week in Warrantless Anthropomorphism: plants.

From the way they assign terms like "cooperation" and "altruism", they could just as well describe two batteries in parallel as being altruistic because the one with more voltage will share its charge with the one that has less.

It isn't altruism if they have no choice but to act that way.

Feb 01, 2013
Altruism is purely indirect selfishness, carried out for the good of survival where there's an advantage over direct selfishness.

Feb 01, 2013
"It isn't altruism if they have no choice but to act that way."

In that case there's no such thing as altruism. Also, what Silan said.

Feb 02, 2013
I read "Can plants be autistic? You bet, study says." I didn't know plants needed any prodding to act like a vegetable!

Autism manifests with a variety of symptoms. And to varying degrees. It's likely people with autism are reading this site. Saying things like this is a little insensitive.

Feb 02, 2013


Yes, there can be.

Before you can have altruism you must have the capability of making choices, which plant seeds do not possess any more than a virus has a choice over infecting its host.

Human concepts such as compassion, empathy, altruism, good, bad, don't apply to things that don't even think.

Feb 02, 2013


I think it's odd that you know the full experience of being a life form oth Our understanding of what it's like to be another organism is nearly totally incompler than human, despite the fact that you're (I assume) a human.ete. Even dogs remain a mystery to us, the nature of their internal landscape always in debate. Given that, and given that all life is more similar than dissimilar I'm hesitant to announce an absolute verdict on the internal lives of other creatures. I'm fully curious and can't wait as we possibly discover more and more extra-human languages, cultures, songs, patterns, histories, etc. Life is abundant, life is all engaged in the same fundamental processes with the same goals. Why would you presume yourself to be so very different?

Feb 02, 2013

Firstly, that can really only be true if one were to assume that humans have free will. That seems like a big assumption.

Secondly, terms like selfish and altruistic (which is really just a form of strategic selfishness in this context) are not attempting to ascribe human personalities to plants and "lower" life. They're a common way of describing the genes (selfish replicators) and the ultimate phenotypes they express. As far as I know Dawkins was the first to coin the term in "The Selfish Gene," and it has been widely used ever since. No one purports that said genes actually have these pernicious personality traits; it is a way of helping us view evolution from a genetic level (in opposition to now unpopular group selection theories).

Feb 03, 2013
A very confusing article. The issue of Altruism is not that parents will sacrifice for children or siblings or any other that has the same genes. The issue is why do soldiers risk their lives for others. There is no apparent evolutionary advantage to do so. Recent research however has discovered that there is. The survival of the group provides a powerful survival advantage to the individual and it's genes. Such altruism has been selected for, resulting in instincts to risk for others that has now been observed in several social species. Plants?
