Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T09:30:08.828Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Memory and habituation to harmful and non-harmful stimuli in a field population of the sensitive plant, Mimosa pudica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2021

Ella Serpell  and
Johel Chaves-Campos Open the ORCID record for Johel Chaves-Campos [Opens in a new window]
Ella Serpell
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Johel Chaves-Campos*
Affiliation:
Council on International Educational Exchange, Tropical Ecology and Conservation Study Abroad Program, Monteverde, Costa Rica
*
Author for correspondence: Johel Chaves-Campos, Email: JohelChaves@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Mimosa pudica is a Neotropical legume that closes its leaves rapidly in response to touch stimulation, hypothetically as herbivory defence. Habituation to non-harmful stimuli and long-term memory of past events have been demonstrated in this species, the former with relatively heavy objects and the latter under laboratory conditions. This species should not habituate to harmful stimuli if leaf movement is a response to herbivore damage. We tested in Monteverde, Costa Rica, whether (1) memory occurs in wild plants, (2) whether habituation occurs under harmful stimuli: simulated herbivory, and (3) whether wild plants can habituate to light non-harmful stimuli. The degree of closing of the leaflets and time until reopening was measured in response to repeated harmful and non-harmful stimuli. The results showed habituation to repeated non-harmful very light stimuli and showed lack of habituation to simulated leaf damage. Wild plants also showed faster rehabituation to repeated non-harmful stimuli when they had been exposed 15 days previously, suggesting possible long-term memory. These results indicate that wild plants are capable of (1) distinguishing between harmful and non-harmful stimuli (only habituating to the latter), (2) memorizing previous events, and 3) habituating very light tactile stimuli commonly experienced in the field.

Keywords

plant behaviourplant habituationplant memorysimulated herbivory
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , March 2022 , pp. 89 - 98
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrahamson, NJ and Marshall, DL (2009) COS 29-2: the role of seismonasty in reducing Eurema lisa (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) oviposition on Mimosa pudica. In The 94th ESA Annual Meeting. Washington DC, USA: Ecological Society of America.Google Scholar
Amador-Vargas, S, Dominguez, M, León, G, Maldonado, B, Murillo, J and Vides, GL (2014) Leaf-folding response of a sensitive plant shows context-dependent behavioral plasticity. Plant Ecology 215, 1445–1454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appel, HM and Cocroft, RB (2014) Plants respond to leaf vibrations caused by insect herbivore chewing. Oecologia 175, 1257–1266.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Azmi, L, Singh, MK and Akhtar, AK (2011) Pharmacological and biological overview on Mimosa pudica Linn. International Journal of Pharmacy & Life Sciences 2, 1226–1234.Google Scholar
Baldwin, IT and Schmelz, EA (1996) Immunological” memory” in the induced accumulation of nicotine in wild tobacco. Ecology 77, 236–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braam, J (2005) In touch: plant responses to mechanical stimuli. New Phytologist 165, 373–389.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cahill, JF Jr, Bao, T, Maloney, M and Kolenosky, C (2012) Mechanical leaf damage causes localized, but not systemic, changes in leaf movement behavior of the Sensitive Plant, Mimosa pudica (Fabaceae) L. Botany 91, 43–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaudhary, A, Bala, K, Thakur, S, Kamboj, R and Dumra, N (2018) Plant defenses against herbivorous insects: a review. IJCS 6, 681–688.Google Scholar
Clark, KL, Lawton, RO, Butler, PR and Wheelwright, NT (2000) The physical environment. In Nadkarni, NM (ed), Monteverde: Ecology and Conservation of a Tropical Cloud Forest. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 15–39.Google Scholar
Dean, JM and Smith, AP (1978) Behavioral and morphological adaptations of a tropical plant to high rainfall. Biotropica 10, 152–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dethier, VG (1940) Life histories of Cuban Lepidoptera. Psyche: A Journal of Entomology 47, 14–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, AF and Kindlmann, P (1999) Cost of flight apparatus and optimum body size of aphid migrants. Ecology 80, 1678–1690.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, DK (1962) Electrostatic charges on insects due to contact with different substrates. Canadian Journal of Zoology 40, 579–584.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisner, T (1981) Leaf folding in a sensitive plant: a defensive thorn-exposure mechanism? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 78, 402–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, K, Zwaan, BJ and Brakefield, PM (2002) How does egg size relate to body size in butterflies? Oecologia 131, 375–379.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fleurat-Lessard, P, Bouché-Pillon, S, Leloup, C and Bonnemain, JL (1997) Distribution and activity of the plasma membrane H+-ATPase in Mimosa pudica L. in relation to ionic fluxes and leaf movements. Plant Physiology 113, 747–754.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gagliano, M, Renton, M, Depczynski, M and Mancuso, S (2014) Experience teaches plants to learn faster and forget slower in environments where it matters. Oecologia 175, 63–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
García-Barros, E (2000) Egg size in butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea and Hesperiidae): a summary of data. Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera 35, 90–136.Google Scholar
Hjältén, J (2008) Simulating herbivory: problems and possibilities. In Weisser, WW, Siemann, E (eds). Insects and Ecosystem Function. Ecological Studies, vol. 173. Berlin: Springer Heidelberg, pp. 243–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoddinott, J (1977) Rates of translocation and photosynthesis in Mimosa pudica L. New Phytologist 79, 269–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iwasaki, M and Paszkowski, J (2014) Epigenetic memory in plants. The EMBO Journal, 33, 1987–1998.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jensen, EL, Dill, LM and Cahill, JF Jr (2011) Applying behavioral-ecological theory to plant defense: light-dependent movement in Mimosa pudica suggests a trade-off between predation risk and energetic reward. The American Naturalist 177, 377–381.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jones, C and Wilson, JM (1982) The effects of temperature on action potentials in the chill sensitive seismonastic plant Biophytum sensitivum. Journal of Experimental Botany 33, 313–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaiser, H and Grams, TE (2006) Rapid hydropassive opening and subsequent active stomatal closure follow heat-induced electrical signals in Mimosa pudica . Journal of Experimental Botany 57, 2087–2092.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Karban, R (2008) Plant behaviour and communication. Ecology Letters 11, 727–739.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Khait, I, Obolski, U, Yovel, Y and Hadany, L (2019) Sound perception in plants. Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology 92, 134–138.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levitis, DA, Lidicker, WZ Jr and Freund, G (2009) Behavioural biologists do not agree on what constitutes behaviour. Animal Behaviour 78, 103–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martone, PT, Boller, M, Burgert, I, Dumais, J, Edwards, J, Mach, K, Rowe, N, Rueggeberg, M, Seidel, R and Speck, T (2010) Mechanics without muscle: biomechanical inspiration from the plant world. Integrative and Comparative Biology 50, 888–907.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Muday, GK and Brown-Harding, H (2018) Nervous system-like signaling in plant defense. Science 361, 1068–1069.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ness, JH, Bronstein, JL, Andersen, AN and Holland, JN (2004) Ant body size predicts dispersal distance of ant-adapted seeds: implications of small-ant invasions. Ecology 85, 1244–1250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poppinga, S, Masselter, T and Speck, T (2013) Faster than their prey: new insights into the rapid movements of active carnivorous plants traps. BioEssays 35, 649–657.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rankin, CH, Abrams, T, Barry, RJ, Bhatnagar, S, Clayton, DF, Colombo, J, Coppola, G, Geyer, MA, Glanzman, DL, Marsland, S and McSweeney, FK (2009) Habituation revisited: an updated and revised description of the behavioral characteristics of habituation. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory 92, 135–138.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
R Core Team (2020) R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/.Google Scholar
Reed-Guy, S, Gehris, C, Shi, M and Blumstein, DT (2017) Sensitive plant (Mimosa pudica) hiding time depends on individual and state. PeerJ 5, e3598.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reimer-Michalski, EM and Conrath, U (2016) Innate immune memory in plants. Seminars in Immunology 28, 319–327.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simon, FW, Hodson, CN and Roitberg, BD (2016) State dependence, personality, and plants: light-foraging decisions in Mimosa pudica (L.). Ecology and Evolution 6, 6301–6309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Song, X, Huang, W, Shi, M, Zhu, M and Lin, HX (2007) A QTL for rice grain width and weight encodes a previously unknown RING-type E3 ubiquitin ligase. Nature Genetics 39, 623–630.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Svärd, L and Wiklund, C (1988) Fecundity, egg weight and longevity in relation to multiple matings in females of the monarch butterfly. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 23, 39–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thellier, M, Desbiez, MO, Champagnat, P and Kergosien, Y (1982) Do memory processes occur also in plants? Physiologia Plantarum 56, 281–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ton, J, D’alessandro, M, Jourdie, V, Jakab, G, Karlen, D, Held, M, Mauch-Mani, B and Turlings, TC (2007) Priming by airborne signals boosts direct and indirect resistance in maize. The Plant Journal 49, 16–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Volkov, AG, Baker, K, Foster, JC, Clemmons, J, Jovanov, E and Markin, VS (2011) Circadian variations in biologically closed electrochemical circuits in Aloe vera and Mimosa pudica . Bioelectrochemistry 81, 39–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Volkov, AG, Foster, JC, Ashby, TA, Walker, RK, Johnson, JA and Markin, VS (2010) Mimosa pudica: electrical and mechanical stimulation of plant movements. Plant, Cell & Environment 33, 163–173.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Volkov, AG, Reedus, J, Mitchell, CM, Tuckett, C, Volkova, MI, Markin, VS and Chua, L (2014) Memory elements in the electrical network of Mimosa pudica L. Plant Signaling & Behavior 9, 982029.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Waterman, JM, Cazzonelli, CI, Hartley, S and Johnson, SN (2019) Simulated herbivory: the key to disentangling plant defence responses. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 34, 447–458.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed