Plant bioacoustics: on the emission and reception of airborne sounds by plants, and their adaptive value.

Project Information

PLANT BIOACOUSTICS

Grant agreement ID: 101098318

DOI

10.3030/101098318

EC signature date 24 May 2023

Start date 1 June 2023

End date 31 May 2028

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 500 000,00

EU contribution

€ 2 500 000,00

Coordinated by

TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY
Israel

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PLANT BIOACOUSTICS (Plant bioacoustics: on the emission and reception of airborne sounds by plants, and their adaptive value.)

Reporting period: 2023-06-01 to 2025-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Understanding Plant Bioacoustics
Plants are dynamic organisms deeply integrated into their environments, constantly exchanging information with animals, other plants, and abiotic cues to survive and reproduce. Traditionally, research has highlighted how plants use chemical (e.g. volatile organic compounds), visual (e.g. floral colors), and tactile cues for communication. These modalities mediate interactions with pollinators, herbivores, seed dispersers, and other plants. Yet one major sensory channel — airborne sound — remains strikingly underexplored in plants, despite its wide use across the animal kingdom and its clear potential for conveying adaptive information.
Recent findings from our group have challenged this view. We discovered that flowering plants can respond within minutes to the sounds of pollinators by increasing the sugar concentration in their nectar, potentially enhancing pollination success. Moreover, we found that plants emit brief ultrasonic sounds, and that the nature of these sounds varies with the plant’s physiological state — such as dehydration or injury. These airborne emissions can be detected remotely and carry meaningful information.
These findings suggest that plants may participate in a previously overlooked form of ecological communication — using bioacoustics — which could dramatically alter our understanding of plant behavior and interaction. The possibility that plants not only emit but also sense and respond to sound opens new horizons for investigating the sensory and communicative capacities of plants. Moreover, it suggests that acoustic signals may play a role in mediating plant-animal and possibly plant-plant interactions in ways that are evolutionarily adaptive.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Work Performed and Main Achievements
During the project period, we conducted a series of integrated studies to investigate the role of acoustic cues in plant biology. These studies ranged from behavioral ecology to molecular biology and bioacoustics, contributing multiple lines of evidence to the emerging field of plant bioacoustics.
1. Plant acoustic signals and herbivore behavior
We examined the impact of plant-emitted sounds on herbivorous insects, focusing on oviposition behavior in female moths. Our experiments demonstrated that moths use ultrasonic sounds emitted by dehydrated plants as cues when selecting host plants. These results suggest that plant stress sounds can serve as informative signals in plant-insect interactions. While the findings underscore the ecological relevance of airborne sounds, they also highlighted methodological complexities such as context-dependence of moth responses.
2. Acoustic communication between pollinators and plants
We conducted detailed experiments exploring both sides of the acoustic interaction between plants and pollinators. First, we confirmed and expanded on earlier findings that plants increase nectar sugar concentration within minutes in response to pollinator wingbeat sounds. In this study, we performed a more comprehensive chemical analysis of the nectar’s composition in response to sound exposure. We also began investigating whether pollinators can detect and behaviorally respond to plant-emitted stress sounds in the field, which could have adaptive consequences for their foraging behavior and influence pollination success.
3. Construction of a plant airborne sound library
We recorded ultrasonic sounds emitted by plants under various stress conditions, including drought, physical injury and disease. These recordings serve as the foundation for the first systematic library of plant airborne sounds. This dataset supports future machine learning applications for sound classification, diagnostics, and stress detection.
4. Functional role of acoustic signaling in plant-plant communication
We initiated a comprehensive investigation into whether plants can sense and respond to the sounds emitted by other plants under stress, using a combination of automated plant phenotyping, acoustic recording, gene expression profiling, and metabolomic analysis.
These combined studies demonstrate a broad experimental framework for exploring acoustic signaling in plants, moving from ecological interactions to cellular and molecular responses.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Results Beyond the State of the Art
This project presents groundbreaking results that collectively shift the paradigm of how we understand plant communication and environmental sensing.
1. Revealing new sensory modality in plant-insect interactions
Our study on moth oviposition behavior reveals that insects can exploit plant-emitted ultrasonic sounds for host selection. This finding introduces a novel dimension to the field of sensory ecology and opens up new perspectives for pest management strategies using sound cues.
2. Discovery of fast plant responsiveness to animal-generated sounds
The confirmation that plants rapidly alter nectar sugar concentration in response to pollinator sounds challenges the traditional view of plants as passive responders. This supports the concept of plants as active participants in acoustic-based mutualisms and suggests a co-evolutionary component to plant–pollinator acoustic interactions.
3. Establishment of the first airborne plant sound library
Our recordings of plant sounds under specific stress conditions create a unique resource for the scientific community. Combined with advanced AI-driven analysis, this sound library can serve as a tool for early diagnosis of plant stress, with significant applications in precision agriculture and automated crop monitoring.

Impact potential and future needs:

The results of this grant can alter our understanding of plant interaction with their environment, and also have direct relevance for agriculture – from using sounds for improved monitoring of plants, through manipulating pest behavior, and up to improving plant resilience.
To ensure the continued development and application of these findings, several key steps are needed:
Further research to clarify mechanisms of sound perception and emission, and to test ecological validity in natural systems.
Interdisciplinary collaboration bridging plant science, ecology, engineering, and AI.
Collaboration with industry to turn the scientific discoveries into methods that can be applied in agriculture.
This work sets the stage for an entirely new field within plant science and agroecology, with the potential for societal, environmental, and commercial impact.