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Deep in the North Island Forests of New Zealand, a zombie tree lays dreaming.
Ecologists [and co-equal authors] Sebastian Leuzinger and Martin Bader spotted [an] apparently dead kauri pine tree stump (Agathis australis) [...], but it showed something that dead trees don't have: sap running through it.
Testing of water flows in the stump and its neighbors reveals that the kauri pine tree's neighbors are keeping the foliage free stump alive. But why?
Leuzinger and his colleagues think the tree stump's roots have been grafted together with roots from other trees, something that is known to happen when trees sense they can share resources with the trees around them. These grafts allow trees to form a type of 'superorganism' in a forest, and help groups of trees improve their collective stability.
In this case however
It's not clear yet what the surrounding trees get out of a deal like this. The researchers say one possible[sic] is that the connections were formed when the stump was still a healthy tree, and it's simply not letting go.
Maybe the surrounding trees get to extend their own root networks, and gather more water and nutrients, by keeping the connection to the stump.
The ecologists note that "More research is going to be needed to find out for sure."
Not touched on is what we are all thinking - that the dead tree is in control, slowly and inexorably spreading as the other trees scream in terrified tree speak, a leaf rustle here, a scrape of bark there, crying out for our help in their desperation...but we cannot hear them.
Journal Reference
"Hydraulic Coupling of a Leafless Kauri Tree Remnant to Conspecific Hosts" M.K-F. Bader, S. Leuzinger. iScience, July 25,2019 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2019.05.009
(Score: 5, Interesting) by choose another one on Sunday July 28 2019, @08:45AM (1 child)
I think it is unlikely, but if trees have feelings then plants do too, so the Vegan movement will disappear...
Possibly, but there is a simpler explanation which it looks like the authors are leaning towards: the trees get an advantage from connecting their root systems together when alive (larger network more resilient to small scale localised changes in environment), and that this advantage outweighs the "cost" of keeping the occasional dead stump alive. This is not dissimilar to the way animals and humans have evolved to co-operate - basically strength in numbers outweighs the cost of the group/tribe supporting the odd sick/old/injured individual.
What I would be more interested in for further research is the genetic diversity of the "super organism" - if you introduced an unrelated tree of the same species (trees in same area are often related - the apple doesn't fall far...) would it join roots or do the tress keep it "in the family" so to speak? Do different tree species join root systems (that would be very interesting and slightly freaky - inter-species super organism)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 29 2019, @12:16AM
And vegans? Or will they move on to eating those things which only perish by natural causes? And how many such vegans could the world support?