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New critique debunks claim that trees can sense a solar eclipse [arstechnica.com]:

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Last year, a team of scientists presented evidence that spruce trees in Italy’s Dolomite mountains synchronized their bioelectrical activity in anticipation of a partial solar eclipse—a potentially exciting new insight into the complexities of plant communication. The findings [royalsocietypublishing.org] naturally generated media interest and even inspired a documentary [vimeo.com]. But the claims drew sharp criticism from other researchers in the field, with some questioning [livescience.com] whether the paper should even have been published. Those initial misgivings are outlined in more detail in a new critique [cell.com] published in the journal Trends in Plant Science.

For the original paper, Alessandro Chiolerio, a physicist at the Italian Institute of Technology, collaborated with plant ecologist Monica Gagliano of Southern Cross University and several others conducting field work in the Costa Bocche forest in the Dolomites. They essentially created an EKG [unsw.edu.au] for trees, attaching electrodes to three spruce trees (ranging in age from 20 to 70 years) and five tree stumps in the forest.

Those sensors recorded a marked increase in bioelectrical activity during a partial solar eclipse on October 22, 2022. The activity peaked mid-eclipse and faded away in its aftermath. Chiolerio et al. interpreted this spike in activity as a coordinated response among the trees to the darkened conditions brought on by the eclipse. And older trees’ electrical activity spiked earlier and more strongly than the younger trees, which Chiolerio et al. felt was suggestive of trees developing response mechanisms—a kind of memory captured in associated gravitational effects. Older trees might even transmit this knowledge to younger trees, the authors suggested, based on the detection of bioelectrical waves traveling between the trees.

Soon, other plant scientists weighed in, expressing strong skepticism and citing the study’s small sample size and large number of variables, among other concerns. Justine Karst, a forest ecologist at the University of Alberta in Canada, unfavorably compared [livescience.com] Chiolerio et al.’s findings to a 2019 study claiming evidence for the controversial “wood-wide web [bbc.co.uk]” concept, in which trees communicate and share resources via underground networks of mycorrhizal fungi. Karst co-authored a 2023 study [nature.com] demonstrating insufficient evidence for the wood-wide-web.

Science or pseudoscience?

Ariel Novoplansky, an evolutionary ecologist [researchgate.net] at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, was among those who objected to the study’s publication—so much so that he co-authored the new critique with his Ben-Gurion colleague Hezi Yizhaq. He thinks it’s far more likely that the spikes in bioelectrical activity were due to temperature shifts or lightning strikes.

“My serious doubts had arisen from the very basic premise regarding the adaptive rationale the entire study hinged upon—namely, that those trees would be functionally affected by such a minor ‘passing cloud’ effects of such a (very) partial eclipse [with] a mere 10.5 percent reduction in sunlight for two hours,” Novoplansky told Ars. “I then thought about the possibility that thunderstorms might be involved in the heightened ‘anticipatory’ electrical activity of the trees, and it rolled from there.”

The forest trees frequently experience far greater fluctuations in cloud cover, and hence light quality and quantity, than occurred during the partial eclipse, according to Novoplansky. He also objected to the suggestion of older trees sharing prior eclipse “knowledge” with younger trees, pointing out that each solar eclipse follows a unique path. So even if older trees “remembered” an earlier eclipse, it would not translate into being able to anticipate future ones. And any gravitational changes associated with a partial eclipse would be minor, on par with a new moon. Thus, for Novoplansky [eurekalert.org], the 2025 paper “represents the encroachment of pseudoscience into the heart of biological research.”

“This field of plant behavior/communication is rampant with poorly designed ‘studies’ that are then twisted into a narrative that promotes personal worldviews and/or enhances personal celebrity,” said James Cahill, a plant ecologist at the University of Alberta in Calgary, Canada, who voiced objections [livescience.com] when the original paper was published and is cited in Novoplansky’s acknowledgements. “The textbook example of this is the [Suzanne] Simard ‘mother tree’ debacle [wikipedia.org]. Ariel is trying to get the science back on track, as are many of us.”

(Cahill recently co-authored [nih.gov] a paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution on the issue of cognition in plants, including commentary on “how we might stop fighting and do actual science.”)

“He puts forward logical alternative hypotheses,” said Cahill of Novoplansky’s critique. “The original work should have tested among a number of different hypotheses rather than focusing on a single interpretation. This is in part what makes it pseudoscience and promoting a worldview.”

Granted, “[p]lants have extensive and well established mechanisms of communication, with that of volatiles being the most well studied and understood,” he added. “There is also growing recognition that root exudates play a role in plant-plant interactions, though this is only now being deeply investigated. Nothing else, communication through mychorriza, has withstood independent investigation.”

Chiolerio and Gagliano stand by their research, saying they have always acknowledged the preliminary nature of their results. “We measured [weather-related elements like] temperature, relative humidity, rainfall and daily solar radiation,” Chiolerio told Ars. “None of them shows strong correlation with the transients of the electrome during the eclipse. We did not measure environmental electric fields, though; therefore, I cannot exclude effects induced by nearby lightnings. We did not have gravitational probes, did not check neutrinos, cosmic rays, magnetic fields, etc.”

“I’m not going to debate an unpublished critique in the media, but I can clarify our position,” Gagliano told Ars. “Our [2025] paper reports an empirical electrophysiological/synchrony pattern in the eclipse window, including changes beginning prior to maximum occultation, and we discussed candidate cues explicitly as hypotheses rather than demonstrated causes. Describing weather/lightning as ‘more parsimonious’ is not evidence of cause. Regional lightning strike counts and other proxies can motivate a competing hypothesis, but they do not establish causal attribution at the recording site without site-resolved, time-aligned field measurements. Without those measurements, the lightning/weather account remains a hypothesis among other possibilities rather than a supported or default explanation for the signals we recorded.”

“We acknowledged the limited sample size and described the work as an initial field report; follow-up work is ongoing and will be communicated through peer-reviewed channels,” Gagliano added. As for the suggestion of pseudoscience, “I won’t engage with labels; scientific disagreements should be resolved with transparent methods, data, and discriminating tests.”

“It seems that the public appeal is something particularly painful for the colleagues who published their opinion on Trends in Plant Science,” Chiolerio said. “We did not care about public appeal, we wanted to share as much as possible the results of years of hard work that led to interesting data.”

DOI: Trends in Plant Science, 2026. 10.1016/j.tplants.2025.12.001 [doi.org]  (About DOIs [arstechnica.com]).

DOI: A. Chiolerio et al., Royal Society Open Science, 2025. 10.1098/rsos.241786 [doi.org]  (About DOIs [arstechnica.com]).

Journal Reference:
Redirecting, (DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2025.12.001 [doi.org])
Just a moment..., (DOI: 10.1098/rsos.241786 [doi.org])

Original Submission