A groundbreaking new international study reveals a striking level of intelligence and communication among spruce trees, one that resembles collective animal behaviour, reports SciTechDaily
When JRR Tolkien described the trees as “whispering to each other, passing news and plots along in an unintelligible language” in his famed series The Lord of the Rings, he could not have predicted that more than 70 years later, a team comprising scientists from the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Australia would prove exactly that.
According to a study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, spruce trees are not only talking to each other, they are anticipating solar eclipses hours in advance and responding with synchronised bioelectrical signals in a display of forest-wide coordination.
The study also found that older trees show a stronger early reaction, suggesting an environmental memory spanning decades that may help them in signaling younger trees about upcoming events. Their findings add to a growing body of evidence that plants are active members of their ecosystems, capable of communication and complex, coordinated behaviours that are normally associated with animals.
“This study illustrates the anticipatory and synchronized responses we observed are key to understanding how forests communicate and adapt, revealing a new layer of complexity in plant behavior,” one of the study’s lead authors, Professor Monica Gagliano of Southern Cross University, Australia, told SciTechDaily. “Basically, we are watching the famous ‘wood wide web’ in action!”
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The multinational, interdisciplinary team made this remarkable discovery using custom-built sensors deployed across a forest in the Dolomites, a mountain range in northeastern Italy. Recording simultaneous bioelectrical responses from multiple trees, their analysis revealed that the electrical activity of individual trees became significantly more synchronised before and during a solar eclipse, indicating that the trees are able to coordinate and function as a unified living system in response to external events.
“By applying advanced analytical methods – including complexity measures and quantum field theory – we have uncovered a deeper, previously unrecognized dynamic synchronization not based on matter exchanges among trees,” explained Professor Alessandro Chiolerio of the Italian Institute of Technology and University of the West of England, the other lead author on the study.
“We now see the forest not as a mere collection of individuals, but as an orchestra of phase-correlated plants.”
The findings also illustrate the importance of preserving older trees, which appear to guide the collective response of the forest. “This discovery underscores the critical importance of protecting older forests, which serve as pillars of ecosystem resilience by preserving and transmitting invaluable ecological knowledge,” Gagliano told SciTechDaily.
The strong early response of old trees “speaks volumes about their role as memory banks of past environmental events,” she added.
