Mesological Plasticity as a New Model to Study Plant Cognition, Interactive Ecosystems, and Self-Organized Evolutionary Processes

Abstract

The plasticity of living systems acts at several levels of evolutionary biology including self-organization, phenotypic, phylo-, onto-and epigenetic processes, while mesology is an approach situated in between ecology and phenomenology. After a description of the specific objects of plasticity and mesology as non-dualist studies of the dynamical coupling between beings and their singular milieu, we will develop some arguments regarding the perception-action loop and the sensory flux of informations crossing the evolution of the living, before focusing on recent discoveries about plant electrome. Using for the first time mesological plasticity as a frame to reanalyze the Uexcküll's assertions about Umwelt and meaning-making theories of plants, this chapter shows the leading rule of electromic interfaces in the generation of spontaneous low-voltage variations continuously emitted by plants via electrophytographic or EPG recordings. Used as early markers, EPGs are considered in this framework as natural systems of monitoring and discrimination of environmental stimuli that allow the identification of the electromic signature of a plant-stimulus pair in a given milieu.More generally, we will develop the trajections associated with complex behaviours of plants: a bottom-up transdisciplinary view of co-evolutionary or ecosemiotic processes highlighting their specific sensitive fields and cognitive accesses to experience (their otherness) as well as new phenomenologies about interactive ecosystems and phytosemiotics.

The Electrome of a Parasitic Plant in a Putative State of Attention Increases the Energy of Low Band Frequency Waves: A Comparative Study with Neural Systems

“…Low-frequency cortical oscillations (<1 Hz), such as the K-complex, have been observed in the brain during sleep, and similar low-frequency EPG emissions have been observed in plants [25,45,[75][76][77]. Although these processes cannot be compared directly, the mechanisms underlying the electromes of living organisms present similarities that could reflect a strong mesological plasticity linked to the biology and evolution of living species and their environment [25,45].…”

“…On the other hand, the plant’s perceptive system, including the spontaneous bioelectrical oscillations within plant bodies, involves ion channels that respond to chemical or physical stimuli [ 61 ]. As a result, there is a remarkable convergence in some plant and animal bioelectrical processes that suggest a deep evolutionary origin of the same mechanisms [ 24 , 45 , 62 ]. Plant intrinsic capacity to generate a permanent electromic activity is only now beginning to be explored [ 26 , 40 ].…”

“…C. racemosa and many other plants have predominantly low frequency ranges related to energy expenditure that might increase during operational choice and attention facing external cues [ 9 ]. This phenomenon is remarkable and may have similarities with information processing at the neural scale [ 24 , 25 , 45 , 73 , 74 ].…”

“…Although it would be important to further investigate the links between the cyclic and low-frequency activities in C. racemosa and many other plants, our results indicated that, whatever the cognitive value we attribute to the perceptual process involved (such as selective attention), the operating mode was, in the particular case of the dodder: (1) hostselective (operational choice), (2) energy-intensive (in proportion to the frequencies detected), (3) associated with a possible state of attention on transdisciplinary grounds [9], and (4) of a mesological order (Umwelt of plants, a direct link with their singular milieu [44,45]). This is in line with other studies on electrome complexity [26,40,43], including some that demonstrated specific electromic signatures in pathogen-infected plants [28,46], bioelectric patterns of oscillations recorded in loco in Miconia sp.…”