(PhysOrg.com) -- To survive, leafy plants need to take in as much carbon dioxide as possible through pores in their leaves without losing water. Known as stomata, these pores somehow work together, processing and exchanging the information necessary to open and close at opportune times to achieve constant, optimal balance.
An amazing and puzzling aspect of this process is that plants have no central processing unit, says Utah State University physicist David Peak.
“What we’re observing is a very primitive form of intelligence,” Peak says. “But how these stomata communicate, in what amounts to a sophisticated social network, remains a mystery.”
Peak and colleague Keith Mott, a professor of plant physiology at USU, have studied the function of stomata in intact leaves, with an emphasis on information processing, for nearly a decade. The team challenged a recent study on stomatal responses to radiant energy in a paper published in the Nov. 21, 2011 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
