How do trees send messages?

I read that some trees can send messages to others of the same type when they are being attacked by infestations of certain bugs.

What happens is that one tree in a stand gets attacked and produces toxins but the other nearby trees that have no infestation will also produce the same toxins.

So how is it done and how does one tree pick up the information from another?

I assume that producing the toxins uses up resources so they are not produced all the time, only when necessary.

Tch! wrong forum,

Any chance of a move to GQ ?

feeling kind of silly this morning…
they say:

“Leaf me alone!”

Why, they bark, of course. They say “Bough-wow!”

Perhaps slythe’s concedaring the request - yew never know.

I was tempted to leaf it in IMHO, but I con-seed that it wood be better suited in the GQ branch of the SDMB.

yeah, he was bark-ing up the wrong tree.

Email I think!

No no no. Just kindling… errr kidding. I think that maybe the trees secrete a chemical from their roots that says “SHIT, all these bugs are attacking me!! Don’t worry about me, save yourselves!!!” The other trees absorb this chemical in their roots and they know what’s going on. So they start producing the appropriate toxins to ward off the infestation. Yes that is definitely it. Or maybe it’s the email.

They distribute leaflets, of course.

I would think that it would be obvious…they blow their huorns.
I haven’t been able to find any supporting documentation, but my memory was that trees secrete something akin to pheromones that, airborne, migrate from tree to tree. The pheromone-like substance is absorbed by nearby trees and triggers an “attack” response.

Gosh, what a sap I am - I thought acorns sent oak signals. But I’m pretty sure shrubs use gorse code.

I love puns as much as the next guy, but

PLEASE STOP!! My eyes are now bleeding!

Yeah, it’s the pheromones, I think… And a special notice to tomndebb for his gratuitous Tolkien reference :slight_smile: (looking for a Treebeard smiley)

jb-- if you don’t like it, why don’t you make like a tree and leave?

Bbbllouurggghhhhh

that is the sound of one man yakking. cngrats, greenbean.

If there is one tree in the middle of a meadow, all these bugs attack it and he screams out to the other trees but there aren’t any around to hear it, does it make a noise?

      • Not exactly an answer to the OP, but I read somewhere that there was evidence that some bugs could tell the health of a tree by listening to it. As a tree dies, the wood dries out and cracks and splits, emitting extremely short quiet bursts of ultrasonic waves. Some bugs that need dead wood to lay their eggs in can apparently hear this noise, and are attracted to it. - MC

Well, there’s no smoke without fire - perhaps these days the tree logs on. Or phone’s other tree’s. You know, a tree ring.
(Casdave - nothing to do with you just an opportunity for a pun fest. Sorry, can’t help with the question)

From The Chemical Defenses of Higher Plants - Gerald Rosenthal

“The study of inducible defense was recently taken a dramatic step further by the work of David F. Rhoades of the University of Washington, as well as that of Jack C. Schultz and Ian Balwin, then at Dartmouth College. It has been established that when the Sitka willow, Salix sitchensis, is attacked by insects, its leaf quality (a measure of its suitability as a food resource for insects) deteriorates. Rhoades noted, however, that the leaf quality of near-by willows-even willows that had not been attacked-also seemed to deteriorate. Perhaps, Rhoades suggested, the attacked tree produces a signal, analogous to an insect’s alarm pheromone, that travels through the air to induce defensive responses in neighboring, unattached trees. Schultz and Balwin tested Rhoades’s hypothesis by planting seedlings of the sugar maple, Acer saccharum, in two separate growth chambers. They found that plants that had been damaged intentionally, as well as plants in the same growth chamber as the damaged ones, tended to produce greater quantities of tannins and phenolics, two defensive compounds, than plants grown in a separate chamber. Although these studies have not definitively proved the existence of communicative chemical defense by plants, they have generated great interest in attempts to prove that pheromonal comunication between trees may actually take place.”

Yeah, no more puns, we need to get to the root of the problem. We should just keep these jokes locked up in a trunk! :smiley: Honestly, though, I’m stumped. :D. That’s my last post for a week, I’m off to my dad’s! I guess I have to make like a tree and get out of here (thanks to Back to the Future).