دانلود کتاب زیست شناسی حسی، ارتباطات، حافظه و هوش گیاهان

This book sets out to explore cognitive abilities in plants. Although nominally a theme that has only been consistently addressed in the last two decades, science has in fact been investigating some of its conceptual bases for a long time, as in the case of studies of plants’ perception and communication skills. In their condition as organisms with no central command structures, such approaches necessarily center on general and individual cellular capacities, avoiding metaphors or analogies with living beings endowed with canonical nervous systems and brains. The intention is that reading this work should help to dispel the prevalent idea that plants are passive organisms and, despite their long evolution in interaction with the environment, only capable of responding to stimuli, an unlikely condition for any living being. At one time, given their sessile condition, plants were considered to be asexual simply because they lacked the means of moving around in search of a partner, a role associated to sexual beings. Even though today we consider such ideas groundless, nevertheless, to some extent we perpetuate the attitude when we consider that because plants lack the sensory organs that typify big animals, they must be insensitive to stimuli such as sounds, smells and touch, in spite of the fact that their sensitivity to gravity and light is well known. Although the effects of many stimuli that plants respond to have been explored, the corresponding sensory apparatuses are still little known as, for example, in the case of responses to temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, atmospheric gases, water, salts, magnetic and electrical fields, all of which are addressed in the first chapter. Plants are not just skillful at detecting the presence and realizing the importance to their development of various elements in the environment, but they are also capable of recognizing themselves and their relatives, of memorizing, learning, communicating and even deliberately modifying the environment to their own benefit and that requires intelligent behavior. Proof of those plant skills set out in this book is evidence that cognitive abilities are not an exclusive characteristic of specific cells of immunological or nervous systems and reveal hitherto unexplored potentialities of cells which are apparently unspecific and occur in various plant tissues and organs. Given the importance of this theme, I felt impelled to write this book which in spite of being essentially based on studies in the field of plant biology is of common interest to all professionals, students and persons imbued with curiosity in the various areas of life and life behavior sciences. Despite the considerable knowledge associated to the themes addressed here, there is still a long way to go and that will certainly require the concerted efforts of professionals in a variety of segments.