Comment on 'Lack of evidence for associative learning in pea plants'

Monica Gagliano; Vladyslav V Vyazovskiy; Alexander A Borbély; Martial Depczynski; Ben Radford

doi:10.7554/eLife.61141

Comment on 'Lack of evidence for associative learning in pea plants'

Elife. 2020 Sep 10:9:e61141. doi: 10.7554/eLife.61141.

Authors

Monica Gagliano^{1

2}, Vladyslav V Vyazovskiy³, Alexander A Borbély⁴, Martial Depczynski⁵, Ben Radford⁵

Affiliations

¹ The Biological Intelligence (BI) Lab, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Camperdown, Australia.
² School of Science and Engineering and School of Creative Industries, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, Australia.
³ Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
⁴ Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
⁵ Australian Institute of Marine Science, The Oceans Institute, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia.

Abstract

In 2016 we reported evidence for associative learning in plants (Gagliano et al., 2016). In view of the far-reaching implications of this finding we welcome the attempt made by Markel to replicate our study (Markel, 2020). However, as we discuss here, the protocol employed by Markel was unsuitable for testing for associative learning.

Keywords: associative learning; ecology; memory; phototropism; pisum sativum; plant biology; plant growth; replication.

Publication types

Comment

MeSH terms

Conditioning, Classical*
Pisum sativum*

Grants and funding

TWCF0313/Templeton World Charity Foundation/International