The Ditto among plants, a vine with 12 kinds of leaves?!

Look at the two leaves below. Their shapes, sizes, and leaf arrangements are completely different. They definitely look like two different plants... But in fact, the leaves indicated by the letter V in the two pictures belong to the same plant - Boquila trifoliolata. Boquila trifoliolata is known as the "master of plant disguises", and cosplaying different leaves is the best trick of this plant.

Chamaecyparis chamaecyparis (V) and the different hosts they mimic (T) | Gianoli and Carrasco-Urra / Current Biology (2014)

Plant mimicry is rare in nature, and even rarer is proven. But this woody vine in the temperate rainforests of South America has taken plant mimicry to an incredible level. The chameleon can mimic at least 12 host tree species, and it may have mimicked all the trees in a forest.

01

The Master of Transformation in Plants

Chamaemelum is a member of the family Akebia, which has some edible wild fruits called August fry and cat shit. Chamaemelum is also a climbing woody vine, and its leaves are the same as theirs, with shiny three-lobed leaves.

Original appearance of the leaves of Chaenomeles sinensis | Wikipedia

But once it attaches itself to a host, everything changes - every aspect of its leaves changes, and it is clearly reorganizing and remodeling itself in the image of the host. Field surveys show that they can mimic at least 12 different hosts.

The leaves of each host are different. Some have sharp teeth at the end of the leaves, some have small serrations on the edges, some are wider, and some are smaller, which fully reflects the saying "there are no two identical leaves in the world". Scientists used 11 leaf traits as the standard for comparison and found that the leaves of the chafing herb and the host are very similar in 9 traits, including leaf angle, leaf size, petiole length and leaf color. The chafing herb has achieved a perfect simulation, mixed in with the host leaves, to the point where it is difficult to tell the real from the fake at a glance.

Different chamomile plants grow different leaves, not because the plants grow in different environments, that is, environmentally caused plant heterophylly. Although the mimic chamomile plants have different hosts, they are all in the same area and have the same habitat, which shows that they have changed completely to adapt to the leaves of the host. Moreover, if the chamomile plants have attached themselves to leafless trunks or have not yet attached themselves to a host, their leaves do not show mimicry. This also confirms that the changes in the leaves of the chamomile plants are "actively" simulating the leaves of the host.

Chamaecyparis chamaecyparis (V) and the different hosts they mimic (T) | Gianoli and Carrasco-Urra / Current Biology (2014)

Seeing this, you must have a bold idea: let a chameleon plant take on different hosts to see if they can change as much as possible. Observations in the wild give us a direct yes - the same chameleon plant can indeed mimic different hosts when it shuttles between different hosts. Maybe we should try to place different hosts layer by layer like stairs along the height of the climb to test the limit of its mimicry.

02

The secret of cross-dressing is still a mystery

Why does the chameleon go to great lengths to mimic its host? Scientists have found that compared to individuals that do not have a host or do not mimic it, those chameleons that blend into the leaves of the host have a significantly lower risk of being preyed upon.

By perfectly blending into the host's leaf environment, they share the same fate with the host, vividly demonstrating "I am not here to destroy this family, but to join this family". Moreover, the chameleon vines only take advantage of their height and climb to places with more sunlight, so their leaf density is generally lower than that of the host. After mimicking and blending into the host, even if a predator comes, the host is at greater risk of being eaten than the chameleon vines.

Statistics of predation intensity of different Chaenomeles chaenomeles individuals when attached to a host (left), not attached to a host (center), and attached to a leafless tree trunk (right) | Gianoli and Carrasco-Urra / Current Biology (2014)

However, although the chameleon has achieved an amazing mimicry effect, we still don't know how it does it. The chameleon is still just a vine. Even if it attaches to a host, it only "brushes" with the host; they are not parasitic plants and will not integrate into the host's interior to steal the host's nutrients and information. This is amazing, how do they obtain information about the leaves of different hosts to achieve precise mimicry?

Since the chamomile seems unable to obtain information about the host through physical contact, researchers speculate that it may be "wireless" signals that transmit information about the host. For example, volatile gases (VOCS) produced by the host plant may provide information and play a role in matchmaking; but there is no research on whether volatile gases can convey all aspects of leaf information. Some scientists even suspect that the chamomile may have a "sky eye" that can infer the shape of the leaves through the light that passes through the host leaves; however, although the plant's photosensitivity is very sensitive, no research has shown that it can reach such a detailed and keen level.

A chamaecyparis mimics the leaves of different hosts | Gianoli and Carrasco-Urra / Current Biology (2014)

Now, the chamaejasminoides have left us with countless incarnations, and the secrets behind these incarnations are still unknown. Its mimicry is not only a very interesting phenomenon, but may also hide valuable information about plant communication and plant "senses" that we need to explore.

References

Gianoli and Carrasco-Urra, Leaf Mimicry in a Climbing Plant Protects against Herbivory, Current Biology (2014)

Author: Zhou Fang

Editor: pee pee shrimp

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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