Data from: State dependence, personality, and plants: light-foraging decisions in Mimosa pudica (L.)

Plants make foraging decisions that are dependent on ecological conditions, such as resource availability and distribution. Despite the field of plant behavioral ecology gaining momentum, ecologists still know little about what factors impact plant behavior, especially light-foraging behavior. We made use of the behavioral reaction norm approach to investigate light foraging in a plant species that exhibits rapid movement: Mimosa pudica. We explored how herbivore avoidance behavior in M. pudica (which closes its leaflets temporarily when disturbed) is affected by an individual’s energy state and the quality of the current environment and also repeatedly tested the behavior of individuals from two seed sources to determine whether individuals exhibit a “personality” (i.e., behavioral syndrome). We found that when individuals are in a low-energy state, they adopt a riskier light-foraging strategy, opening leaflets faster, and not closing leaflets as often in response to a disturbance. However, when plants are in a high-energy state, they exhibit a plastic light-foraging strategy dependent on environment quality. Although we found no evidence that individuals exhibit behavioral syndromes, we found that individuals from different seed sources consistently behave differently from each other. Our results suggest that plants are capable of making state-dependent decisions and that plant decision making is complex, depending on the interplay between internal and external factors.

植物会做出依赖于生态条件的觅食决策，例如资源可获得性与分布格局。尽管植物行为生态学领域发展势头迅猛，但生态学家对哪些因素会影响植物行为，尤其是光觅食行为，仍知之甚少。本研究采用行为反应规范法（behavioral reaction norm），对一种具有快速运动能力的植物——含羞草（Mimosa pudica）的光觅食行为展开探究。我们探讨了含羞草的避植食行为（受干扰时会暂时闭合小叶）会受到个体能量状态与当前环境质量的何种影响；同时还反复测试了来自两种种子来源的个体的行为，以判断个体是否表现出“个性”（即行为综合征（behavioral syndrome））。研究结果表明，当个体处于低能量状态时，它们会采取更具风险的光觅食策略：更快地展开小叶，且受干扰时更少闭合小叶。而当植物处于高能量状态时，它们会展现出依赖环境质量的、具有行为可塑性的光觅食策略。尽管未发现个体存在行为综合征的证据，但我们发现来自不同种子来源的个体的行为始终存在显著差异。本研究结果提示，植物具备做出状态依赖型决策的能力，且植物的决策过程十分复杂，取决于内部与外部因素之间的相互作用。