Nonhuman communication
Every information exchange between living organisms — i.e. transmission of signals that
involve a living sender and receiver can be considered a form of communication, and even
primitive creatures such as corals are competent to communicate. Nonhuman communication
also include cell signaling, cellular communication, and chemical transmissions between
primitive organisms like bacteria and within the plant and fungal kingdoms.
Animals
The broad field of animal communication encompasses most of the issues in ethology.
Animal communication can be defined as any behavior of one animal that affects the current
or future behavior of another animal. The study of animal communication called zoo
semiotics (distinguishable from anthroposemiotics, the study of human communication) has
played an important part in the development of ethology, sociobiology, and the study of
animal cognition. Animal communication, and indeed the understanding of the animal world
in general, is a rapidly growing field, and even in the 21st century so far, a great share of
prior understanding related to diverse fields such as personal symbolic name use, animal
emotions, animal culture and learning, and even sexual conduct, long thought to be well
understood, has been revolutionized.
Plants and fungi
Communication is observed within the plant organism, i.e. within plant cells and between
plant cells, between plants of the same or related species, and between plants and non-plant
organisms, especially in the root zone. Plant roots communicate with rhizome bacteria, fungi,
and insects within the soil. These interactions are governed by syntactic, pragmatic, and
semantic rules, and are possible because of the decentralized "nervous system" of plants. The
original meaning of the word "neuron" in Greek is "vegetable fiber" and recent research has
shown that most of the microorganism plant communication processes are neuron-like. Plants
also communicate via volatiles when exposed to herbivory attack behavior, thus warning
neighboring plants. In parallel, they produce other volatiles to attract parasites that attack
these herbivores. In stressful situations, plants can overwrite the genomes they inherited from
their parents and revert to that of their grand- or great-grandparents.
Fungi communicate to coordinate and organize their growth and development such as the
formation of Marcelia and fruiting bodies. Fungi communicate with their own and related
species as well as with nonfungal organisms in a great variety of symbiotic interactions,
especially with bacteria, unicellular eukaryotes, plants, and insects through biochemicals of
biotic origin. The biochemicals trigger the fungal organism to react in a specific manner,
while if the same chemical molecules are not part of biotic messages, they do not trigger the
fungal organism to react. This implies that fungal organisms can differentiate between
molecules taking part in biotic messages and similar molecules being irrelevant in the
situation. So far five different primary signaling molecules are known to coordinate different
behavioral patterns such as filamentation, mating, growth, and pathogenicity. Behavioral
coordination and production of signaling substances is achieved through interpretation
processes that enable the organism to differ between self or non-self, a biotic indicator,
biotic message from similar, related, or non-related species, and even filter out "noise", i.e.
similar molecules without biotic content.
Bacteria quorum sensing
Communication is not a tool used only by humans, plants and animals, but it is also used by
microorganisms like bacteria. The process is called quorum sensing. Through quorum
sensing, bacteria are able to sense the density of cells and regulate gene expression
accordingly. This can be seen in both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. This was
first observed by Fuqua et al. in marine microorganisms like V. harveyi and V. fischeri
No comments: