""Granted, "[p]lants have extensive and well established mechanisms of communication, with that of volatiles being the most well studied and understood," he added. "There is also growing recognition that root exudates play a role in plant-plant interactions, though this is only now being deeply investigated. Nothing else, communication through mychorriza, has withstood independent investigation.""
""We measured [weather-related elements like] temperature, relative humidity, rainfall and daily solar radiation," Chiolerio told Ars. "None of them shows strong correlation with the transients of the electrome during the eclipse. We did not measure environmental electric fields, though; therefore, I cannot exclude effects induced by nearby lightnings. We did not have gravitational probes, did not check neutrinos, cosmic rays, magnetic fields, etc.""
""I'm not going to debate an unpublished critique in the media, but I can clarify our position," Gagliano told Ars. "Our [2025] paper reports an empirical electrophysiological/synchrony pattern in the eclipse window, including changes beginning prior to maximum occultation, and we discussed candidate cues explicitly as hypotheses rather than demonstrated causes. Describing weather/lightning as 'more parsimonious' is not evidence of cause. Regional lightning strike counts and other proxies can motivate a competing hypothesis, but they do not establish causal attribution at the recording site without site-resolved, time-aligned field measurements. Without"
A critique argued the original experiment tested only a single interpretation and should have compared multiple hypotheses, calling the approach pseudoscientific and promoting a worldview. Established plant communication mechanisms include volatile signaling and emerging evidence for root exudates in plant-plant interactions, while mycorrhizal-mediated communication lacks independent verification. The experimental team reported electrophysiological synchrony during a solar eclipse, with changes beginning before maximum occultation, and noted weather variables showed no strong correlation with electrome transients. The team acknowledged lacking measurements of environmental electric fields, gravitational probes, neutrinos, cosmic rays, and magnetic fields, and insisted regional lightning counts do not establish causal attribution without site-resolved, time-aligned field data.
Read at Ars Technica
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