Our Taxa is Best

By Laura Naslund

         Today is my favorite day of the year. Yes, birthdays are exciting, and holidays are filled with wholesome family time, but tonight, the Duke-Carolina (that is the University of North Carolina) men’s basketball game, beats them all. This ferocious battle between rivals, in which students from my beloved university shout “our blue is best” (Duke’s school color is a regal deep blue while Carolina’s school color is a wimpy periwinkle), has me thinking of another fierce rivalry: the rivalry between the plant people and the insect people in our Tropical Biology program. 

            As we have become more comfortable with each other, what started as polite disagreements about the superiority of our respective taxa has escalated into passionate debates. Over some delicious tortas de yuca at dinner a few nights ago, however, our plant-insect duel intensified to its greatest level yet. After some opening salvos about how plants can manufacture their own food and are easier to meet-- yes, “meet” is apparently the term a self-respecting botanist uses when referring to finding a plant--than insects, I threw down what I felt would be the ultimate trump card: insects have behavior. I smugly looked up from my plate expecting to find my opponents with searching expressions, unable to find a proper retort. Much to my surprise, they gave me knowing glances, smiled, and one said, “What makes you think plants don’t have behavior. After all, what is behavior but responding to a stimulus? Plants bend towards light, communicate stress through chemical signals, and alter their growth patterns in response to changes in water and nutrient availability.” I frantically scanned my brain trying to find the definitions of behavior we had discussed in my behavioral ecology course last semester to find one that would exclude plants from having behavior, but, alas, to no avail. I could only sit motionless and hope that someone else would distract the table with another topic of conversation. Mercifully, someone directed the conversation towards the group’s favorite television show and I, for at least the moment, was spared.

            Unwilling to admit defeat, I scoured the internet for papers on the definition of behavior. To my surprise, I found that there remain questions as to what exactly constitutes behavior in ecology literature. With no definitive consensus, I am now left with a decision to make: accept as truth a definition of behavior that excludes plants or find a new indisputable argument to support insect superiority. In the face of such uncertainty, as we have learned to do in our statistics seminars, I must fail to reject my classmates’ claim that plants have behavior. Although I have yet to find my new indisputable evidence that insects are better than plants, I am sure that the insects of Costa Rica will provide me ample inspiration.