At first glance, plants seem relatively immobile and, unlike animals, unable to interact with the surroundings or escape stressful environments. But, although markedly different from those of animals, movement pervades all aspects of plant behaviour. Here, we focused our investigation on the approaching movement of climbing plants, that is the movement they perform to reach-to-climb a support. In particular, we examined whether climbing plants evolved a motor accuracy mechanism as to improve the precision of their movement and how this eventually differs from animal species. For this purpose, by means of three-dimensional kinematical analysis, we investigated whether climbing plants have the ability to correct online their movement by means of secondary submovements, and if their frequency production is influenced by the difficulty of the task. Results showed, not only that plants correct their movement in flight, but also that they strategically increase the production of secondary submovements when the task requires more precision, exactly as humans do. These findings support the hypothesis that the movement of plants is far cry from being a simple cause-effect mechanism, but rather is appropriately planned, controlled and eventually corrected.

乍一看，植物似乎相对静止，与动物不同，植物无法与周围环境互动或逃避压力环境。但是，尽管运动与动物明显不同，但运动却遍及植物行为的各个方面。在这里，我们的研究重点是攀缘植物的接近运动，即它们攀爬支撑物的运动。特别是，我们研究了攀缘植物是否进化出了一种运动精确度机制来提高其运动的精确度，以及这最终与动物物种有何不同。为此，通过三维运动学分析，我们研究了攀缘植物是否具有通过二次子运动在线校正其运动的能力，以及它们的频率产生是否受到任务难度的影响。结果表明，植物不仅会在飞行中纠正其运动，而且当任务需要更精确时，它们也会策略性地增加次级子运动的产生，就像人类所做的那样。这些发现支持这样的假设：植物的运动远非简单的因果机制，而是经过适当的计划、控制和最终纠正的。