From Craig Morris, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
James Wong examined the evidence that playing music benefits plants and notes that, while plants cannot hear, they can respond to vibrations, although which types of music and sound affect them positively or negatively remain unknown (22 November, p 43).
A 2018 study in Ecology and Evolution addressed this by testing the music group AC/DC’s claim that “rock and roll ain’t noise pollution” using soybean plants, aphids and ladybirds. Exposure to rock music and urban noise reduced ladybird predation, leading to higher aphid densities and, through weakened trophic cascades, lower plant biomass, demonstrating that certain loud sounds can disrupt predator-prey-plant interactions and, ultimately, contradicting AC/DC’s claim that rock and roll is harmless to plants.
