Getting hit by lightning is good for some tropical trees | Hacker News Reader

Getting hit by lightning is good for some tropical trees

caryinstitute.org

141 pointssohkamyung64 comments

Reminds me of how (small and regular) forest fires are actually healthy for giant sequoias.

> Giant sequoia cones are serotinous, which means that fire on the forest floor causes them to dry out, open and release their seeds. This adaptation ensures that the tree times the release of most of its seeds to coincide with fire, which creates ideal conditions for regeneration success. Fire burns off woody debris and exposes the soil, it creates an ash layer that returns nutrients to the soil and increases sunlight by killing some of the competing pines and firs.

https://www.savetheredwoods.org/interactive/giant-sequoia-an...

These types of plants are pyrophytes [1].

The Eucalyptus is one that encouraging fires with its oily leafs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrophyte

“If you explained trees to someone who’d never heard of them—towers that drink through their feet, turn light into food, and whisper through fungal cables—they’d think it’s the craziest tech ever invented.” Add this to the list

I was surprised to learn that two randomly selected trees are not likely to be more closely related than any two other randomly selected plants. They're not a family but rather a strategy that evolution has rediscovered several times separately.

If there is light-powered life on other planets, it has probably figured out how to tree also.

There was a huge revolution in understanding taxonomy when we started actually genetically testing various organisms. Before then, we had to categorize things based on the fossil record and based on similar structures, but it turns out a lot of very similar looking things aren't actually more related to each other than they are to very dissimilar looking things.

I do think there's an argument to be made that there should be a paradigm that describe organisms that are functionally the same within an ecosystem but genetically quite different other than "convergent evolution."

For an animal example with pretty specific niches, various kinds of tenrec look and behave very similarly to various types of hedgehogs and shrews, to the point that they can be mistaken for each other at a glance, but are in a completely different order of species.

I think the paradigm you're looking for is Plato's Theory of the Forms.

Half-joking.

I just think that while it's scientifically fascinating, and great as a fun fact to say "There's no such thing as trees actually, they're just related to various other plants" and "There's no such thing as fish, actually, they're all related to different other species" it's also useful to have a word that refers to all tall, woody plants or all gilled-vertebrates.

Either way, better Plato than Pliny.

>"There's no such thing as fish"

fun fact, your average bony fish is more closely related to us than it is to a shark

The word "fish" historically meant more or less any animal in the sea, which to my understanding included whales, seals, sea turtles, shrimp, shellfish, starfish, jellyfish, etc.

Phylogenetically, there is also a relevant group, but we call them "chordates" instead.

And then there’s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation

That would be interesting, a taxonomy of niches.

We already have the concept of "tree", "grass", etc. it would just need to be formalized

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution

There's a lot we don't know about what life would look like on other planets, but there would be trees and there would be crabs.

> They're not a family but rather a strategy that evolution has rediscovered several times separately.

I don't think that is true. My understanding would be more "all angiosperms are trees, and the ones that aren't woody are sort of doing a neoteny. They still usually have "latent tree genes", and so it fairly "easy" to evolve back and forth between small herb and big tree.

Do you mean 2 randomly selected trees for the same specie?

Otherwise that statement is not surprising at all.

It’s somewhat surprising to me. If you take any two furry animals, they are more closely related to each other than to a lizard.

Right, that was my thinking. Though frequently incorrect, it is intuitive that similar things are more closely related than dissimilar thing.

Not really true. Kiwi birds are very furry (unless you define furry as having mammalian hair, which sort of defeats the point) and are more related to lizards than to mammals.

Well, I suppose the more striking statement is that you can find two trees and two bushes such that there is a tree/bush pair that is closer related than the tree/tree pair.

Ginkgo biloba (Ginkgo/Maidenhair Tree) https://www.vdberk.com/trees/ginkgo-biloba-mascia/

Pinus strobus (White Pine) https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=PIST

Ephedra sinica (Chinese Ephedra/Ma Huang) https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/135489-Ephedra-sinica

Juniperus horizontalis (Creeping Juniper) https://www.gardenia.net/plant/juniperus-horizontalis-blue-c...

I think visually the first two look alike and the last two look alike. I would phenotypically bucket them together. But the reality of genetic relation is different.

Well no, 2 randomly selected trees for the same species are quite likely to have a recent common ancestor (contrasted with, say, a tree and fish) because they're the same species.

I was under the mistaken impression that "tree" was a phylogenetic thing. Like, they're all descended from some distant great-grandmother-tree or something. The surprising thing was that this is not the case, and many separate species have all discovered how to tree individually.

> whisper through fungal cables

the wood wide web isn't real

yup. https://undark.org/2023/05/25/where-the-wood-wide-web-narrat...

Trees essentially just pump water out of the ground and up to their leaves where it evaporates. They're like big natural humidifiers.

But also through insane negative pressures, otherwise they'd only get water up ~10m

Trees also consume air to grow (they add mass primarily by extracting carbon from CO₂).

tall redwoods also drink fog through their face (leaves and bark)

Really cool, feels like the v1 of the lightning trees from Hyperion. Was hoping there was a breakdown of how the trees accomplish this. Will be interested to see follow up

Clicked on comments to write something about Hyperion, found your comment instead :) Cannot recommend that series enough to anyone who loves science fiction.

Yes, highly recommended - beware, it's 4 long books (which is a good thing), with 1+2 and 3+4 belonging together. And the trees are called Tesla trees ;-)

The Tesla Trees was indeed immediately where my mind went, just give it a few million evolution iterations! And the article not only backs up what the headline indicates - it reads almost as a malevolent adaptation, attracting lightning to eliminate parasites and competition.

I have a grow tent in the basement with tropical shrubs - hibiscus, plumeria, jasmine. Maybe it's time to make a Tesla coil...

I think the title is misleading. The lightning strike isn't itself good for those trees. It just eliminates competition for resources by killing less resilient surrounding plants and trees.

So... it winds up being good for the trees?

I interpret the title as that the tree itself is benefiting from it. Like your example with exercise which causes damage but increases fitness by "over"healing. But that is impacting the training person itself. While in the tree case the tree probably suffers from the lightning strike and also doesn't experience a fitness increase - just the surrounding plants all wither more than the benefiting tree. So, given this line of thinking - I find the title misleading. From that perspective it probably isn't misleading to everybody.

You're right.

"Getting hit by lightning is good for some tropical trees, since it can withstand the strike, but its competition cannot" might be the more verbose but complete title.

No.

Lightning striking the tree is bad. It damages it, full stop.

Lightning striking the trees surrounding it is good, because it kills them, and it gets more resources and grows more.

But the two events tend to happen together, because lightning hits several trees at once.

So the title is, indeed, incorrect. It's confused about which trees are being hit, and which trees are benefiting.

Obviously the best-case scenario for the tree is to have lightning strike next door, killing neighboring trees with no damage whatsoever to yourself.

Working out damages muscles, but it's still good for you, the organism as a whole, as the end result of that process is positive.

In this case, it really is good for the trees, to the point where they may have evolved to encourage the strikes:

> The trees may have even evolved to act as lightning rods.

> But in 2015, while working in Panama, Gora and his colleagues came across a Dipteryx oleifera tree that had survived a strike with little damage — even though the jolt had been strong enough to blast a parasitic vine out of its crown and kill more than a dozen neighboring trees.

> “Seeing that there are trees that get struck by lightning and they’re fine was just mind blowing,” Gora recalled. Over time, the team encountered other D. oleifera trees thriving after getting hit, so they decided to take a closer look.

> “These data provide the first evidence that some trees benefit from being struck by lightning,” the authors write. Or, as Gora puts it, “It's better off for a Dipteryx oleifera tree to be struck than not.”

> The trees may have even evolved to act as lightning rods.

Scientists: Let's get near these dangerous lightning rod trees to study them!

Typical scientist behavior, really.

Nope.

"with little damage".

That's damage.

"It's better off for a Dipteryx oleifera tree to be struck than not" -- because its neighbors will be struck and killed. Not because it got struck.

The article presents zero evidence that being struck by lightning has any direct beneficial effects. It's not like how muscles grow back stronger. It's more like, a horrible disease maimed you and killed your neighbors, but now you can eat better because you're raising crops in their backyards. But the disease didn't make you healthier!

At least this is according to the facts the article presents.

Not all damage is bad.

Callouses on our feet are useful damage. Vining plants need branches to break off to promote new vining. Deciduous trees drop their leaves. Humpback whales do belly flops to dislodge parasites.

Evolving to be more likely to get struck by lightning means they're freed of parasitic vines more frequently. That's beneficial damage.

You're confusing two different kinds of damage.

There is the kind that makes you stronger or more adapted -- muscles, callouses. Then there's the kind that's just bad. Injuries, the flu, stress. Lightning is the second kind. The tree doesn't get stronger. The tree doesn't adapt. It just gets damaged.

If someone whacks me on the head so I get concussed, but kills a bee in the process about to sting me, are you going to say that whacking me on the head was "beneficial damage"? That would be crazy. Sure it's helpful that some vines get killed. That's something separate from the damage caused by the lightning to the tree. The tree is still damaged from it, in the bad way.

Is sharpening a knife damaging it? It gets a bit philosophical I suppose.

It actually helps the tree by killing parasitic vines. Based on just the parasites, it could be beneficial to the tree to get hit directly compared to only nearby trees dying.

Similarly, trees like Longleaf pine, Giant sequoia, and Coast redwood have adapted to not only tolerate but thrive through fire. Some even require fire to reproduce.

Card carrying member of the Australian Plant Society here! Prior to flowering plants (Angiospermae; 140MYA) we had ferns (Polypodiopsida; 360MYA) and Fungi (>1000MYA).

I suspect a large number of Australian fern species, especially those with elevated situations (epiphytes) such as Asplenium (colloquially "Birds Nest Ferns") and Platycerium ("Staghorns" and "Elkhorns") as well as those with substantial frond sizes Todea barbara ("King Fern") or Pteridium esculentum ("Bracken Fern") or tree-like stature Cyathea/Dicksonia ("Tree Ferns") may have evolved partly to benefit from fire for spore release and long distance transmission due to fire-related updrafts. This could make sense because they may usually otherwise be 'trapped' in high moisture locations without due to an absence of strong updrafts facilitating ascending to higher altitudes yielding potential for longer distance transmission. Just as ferns are often the first greenery to emerge from winter landscapes in the northern hemisphere, ferns are often the first visible greenery to return to burned bushland... after moisture.

Based on their age I suspect a large number of fungi probably respond to fire, especially subterranean species that are likely subject to only partial thermal trauma.

Stepping back from fire to lightning, I similarly suspect "getting hit by lightning" and/or consequent canopy opening elicits a fungal response which also benefits trees that are victim to lightning strike.

Also Xanthorrhoea which is adapted to fire but doesn't require it.

Serotiny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotiny

Australian eucalyptus trees also require fire to reproduce. The oil in the leaves is there to intensify the fire, destroying competing species.

Not true. There are many eucalypts. Some benefit from fire. Others benefit from cold. Most require neither and some probably require different seed release or germination stimuli.

A primary evolutionary purpose of the oils seems to be as a pathogen resistance measure, being antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal.

Also re: lightning and living things, from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43044159 :

> "Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms" (2024)

> "Gamma rays convert CH4 to complex organic molecules [like glycine,], may explain origin of life" (2024)

Anyone know what makes these trees better able to take the hit? Do they insulate their trunks and hope to channel the strike through parasitic vines and competing trees? Or do they grow some kind of highly conductive guide to easily channel the strike to ground?

Neither seems plausible to me. The first perhaps is a bit less unlikely... I presume there is a third option that I missed.

Given that these trees may be intentionally attracting lightning to kill their neighbors, I wonder what the nature of their day-to-day interactions are like under the soil. Have other species evolved to attack these trees? Do they even know?

They (likely) don't know. They know that if they act as lightning rods, their chances of survival are inreased by burning parasitic vines. And they know that, because it worked.

Given that there was enough time to make the trees lightning-resistant, I'm surprised there isn't a lightning-resistant parasitic vine as well!

Fascinating stuff. :)

Earth has figured out the optimal way to operate over millions and millions of years of trial and error.

Our job is to get out of the way.

Earth has figured out a bunch of good enough ways to operate. They are by no means always optimal, especially as situations change.

We have knee problems because we evolved fairly recently from creatures that didn't walk upright on asphalt all the time.

We are part of Earth too. One of many species to rise and maybe fall.

Unfortunately each tree will only be hit once.

Wut?

I think it's a joke playing off of "lightning never strikes the same place twice".

Fairly surprised there was no mention of nitrogen fixation in the article.

outstanding, a lightning trap for nearby plants, and maybe nearby animals i wonder

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