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Recording electrical signals from a #passiflora using a custom array of #microneedles inserted into the stem just below a leaf. #biology #plants

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— Phyclops Project - We Listen To Plants (@phyclopsproject.bsky.social) Aug 10, 2025 at 4:24 PM

Question this experiment will answer:
Can a geomagentic storm alter the electrical signalling patterns of a Conifer (Picea alba)?

We know that animal species can sense the earth’s geomagnetic field. Many bird species use their magnetoreception for navigation. Some cetaceans such as dolphins and orcas also sense the magnetic field and use it for navigating long distances through the oceans. It is believed that when geomagnetic disturbances (storms) ocurr these marine mammals can temporarily lose their sense of direction. More recently it was shown that at least one ant species uses the geomagnetic field as an additional cue for finding their way back to their nest.

Plants do not move and sensing the earth’s magnetic field for the purpose of ortientation may not give them any significant advantage as it does to the motile animal species mentioned, however since geomagnetic storms are mostly caused by abrupt changes in the particle flow and the spectral output of the sun and plants are very sensitive to different wavelengths of light, even if they don’t sense geomagnetism directly they could be sensing the associated changes in photon spectral composition and react to it, for example to protect their sensitive photosynthetic machinery.

Unfortunately we had to stop this experiment on 7. June 2025 after six months of data collection because our equipment was stolen from the field site. We lost one environmental recorder and two plant signal recorders “Minions”.

Luckily we have developed a new type of plant signal recorder, the Phyclops One v2 which is much easier to use than the “Minions”. We also sell it at a very competitive price.

Setting up a new plant and geomagnetism experiment or instead creating a completely different experiment related to plant associative learning (plant intelligence) will be much quicker with the Phyclops One v2.

The latest video below summarizes the three-step analysis we performed on the geomagnetic and plant data to answer our research question. We find that it is unfortuntantely not possible to identify a reaction to geomagnetic disturbances by performing voltage measurements on the stem of a mid-sized conifer.

All videos for the Geomagnetism long-run experiment

Newest

Introduction

Geomagnetic Kp-index (global indicator for disturbances of the Earth’s magnetic field)

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What can you do with this ?

Software tools, firmware and documentation

Example: How to connect it to a plant (Indoor/Outdoor)

Board with all components in place (some soldering is required)

(Some soldering is required)

Download from bioRxiv

Download from github

A sample of the data used in this research paper is available on Zenodo

After calibrating two amplifier Version 4 boards and hooking them up to the microcontroller two new cases were built. Unintentionally they turned out to look like Minions, which is why I am tempted to call them just that.

The goal is to set them up over the next couple of days in a new field location. One will be connected to a douglas fir, the other one to a piece of dead wood as a control.

After a week of design work, 3-4 weeks of prototype testing on a breadboard connected to an Avocado plant the final design was sent out to the company doing the fabrication. Just three weeks later I received the five amplifier boards that I had orded and, to my great relief, they all worked as intended (phew).

It is time to look at improving the amplifier design and to come up with a better, less noisy instrumentation amplifier that I can use in outdoor and indoor plant electrical recordings. Since the amplifier is, in my view, the most important component of a recording device, it deserves a lot of TLC :)

For more videos see the Phyclops Youtube channel

Conifer (Picea abies) Sample Dataset

Download it from zenodo To request access to the full dataset send an email to phyclops at protonmail dot com. Note that this specific collection of electrophysiology recordings contains unwanted noise, but it can still be useful for getting a ‘feel for the data’, which is why we make it available here. For details on what is being recorded see the included Readme file.

As of October 2024 there are many more different datasets for a variety of other plants both potted and wild, indoor and outdoor.

It is possible to detect the irrigation state (dry/irrigated) of an olive tree by analyzing the recorded electrical signals. It is important to note that this detection method can sense dryness well before it becomes apparent e.g. through wilted or discolored leaves, sagging branches etc.