Abstract/Summary

The cognitive ecology of non-neural organisms like plants and fungi is a new and controversial research field that has gained momentum since the turn of the century. Many studies have suggested that plants and fungi perceive and respond plastically to their environment, implement behaviours that maximise their chances of survival, and that they have the ability to store memories, learn and communicate. However, little is known about how these phenomena occur and what underpins it. This is not only a scientific question, but also philosophical, with deep implications for what we understand by cognition. This thesis sought to contribute to this debate by focusing on the symbiotic relationship between mycorrhizal fungi and plants. After a general introduction situating the thesis in the epistemological debate and describing the challenge of establishing methods to study the cognitive ecology of plants and fungi in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 departs from the post-cognitivist tradition to build the hypothesis that the cognitive process of plants can be extended to that of mycorrhizal fungi when they are in symbiosis. Chapter 3 describes a failed attempt to test this hypothesis with the use of Perspex microcosms. Chapter 4 focused on the putative cognition of ectomycorrhizal fungi and how memory could be involved in its foraging behaviour, a hypothesis not supported by the evidence gathered during this study. Chapter 5 describes the successful attempt of using electrophysiological equipment to record the spontaneous and evoked electrical signalling of different fungal species, suggesting that this signalling could have the key to understand, in part, the complex and plastic behaviours these organisms present. The thesis concludes with Chapter 6, a rumination on the philosophical and practical challenges of both traditional and alternative views of cognition in non-neural organisms.