Oh cool! Aegle strikes again with an awesome article. Makes you muse and wonder if the reverse ever happens.. that a bacteria alters a plants leaves to go to flowering more often, in order to attract more pollinators and thus transport of itself. Or if any pollinator interactions ever originated as such. Or if they have ever altered flower structure/scents with the result of an increase in dispersal.
I get to speculating after a beer or two. I'm sure the bacterial/plant interactions run deeper than we know.. along with the endophytic fungal interactions too. A very unexplored and fascinating horizon of study. It was some crazy number I heard in my plant biology course recently.. atleast over 50% of plants have fungal endophytes! makes you wonder who's producing what when it comes to alkaloids and things. Anyhow, thanks for the share!!
Living to Give