There was an experiment where a scientist (I think it was Pask) built a cybernetic chemical machine in a petri dish. When the requirement to respond to sound was introduced, the machine grew "ears": spines of different lengths (that therefore vibrated at different resonant frequencies like the hairs in the inner ear.) (One of the most fascinating and terrifying experiments ever conducted IMO.)
Then there was the famous case of the program optimized by genetic programming that wouldn't function correctly on any but the FPGA it was evolved on; the program had adapted itself to idiosyncrasies of the hardware that were invisible on the level of the specification.
Just as Lord Kelvin's Thunderstorm evolves an electric charge so evolution, uh, evolves whatever potentialities are there and adaptive.
In sum, duh. Of course plants are sensitive to sound. The contradictory hypothesis would be that there's nothing useful to plants in their soundscape. And doesn't that sound obviously silly?
Then there was the famous case of the program optimized by genetic programming that wouldn't function correctly on any but the FPGA it was evolved on; the program had adapted itself to idiosyncrasies of the hardware that were invisible on the level of the specification.
Just as Lord Kelvin's Thunderstorm evolves an electric charge so evolution, uh, evolves whatever potentialities are there and adaptive.
In sum, duh. Of course plants are sensitive to sound. The contradictory hypothesis would be that there's nothing useful to plants in their soundscape. And doesn't that sound obviously silly?