Kin recognition by self-referent phenotype matching in plants

When plants of Arabidopsis thaliana are cultivated in rows ofcoetaneous kin neighbours (plants of the same accession) thegrowth of their leaves is horizontally reoriented towards the emptyspaces out of the row, increasing self-shading and reducing mutualshading among plants (Fig. 1a). This growth pattern is notobserved among nonkin plants (plants of a different accession) ornoncoetaneous plants. The leaf-position response requires similarbody shapes and hence vertical light profiles perceived byneighbours, a requisite not fulfilled by nonkin plants (Fig. 1c).Based on these observations Crepy & Casal (2015) concluded thatplants are able to recognize kin neighbours by the matching of theirbody shapes (phenotype matching). In their letter Till-Bottraud&de Villemereuil (2015) question whether this is actually a case of?kin recognition or phenotype matching?.Fil: Crepy, Maria Andrea. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura; Argentina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria; ArgentinaFil: Casal, Jorge José. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura; Argentina. Fundación Instituto Leloir; Argentin