Information and Communication Theoretical Foundations of Plant Communication: Mechanisms, Models, and Empirical Approaches
Plants exchange information through chemical, electrical, and mechanical signaling, engaging not only with neighboring plants but also with insects, animals, and microorganisms. These interactions support a broad range of ecological functions, from resource coordination and reproductive signaling to collective responses to environmental change. Despite extensive biological documentation of these processes, their systematic analysis from an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) perspective remains limited. This article addresses that gap as a tutorial with survey elements. It first establishes the biological foundations of plant communication across chemical, mechanical, and electrical modalities, covering the full range of interacting agents and signal functions. Building on this foundation, it reformulates plant signaling within ICT frameworks by defining transmitter, channel, and receiver models for each modality and introducing the relevant mathematical descriptions. Empirical studies and state-of-the-art sensing approaches are then reviewed to ground the models in experimental reality and identify where theory and measurement diverge. The paper concludes with a lessons learned section that distills cross-cutting insights on the fidelity of biology-to-ICT mappings, the distinctive channel properties of plant communication, multimodal coupling, receiver design principles, and observability constraints. By integrating biological depth with communication-theoretic rigor, this article provides a comprehensive foundation for the communications research community and identifies the open problems that will define interdisciplinary progress in this field.