Very cool article. Who knew that plants communicate with each other? This reminded me about something I read about a while ago about a defense mechanism that bacteria use to protect the colony. I tried searching for it, but so far no luck. However, I did find another interesting behavior of our old friend, the tomato plant ...

When under attack by caterpillars, tomato plants release the chemical methyl jasmonate. This gives the tomato leaves an unpleasant taste, so the caterpillars (hungry as they are) start eating each other. Basically, the plant capitalizes on a trait of these nasty little beasts: when food is scarce, they turn into cannibals! And just as we saw in your research, @jaki01, the release of methyl jasmonate is a signal to neighboring tomato plants to take the same defensive measure.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2017/07/10/cannibal-caterpillars-tomato-plants/#.WglGzVtSxaQ

I have new-found respect for tomato plants. :)