alt Hacker News> I haven't seen any convincing explanations on what the plant's advantage would be.
It doesn't have to be an advantage in emitting clicking sounds, just more advantageous to the plant overall lifelong wellbeing to be that way.
(This is not my field, but I wonder) is it more expensive to be silent than noisy?
This study (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5543975/) hints that repairing cavitation damage is expensive.
Selection mostly says losing traits tend to become rare, and winning traits more common. It doesn’t have much to say about benign traits. That which does not kill you makes you weirder.