[tantalor]

Article mentions "short nutrient pulses result in step-like changes" which implies a discrete event, not like continuous leakage.

I wonder about distribution of the sizes of those pulses.

If all the pulses are basically the same size, then a trigger over the total is indistinguishable from "counting" the number of pulses.

Otherwise, yeah it's not really like "counting" at all.

[samatman]

I'm pretty sure (having read the same two paragraphs as anyone else) that the pulses were caused artificially in the experiment. The pulses let them demonstrate that the spores can passively soak up potassium to a certain threshold, then activate. The interesting part being that the process doesn't cost the spore energy.

This is more like measurement than counting, imho. Something of an osmotic thermostat, ionostat perhaps.