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Assessment of Circalunar (~Monthly) Rhythms

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Circadian Clocks

Part of the book series: Neuromethods ((NM,volume 186))

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Abstract

Moonlight is the strongest naturally and predictably occurring nocturnal light source. Thus, many species have adapted to use moonlight as a reliable timing cue, either by directly reacting to moonlight or by entraining inner oscillators, like the monthly circalunar clock.

Natural moonlight is characterized by intensity, spectrum, and complex timing, which regularly changes every night and across additional timescales. In order to understand the molecular and cellular machineries underlying moon-controlled physiology and behavior, lab experiments with organisms exhibiting well-documented lunar cycles are important. Tools such as TALEN- or Cas9/Crispr-engineered mutants or transgenesis are crucial to move from correlative studies to causal relationships. However, lab experiments face the problem that commonly used artificial light sources differ greatly from sun- and moonlight.

To start to overcome this limitation, we have developed naturalistic sun- and moonlight sources, which closely mimic the natural light environment.

We highlight the use of these naturalistic sun- and moonlight sources using the marine bristle worm Platynereis dumerilii, which controls its timing of reproduction with a circalunar clock. Importantly, while designed for Platynereis research, these methods can also be relatively easily adapted and used to study the effects of moonlight and/or monthly oscillator systems of other species. Finally, we provide an overview on statistical analyses of circalunar data sets.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Perutz Labs, University of Vienna, Vienna BioCenter, Vienna, Austria

    Birgit Poehn & Kristin Tessmar-Raible

  2. Research Platform “Rhythms of Life”, University of Vienna, Vienna BioCenter, Vienna, Austria

    Birgit Poehn & Kristin Tessmar-Raible

  3. Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany

    Kristin Tessmar-Raible

  4. Carl-von-Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, Germany

    Kristin Tessmar-Raible

Authors
  1. Birgit Poehn
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  2. Kristin Tessmar-Raible
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kristin Tessmar-Raible .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan

    Tsuyoshi Hirota

  2. Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan

    Megumi Hatori

  3. Regulatory Biology Laboratory, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Satchidananda Panda

1 Electronic Supplementary Materials

Sexual metamorphosis of Platynereis dumerilii causes clear behavioral changes (female). The video shows a mature, yellow-colored female swimming in circles. In contrast, the immature/premature worms settle at the bottom and display crawling behavior (MOV 71165 kb)

Sexual metamorphosis of Platynereis dumerilii causes clear behavioral changes (male). The video shows a mature, red−/white-colored male swimming in the culture box. In contrast, the immature/premature worms settle at the bottom and display crawling behavior (MOV 34876 kb)

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Poehn, B., Tessmar-Raible, K. (2022). Assessment of Circalunar (~Monthly) Rhythms. In: Hirota, T., Hatori, M., Panda, S. (eds) Circadian Clocks. Neuromethods, vol 186. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2577-4_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2577-4_10

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  • Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-2576-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-2577-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Protocols

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