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Seasonality of circadian locomotor activity in an insect

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Abstract

Daily periodic locomotor activity of Carabus auronitens was recorded in a climate-constant laboratory with the animals exposed to naturally changing photoperiods. Most actograms exhibit directed seasonal variations of duration and phase position of daily activity. Seasonal locomotor activity starts in early spring (following dormancy) on a low daily level, first being confined to a short time span around dusk (and even shorter around dawn). In the course of season, the daily onsets of activity become closely related with sunset and the duration of daily activity is steadily extended with both parts of the bimodal phase fusing to a common, unimodal activity band by late spring. Subsequently, it is further extended into forenoon, until in summer (shortly before aestivation), spontaneous phase inversion turns activity periodicity from nocturnality into diurnality within 1 day. Such seasonal variations are paralleled by changes in the precision of synchronization of the individuals' activity rhythms to the entraining light/dark cycle. No geographical differences were detected. The results support the idea of the circadian clock as a system of two dynamically coupled physiological oscillators that invert their phase relation as soon as the natural dark phase falls short of some minimum-tolerable night length.

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Abbreviations

LD:

light/dark cycle

nLD:

natural light/dark cycle

DD:

constant darkness

τ:

endogenous period length

SS:

sunset

SR:

sunrise

PRC:

phase-response curve

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  1. Fachbereich 2 (Biologie/Chemie), Universität Bremen, Postfach 330 440, W-2800, Bremen, 33, Germany

    H. Meyer-Peters

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Meyer-Peters, H. Seasonality of circadian locomotor activity in an insect. J Comp Physiol A 171, 713–724 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00213068

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