Circadian rhythms in the Limulus visual system

Circadian rhythms in the Limulus visual system.

A circadian clock in the Limulus brain generates efferent optic nerve activity at night. The endogenous activity begins near dusk, continues during the night, and stops near dawn. Approximately 10 to 20 efferent fibers in each lateral optic nerve trunk fire in close synchrony with one another and with the efferent fibers in the opposite nerve trunk producing bursts of nerve impulses at night. T...

Behavioral Correlates of Circadian Rhythms in the Limulus Visual System

A clock in the brain of Limulus generates circadian rhythms in retinal sensitivity. We examined the relation between behavioral responses to light and circadian changes within the visual system. Our first experiment recorded unconditioned movements of the telson (tail) elicited by a constant level of illumination of the lateral eyes at different times of the day while an animal remained in the ...

Efferent control of circadian rhythms in the Limulus lateral eye.

Circadian rhythms in Limulus photoreceptors. I. Intracellular studies

The sensitivity of the lateral eye of the horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus, is modulated by efferent optic nerve impulses transmitted from a circadian clock located in the brain (Barlow, R. B., Jr., S. J. Bolanowski, and M. L. Brachman. 1977. Science. 197:86-89). At night, the efferent impulses invade the retinular, eccentric, and pigment cells of every ommatidium, inducing multiple anatomica...

Circatidal and circadian rhythms of locomotion in Limulus polyphemus.

The nocturnal increases in the sensitivity of the lateral eye of Limulus polyphemus, the species of horseshoe crab found along the Atlantic coast, have beenfirmly established as being controlled by an endogenous circadian clock ( 1, 2, 3) located in the brain (4). Virtually nothing is known, however, about the control of the animal's behavioral rhythms of mating and spawning that are observed i...