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Alonso, J. C., Abril-Colón, I., & Palacín, C. (2021). Moonlight triggers nocturnal display in a diurnal bird. Animal Behaviour, 171, 87–98.
Abstract: The importance of nocturnal display in diurnal birds has been neglected for a long time, owing to the difficulties in recording behaviour by night. Using loggers with an accelerometer (ACC) we studied nocturnal display in male African houbara bustards, Chlamydotis undulata, ssp. fuertaventurae. Diurnal display of male houbaras consists of a visual component, the display run, and an acoustic component, the boom. Nocturnal display runs were only recorded twice, both on full moon nights. Nocturnal booming intensity was highest on full moon nights when it reached similar levels to those during peak diurnal display at dawn. The more favourable physical conditions for sound transmission and the reduced acoustic competition with wind and other birds at night have been proposed to explain nocturnal vocalizing. Minimizing copulation disruptions, a frequent intramale competition mechanism in bustards, could be an additional advantage of nocturnal display. However, these factors do not explain why vocal activity is highest on full moon nights. We suggest that moonlight may help displaying males to detect predators, as well as to communicate visually with approaching females. Moonlight also allows males to combine booms with visual signals produced by the white neck feathers exposed during booming into more efficient multimodal signals. Moonlight would thus ultimately lead to males achieving nocturnal copulations, which indeed might be more frequent than previously thought, according to rates of nocturnal ACC-recorded precopulatory movements. Finally, nocturnal booming sequences had almost twice as many booms as diurnal ones, which suggests that nocturnal vocalizations transmit higher-quality information about signalling males than diurnal vocalizations. Nocturnal booming significantly increased the total display time of male houbara bustards; thus, future studies should investigate whether nocturnal vocal activity represents an important contribution to individual fitness in this and other nocturnally vocalizing diurnal species.
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Bautista-Covarrubias, J. C., Zamora-Ibarra, P. A., Apreza-Burgos, E., Rodriguez-Ocampo, A. N., Peraza-Gomez, V., Lopez-Sanchez, J. A., et al. (2020). Immune response and oxidative stress of shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei at different moon phases. Fish Shellfish Immunol, 106, 591–595.
Abstract: Moon phases influence the molting process of shrimp, which affect other physiological processes as immune response. This study analyzed some parameters of immune response: total hemocytes counts (THC), hemolymph clotting time and superoxide anion (O2(-)) production, total protein concentration, superoxide dismutase activity, and the presence of Vibrio spp. in Litopenaeus vannamei at different moon phases. The highest percentage of organisms in intermolt stage was observed in the first quarter moon phase (95%). The highest THC was observed at new moon phase, which was significantly different (p < 0.05) than that observed at the third quarter phase. Hemolymph clotting time and CFU values of Vibrio spp. showed no significant difference (p > 0.05) between different moon phases. The higher (p < 0.05) mean O2(-) production value (0.400 +/- 0.168 nmol min(-1) mL(-1)) was determined in hepatopancreas at new moon phase. No relationship was observed between O2(-) and SOD activity, indicating that this antioxidant response was enough to counteract the influence of oxidative stress in L. vannamei at different moon phases.
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Ben-Attia, M., Reinberg, A., Smolensky, M. H., Gadacha, W., Khedaier, A., Sani, M., et al. (2016). Blooming rhythms of cactus Cereus peruvianus with nocturnal peak at full moon during seasons of prolonged daytime photoperiod. Chronobiol Int, 33(4), 419–430.
Abstract: Cereus peruvianus (Peruvian apple cactus) is a large erect and thorny succulent cactus characterized by column-like (cereus [L]: column), that is, candle-shaped, appendages. For three successive years (1100 days), between early April and late November, we studied the flowering patterns of eight cacti growing in public gardens and rural areas of north and central Tunisia, far from nighttime artificial illumination, in relation to natural environmental light, temperature, relative humidity and precipitation parameters. Flower blooming was assessed nightly between 23:00 h and until at least 02:00 h, and additionally around-the-clock at ~1 h intervals for 30 consecutive days during the late summer of each year of study to quantify both nyctohemeral (day-night) and lunar patterns. During the summer months of prolonged daytime photoperiod, flower blooming of C. peruvianus exhibited predictable-in-time variation as “waves” with average period of 29.5 days synchronized by the light of the full moon. The large-sized flower (~16 cm diameter) opens almost exclusively at night, between sunset and sunrise, as a 24 h rhythm during a specific 3-4-day span of the lunar cycle (full moon), with a strong correlation between moon phase and number and proportion of flowers in bloom (ranging from r = +0.59 to +0.91). Black, blue and red cotton sheets were used to filter specific spectral bands of nighttime moonlight from illuminating randomly selected plant appendages as a means to test the hypothesis of a “gating” 24 h rhythm phenomenon of photoreceptors at the bud level. Relative to control conditions (no light filtering), black sheet covering inhibited flower bud induction by 87.5%, red sheet covering by 46.6% and blue sheet covering by 34%, and the respective inhibiting effects on number of flowers in bloom were essentially 100%, ~81% and ~44%. C. peruvianus is a unique example of a terrestrial plant that exhibits a circadian flowering rhythm (peak ~00:00 h) “gated” by 24 h, lunar 29.5-day (bright light of full moon) and annual 365.25-day (prolonged summertime day length) environmental photoperiod cycles.
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Breitler, J. - C., Djerrab, D., Leran, S., Toniutti, L., Guittin, C., Severac, D., et al. (2020). Full moonlight-induced circadian clock entrainment in Coffea arabica. BMC Plant Biol, 20(1), 24.
Abstract: BACKGROUND: It is now well documented that moonlight affects the life cycle of invertebrates, birds, reptiles, and mammals. The lunisolar tide is also well-known to alter plant growth and development. However, although plants are known to be very photosensitive, few studies have been undertaken to explore the effect of moonlight on plant physiology. RESULTS: Here for the first time we report a massive transcriptional modification in Coffea arabica genes under full moonlight conditions, particularly at full moon zenith and 3 h later. Among the 3387 deregulated genes found in our study, the main core clock genes were affected. CONCLUSIONS: Moonlight also negatively influenced many genes involved in photosynthesis, chlorophyll biosynthesis and chloroplast machinery at the end of the night, suggesting that the full moon has a negative effect on primary photosynthetic machinery at dawn. Moreover, full moonlight promotes the transcription of major rhythmic redox genes and many heat shock proteins, suggesting that moonlight is perceived as stress. We confirmed this huge impact of weak light (less than 6 lx) on the transcription of circadian clock genes in controlled conditions mimicking full moonlight.
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Brown, D. R. (1952). Natural illumination charts. Research and Development Project NS 714-100, .
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