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Circadian Patterns of Locomotor Activity and Body Temperature in Blind Mole-Rats, Spalax ehrenbergi

Department of Physiology and Neurobiology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269

S.L. Goldman

Department of Physiology and Neurobiology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269

A.P. Riccio

Department of Physiology and Neurobiology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269

J. Terkel

Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel

A wide variety of organisms exhibit circadian rhythms, regulated by internal clocks that are entrained primarily by the alternating cycle of light and darkness. There have been few studies of circadian rhythms in fossorial species that inhabit a microenvironment where day-night variations in most environ mental parameters are minimized and where exposure to light occurs only infrequently. In this study, daily patterns of locomotor activity and body tem perature (T_b) were examined in adult blind mole-rats (Spalax ehrenbergi). These fossorial rodents lack external eyes but possess rudimentary ocular structures that are embedded in the Harderian glands and covered by skin and fur. Most individual mole-rats exhibited circadian rhythms of locomotor activity, but some animals were arrhythmic. Individuals that did exhibit robust rhythms of loco motor activity also showed rhythms of T_b. In most cases, T_b was highest during the phase of intense locomotor activity. Locomotor activity rhythms could be entrained to light:dark cycles, and several mole-rats exhibited entrainment to non-24-h light cycles (T-cycles) with period lengths ranging from T = 23 h to T = 25 h. Some individuals also showed entrainment to daily cycles of ambient temperature. There was considerable interindividual variation in the daily pat terns of locomotor activity among mole-rats in virtually all the conditions of environmental lighting and temperature employed in this study. Thus, whereas it appears likely that photic cues have a significant role in the entrainment of circadian rhythms in mole-rats, the amount of variability in rhythm patterns among individuals appears to be much greater than for most species that have been studied.

Key Words: mole-rat • circadian rhythm • fossorial

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