HR: 0800h
AN: B31C-1001    [Abstracts]
TI: Magnetite-based Magnetoreception in Animals: 25+ Years of Theory & Experimentation
AU: * Kirschvink, J L
EM: Kirschvink@caltech.edu
AF: Geological & Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, ms 170-25, Pasadena, Ca 91125 United States
AU: Walker, M M
EM: m.walker@auckland.ac.nz
AF: Experimental Biology Research Group, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Private Bag, Auckland, 92019 New Zealand
AB: Living organisms ranging from bacteria through higher vertebrates rely on orientation, navigation, and homing to survive. Any sensory cue that enhances these behaviors will be subject to intense natural selection over geological time. Reproducible behavioral responses to earth-strength magnetic fields(1) have been documented in Bacteria, Protoctists, and in nearly every major group of animals, and are possibly also present in the Archaea. Several groups of animals, including birds and cetaceans, respond behaviorally to magnetic anomalies below 100 nT in magnitude, implying that their magnetoreception ability approaches the thermal noise limit. This approach to thermal noise is commonly observed in other sensory systems, including hearing, olfaction, and electroreception. The hypothesis of magnetite-based magnetoreception(2) is the only theory proposed so far that is capable of explaining all of the magnetic behavioral data. Tiny crystals of single-domain magnetite (or in some bacteria, greigite) rotate the cells of microorganisms passively like a simple compass needle. The initial detection of biogenic magnetite with rock magnetic techniques in birds and bees over 25 years ago has led progressively to the identification of a group of specialized cells in fish and birds which contain organized magnetite-containing structures. In these animals (and presumably all vertebrates) magnetic signals are transmitted to the brain via the ophthalmic branch of the trigeminal nerve(3, 4). Experiments with pulse-remagnetization, like those that convert North-seeking bacteria into South-seekers, have dramatic effects on animal behavior, confirming the role of magnetite in the sensory system. This is therefore a general mechanism for a highly sensitive magnetic sense, the origin of which probably dates to the ancestral metazoan, and perhaps earlier. The largest debate presently occurring in the field concerns the interpretation of magnetic compass responses that vary with intensity and color of light. Some biologists interpret the tendency of birds and amphibians to orient randomly under red lights, but not under shorter wavelengths, as evidence for the existence of a separate compass receptor involving light. However, even some magnetotactic bacteria change their behavior in red light,(5) and all such effects reported to date in animals can be explained simply as a visual influence on an animal's choice of behavior. Although the light-dependent mechanism might be physically plausible for a compass (but not for a high-resolution magnetic), natural selection cannot develop it without a separation from the visual system (exaptation), for which there is no evidence. 1. R. Wiltschko, W. Wiltschko, Magnetic orientation in animals, Zoophysiology (Springer, Berlin, 1995), pp. 297. 2. J. L. Kirschvink, Ph.D. Thesis, Princeton University (1979). 3. J. L. Kirschvink, M. M. Walker, C. Deibel, Current Opinion in Neurobiology 11, 462 (2001). 4. M. M. Walker, T. E. Dennis, J. L. Kirschvink, Current Opinion in Neurobiology 12, 735 (Dec, 2002). 5. R. B. Frankel, D. A. Bazylinski, M. S. Johnson, B. L. Taylor, Biophysical Journal 73, 994 (1997).
DE: 0416 Biogeophysics
DE: 0419 Biomineralization
DE: 0499 New fields (not classifiable under other headings)
DE: 1540 Rock and mineral magnetism
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005