Journal article
Chemical compass behaviour at microtesla magnetic fields strengthens the radical pair hypothesis of avian magnetoreception
- Abstract:
- The fact that many animals, including migratory birds, use the Earth’s magnetic field for orientation and compass-navigation is fascinating and puzzling in equal measure. The physical origin of these phenomena has not yet been fully understood, but arguably the most likely hypothesis is based on the radical pair mechanism (RPM). Whilst the theoretical framework of the RPM is well-established, most experimental investigations have been conducted at fields several orders of magnitude stronger than the Earth’s. Here we use transient absorption spectroscopy to demonstrate a pronounced orientation-dependence of the magnetic field response of a molecular triad system in the field region relevant to avian magnetoreception. The chemical compass response exhibits the properties of an inclination compass as found in migratory birds. The results underline the feasibility of a radical pair based avian compass and also provide further guidelines for the design and operation of exploitable chemical compass systems.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 652.9KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-019-11655-2
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 10
- Issue:
- 2019
- Article number:
- 3707
- Publication date:
- 2019-08-16
- Acceptance date:
- 2019-07-15
- DOI:
- ISSN:
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2041-1723
- Pubs id:
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pubs:1040021
- UUID:
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uuid:77f1e229-7343-493e-a978-e2315b1f0c30
- Local pid:
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pubs:1040021
- Source identifiers:
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1040021
- Deposit date:
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2019-08-08
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Kerpal et al
- Copyright date:
- 2019
- Notes:
- © Author(s) 2019. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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