Life Science log

An international collaboration led by a University of Pennsylvania anthropologist has shown that environmental factors, like temperature and light, play as much of a role in the activity of traditionally nocturnal monkeys as the circadian rhythm that regulates periods of sleep and wakefulness.The study also indicates that when the senses relay information on these environmental factors, it can influence daily activity and, in the case of a particular monkey species, may have even produced evolutionary change. It is possible, according to the study results, that changes in sensitivity to specific environmental stimuli may have been an essential key for evolutionary switches between diurnal and nocturnal habits in primates. The study also provides data to better understand all life cycles.Researchers set out to examine the hypothesis that masking, the chronobiology term for the stimulation or inhibition of activity, was largely caused by changing environmental factors that affected the Azara's owl monkeys' inte