Phase response curve and RNA-sequencing demonstrate spiders’ sensitivity to light and pinpoint candidate light-responsive genes
- 1Department of Biology, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, United States of America
- 2Department of Biological Sciences, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, United States of America
Abstract
Spiders can maintain a wide range of free-running periods while still being entrained to a 24-hour day. To investigate the underlying mechanism of this entrainment, we constructed the phase-response curve (PRC) for the orb weaver, Metazygia wittfeldae, by subjecting the spiders to one-hour light pulses at various times throughout the circadian day. The resulting type 0 PRC showed high amplitude (> 6 hour) phase advance and delays when the light pulse was applied during circadian time (CT) 16–18, including a break point of delays to advances. We then investigated the genetic mechanism of response to light by splitting M. wittfeldae adult females entrained to 12 hours light:12 hours dark (LD 12:12) into two groups. One group received a 1-hour light pulse 5 hours after lights off (equivalent to CT17), and the other group did not. We then sacrificed spiders for RNA isolations 1 and 10 hours after the light pulse. We identified numerous genes that were downregulated by the light pulse 1 hour after the pulse relative to no pulse group. Intriguingly, many of these genes had a flipped pattern of expression 9 hours later – the pulse group had higher expression than the no pulse group. We also identified clock gene homologs in M. wittfeldae that had distinct expression patterns from other arthropods.
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BibTeX
@article{toporikova2026phase,
title = {{Phase response curve and RNA-sequencing demonstrate spiders’ sensitivity to light and pinpoint candidate light-responsive genes}},
author = {Natalia Toporikova and Wenduo Cheng and Leyuan Qian and Andrew Mah and Thomas Clarke and Thomas C. Jones and Darrell Moore and Nadia A. Ayoub},
journal = {PLOS One},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0344063},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0344063},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Phase response curve and RNA-sequencing demonstrate spiders’ sensitivity to light and pinpoint candidate light-responsive genes
AU - Natalia Toporikova
AU - Wenduo Cheng
AU - Leyuan Qian
AU - Andrew Mah
AU - Thomas Clarke
AU - Thomas C. Jones
AU - Darrell Moore
AU - Nadia A. Ayoub
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/23
JO - PLOS One
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0344063
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0344063
AB - Spiders can maintain a wide range of free-running periods while still being entrained to a 24-hour day. To investigate the underlying mechanism of this entrainment, we constructed the phase-response curve (PRC) for the orb weaver, Metazygia wittfeldae, by subjecting the spiders to one-hour light pulses at various times throughout the circadian day. The resulting type 0 PRC showed high amplitude (> 6 hour) phase advance and delays when the light pulse was applied during circadian time (CT) 16–18, including a break point of delays to advances. We then investigated the genetic mechanism of response to light by splitting M. wittfeldae adult females entrained to 12 hours light:12 hours dark (LD 12:12) into two groups. One group received a 1-hour light pulse 5 hours after lights off (equivalent to CT17), and the other group did not. We then sacrificed spiders for RNA isolations 1 and 10 hours after the light pulse. We identified numerous genes that were downregulated by the light pulse 1 hour after the pulse relative to no pulse group. Intriguingly, many of these genes had a flipped pattern of expression 9 hours later – the pulse group had higher expression than the no pulse group. We also identified clock gene homologs in M. wittfeldae that had distinct expression patterns from other arthropods.
SN - 1932-6203
ER -