ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2017
A light-dependent magnetoreception mechanism insensitive to light intensity and polarization.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 54 citations in OpenAlex.
- From skylight cues to magnetic fields: the toolkit of insect long-distance navigation.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Review
- A hybrid compass mechanism combining radical pairs and magnetite crystals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Cryptochrome 4b protein is probably irrelevant for radical pair-based magnetoreception in the European robin.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Biophysical mechanism of animal magnetoreception, orientation and navigation.Scientific reports · 2024Review
- Species-specific circuitry of double cone photoreceptors in two avian retinas.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Adaptive evolution and loss of a putative magnetoreceptor in passerines.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- SkyPole-A method for locating the north celestial pole from skylight polarization patterns.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Gauge-and-compass migration: inherited magnetic headings and signposts can adapt to changing geomagnetic landscapes.Movement ecology · 2023Article
- Kinetics of cone specific G-protein signaling in avian photoreceptor cells.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2023Article
- Driven Radical Motion Enhances Cryptochrome Magnetoreception: Toward Live Quantum Sensing.The journal of physical chemistry letters · 2022Article
- Magnetoreceptory Function of European Robin Retina: Electrophysiological and Morphological Non-Homogeneity.Cells · 2022Article
- Double cones in the avian retina form an oriented mosaic which might facilitate magnetoreception and/or polarized light sensing.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Localisation of cryptochrome 2 in the avian retina.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2022Article
- Double Cones and the Diverse Connectivity of Photoreceptors and Bipolar Cells in an Avian Retina.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2021Article
- Article
- Cryptochromes in Mammals and Birds: Clock or Magnetic Compass?Physiology (Bethesda, Md.) · 2021Article
- Cryptochrome 1 mediates light-dependent inclination magnetosensing in monarch butterflies.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Angular Precision of Radical Pair Compass Magnetoreceptors.Biophysical journal · 2021Article
- The Magnetic Compass of Birds: The Role of Cryptochrome.Frontiers in physiology · 2021Review
- Electroretinographic study of the magnetic compass in European robins.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Billions of migratory birds navigate thousands of kilometres every year aided by a magnetic compass sense, the biophysical mechanism of which is unclear. One leading hypothesis is that absorption of light by specialized photoreceptors in the retina produces short-lived chemical intermediates known as radical pairs whose chemistry is sensitive to tiny magnetic interactions. A potentially serious but largely ignored obstacle to this theory is how directional information derived from the Earth's magnetic field can be separated from the much stronger variations in the intensity and polarization of the incident light. Here we propose a simple solution in which these extraneous effects are cancelled by taking the ratio of the signals from two neighbouring populations of magnetoreceptors. Geometric and biological arguments are used to derive a set of conditions that make this possible. We argue that one likely location of the magnetoreceptor molecules would be in association with ordered opsin dimers in the membrane discs of the outer segments of double-cone photoreceptor cells.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.