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Science 12 October 2001:
Vol. 294. no. 5541, p. 261
DOI: 10.1126/science.294.5541.261f
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This Week in Science
The use of Earth's magnetic field for orientation by vertebrates is the subject of two reports (see the news story by Brown). After hatching in Florida, young loggerhead sea turtles migrate within the North Atlantic gyre surrounding the Sargasso Sea. Lohmann et al. (p. 364) investigated the orientation of hatchling loggerheads in different magnetic fields corresponding to three different geographical positions at the periphery of the gyre. The young turtles orient in the different fields in ways that help to keep them within the gyre, which suggests that the young turtles are genetically programmed to the local geomagnetic field. The sensory and neural basis of magnetic field orientation has been determined in a mammal by Nemec et al. (p. 366). Neurons in the superior colliculus of the Zambian mole rat, which leads an almost entirely subterranean existence, can be selectively activated by magnetic field stimuli.
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)
