Seasonal and lunar variability in planaria mobility, and influences from natural fluctuations in the Earth’s geomagnetic field

Planaria mobility data Different planaria were measured every week for one year. Each planaria was measure din a 100mm petri with 20mL of spring water. Underneath the petri dish was 0.5cm grid paper, this was used to count the number of gridlines each planaria crossed in 5minutes. We found an interaction between season and moon phase, where the planaria showed significantly higher grid counts when the Earth was moving through the Summer and Fall seasons during the new moon and first quarter. This is not seen in the other seasons or moon phases. This seasonal timing of this effect coincides with increased background photon emissions, indicating this change may have been influencing the planaria. In another analysis we z-scored the planaria mobility and coded each day there was a planaria that had a z-score greater than 2, because this indicates it was an outlier. We found there to be greater geomagnetic storm activity surrounding days when outliers were present. For the variables DOY = day of year EST = Eastern standard time Grid = number of gridlines crossed in 5 minutes Moon = moon phase, where 0=new moon; 1=first quarter; 2=full moon and 3=third quarter Season; where 0=fall; 1=winter; 2=spring and 3=summer