Strong (type 0) phase resetting of activity-rest rhythm in fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, at low temperature

Amplitude modulation in limit cycle models of circadian clocks has been previously formulated to explain the phenomenon of temperature compensation. These models propose that invariance of clock period (τ) with changing temperature is a result of the system traversing small or large limit cycles such that despite a decrease or an increase in the linear velocity of the clock owing to slowing down or speeding up of the underlying biochemical reactions, respectively, the angular velocity and, thus, the clock period remain constant. In addition, these models predict that phase resetting behavior of circadian clocks described by limit cycles of different amplitudes at low or high temperatures will be drastically different. More specifically, this class of models predicts that at low temperatures, circadian clocks will respond to perturbations by eliciting larger phase shifts by virtue of their smaller amplitude and vice versa. Here, we present the results of our tests of this prediction: We examined the nature of photic phase response curves (PRCs) and phase transition curves (PTCs) for the circadian clocks of 4 wild-type fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster populations at 3 different ambient temperatures (18, 25, and 29 °C). Interestingly, we observed that at the low temperature of 18 °C, fly clocks respond to light perturbations more strongly, eliciting strong (type 0) PRCs and PTCs, while at moderate (25 °C) and high (29 °C) temperatures the same stimuli evoke weak (type 1) responses. This pattern of strong and weak phase resetting at low and high temperatures, respectively, renders support for the limit cycle amplitude modulation model for temperature compensation of circadian clocks.