People have long told stories about the moon’s power, from werewolves shapeshifting by the moon, to the belief that drinking water soaked with moonlight could help women conceive. And monthly rhythms appear across nature, from corals and cacti to gorillas.
But while there's lots of research showing that the daily cycles of the sun are crucial for biology, scientists have largely ignored the role of the moon – or dismissed it as pseudoscience, particularly in humans. That’s partly because there hasn’t been a convincing mechanism for how the moon might influence life on Earth - which is what my guest this week, Kristin Tessmar-Raible of the University of Vienna, is working to uncover. She studies lunar timing in marine bristleworms: four-eyed, many-legged creatures that swarm according to the phase of the moon and have light receptors buried in their brains.
Forget biological clocks, this is a biological calendar. And the fascinating thing is, she’s uncovering surprising parallels with human biology, which means what’s happening in the worms could help to reveal our own deep connection with the moon, from fertility to sleep to mental health. Jo and Kristin discuss just how far-reaching the moon’s influence may be, the colleagues who once thought she was crazy, and what it takes to change minds in science.
Kristin's home page
https://neurodevbio.univie.ac.at/tessmar-raible-research/
2024 review by Kristin & Andrés Ritter on lunar timing in biology
https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.1038/s44319-024-00196-5
Excerpt from Jo's book The Human Cosmos about the moon's influence on biology
https://www.wired.com/story/oysters-that-knew-what-time-it-was/
2021 study on lunar rhythms in women's menstrual cycles
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.abe1358
2025 study on effect of LEDs and smartphones on timing of women's menstrual cycles
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.adw4096
2024 review of links between lunar cycles, sleep and mental health
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2214756121
2021 review of links between lunar cycles and human biology
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/bies.202100054
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