Planarians Sense Simulated Microgravity and Hypergravity

Figure 5

Simulated alteration of gravity affects planarian scission rate. (a) Scheme of the groups corresponding to Experiment 2 in which scission rates were analyzed. (b) At day 1 several fissioning animals were found (red arrow, in upper images). At day 13 a higher number of small fragments were found in LDC 8 g conditions compared to controls (lower images). (c) Quantification of the fissioned animals at day 1 of the experiment shows that RPM (60°/s) decreases while LDC (8 g) increases it. (d) Quantification of the number of small fissioned fragments in relation to the number of original planarians shows a higher rate of fissioned animals under 4 g hypergravity. In the graphs error bars represent standard error of the mean. Data were analyzed by Student’s -test. ; . Differences are considered significant at .