RESPONSE OF A LIVING ORGANISM, UNDER "CONSTANT CONDITIONS" INCLUDING PRESSURE, TO A BAROMETRIC-PRESSURE-CORRELATED, CYCLIC, EXTERNAL VARIABLE

Abstract

The O2-consumption of potatoes was measured under constant conditions for a 69-day period in 1955 with automatic, continuous-recording respirometers sealed in barostats. Fluctuations in rate were the rule, with single days exhibiting up to 80% increase from minimum to maximum values. The forms of the average solar-day and lunar-day cycles were found to be predominantly mirror-images of similar cycles earlier reported for a corresponding month of 1954. Two kinds of evidence were advanced suggesting that the potatoes in 1955 showed 2 types of daily cycles: (1) with an A.M. oscillation having a maximum about 6 A.M. and a minimum about 9 A.M., and (2) with an oscillation in opposite phase at this time. Of 154 respirometer-days of data, 99 were of type 1 and 55 of type 2. This amount of deviation, ignoring sign, of O2-consumption at 6 A.M. from the daily mean was also found to show a correlation with the algebraic sum of the 3 preceding 2-6 A.M. changes in barometric pressure, and no correlation in any other lead or lag relationships. The 6 P.M. value of 02-consumption, expressed as deviation from the daily mean, was correlated (negatively) only with the sum of the 3 preceding 2-6 P.M. barometric pressure changes. From these, and other described similar correlations, all highly significantly different from zero, it was concluded that the gross form of the described metabolic fluctuations are in some good measure exogenous, and that the organism is, in constant conditions, acting as an harmonic analyzer of some pressure-correlated cyclic external variable.