PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Landler, Lukas
AU  - Nordmann, Gregory C.
AU  - Nimpf, Simon
AU  - Hochstoeger, Tobias
AU  - Kagerbauer, Daniel
AU  - Keays, David A.
TI  - Revised testing procedures do not elicit magnetoreceptive behavior in <em>C. elegans</em>
AID  - 10.1101/349944
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 349944
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/06/18/349944.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/06/18/349944.full
AB  - A diverse range of species is known to rely on the Earth’s magnetic field for spatial information. Vidal-Gadea et al. claimed that C. elegans are magneto-sensitive, exploiting the magnetic field to guide their burrowing behavior [1]. Our attempts to replicate their findings were unsuccessful [2], which Vidal-Gadea attributed to the satiety of the animals and the environment in which they were raised. Here, we report our repeated experiments, having adopted several suggestions proposed by Vidal-Gadea et al. [3]. We find that shortening the length of the behavioral assay and raising the animals in a Faraday cage does not result in magnetotactic behavior. We reluctantly conclude that the assays employed by Vidal-Gadea are not robust or C. elegans are not magneto-sensitive.