Endogenous Circadian Rhythms in Plant Bioelectric Signals: Cross-Station Replication and Visitor-Driven Suppression in a Public Exhibition
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biomimetics-11-00405.pdf
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7.13 MB
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338fd03ac0dccda39b71a9feed59e431
Author(s)
Gloor, Peter A.
Date Issued
June 8, 2026
Journal
Biomimetics
Publisher
MDPI
Citation
Gloor, P. A. (2026). Endogenous Circadian Rhythms in Plant Bioelectric Signals: Cross-Station Replication and Visitor-Driven Suppression in a Public Exhibition. Biomimetics, 11(6), 405.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We report a cross-station replication of endogenous circadian rhythms in plant bioelectric voltage, recorded continuously for 42 days at three independent sensor stations within a public science exhibition (Phänomena, Dietikon, Switzerland; March–April 2026). Three primrose (Primula vulgaris) stations were equipped with custom Biolingo bioelectric sensors (ESP32 + AD8232) and recorded autonomously through approximately 21,000 visitor interactions. We extracted DC-invariant spectral features from 5–10 s voltage windows (n = 78,431 quality-filtered files) and fitted two-stage cosinor models with bootstrap 95% confidence intervals. All three stations show a robust 24 h rhythm in the 1–5 Hz band power (bp1–5), with peak-to-trough amplitudes between 0.35× and 1.19× of mesor (R2med 0.72–0.87). Acrophase varies across stations from 05:00 to 11:00 local time. Critically, the rhythm survives an overnight-only restriction (18:00–09:00, no visitors) at all three stations, ruling out visitor presence as the rhythm driver. The most visitor-intensive station (faces of museum visitors triggering an emotion-recognition installation) additionally shows a sharp daytime amplitude collapse coincident with the exhibition opening at 09:00, during the hours of sustained visitor presence. This temporal coincidence is consistent with—though not by itself proof of—the cardiovascular-mechanosensory coupling characterized at single-subject resolution in a companion study. We argue that bp1–5—the spectral band most directly related to plant action-potential activity—carries an endogenous circadian signal in Primula vulgaris and that this station-level signal co-varies with sustained nearby human presence in a manner consistent with frequency-selective mechanosensory coupling, although the observational design cannot establish this mechanism. From a biomimetic perspective, this suggests that the plant’s evolved bioelectric sensing apparatus might be leveraged as a live ambient biosensor for nearby human activity, complementing the more common biomimetic approach of replicating plant sensing in synthetic devices.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics11060405
