Look down, look all around during the total solar eclipse

Solar eclipse. Credit: Luc Viatour (CC-BY-SA) On August 21^st, millions of people across the U.S. will have the opportunity to witness a total solar eclipse. But we won’t be the only ones taking notice—there is a good chance animals, and even some plants, will be affected by the event, too. It is not as farfetched as you might think. Many animals and plants respond to daily changes in light and temperature. Birds sing at dawn while fireflies come out at twilight. Flowers like morning glories and poppies open in the morning and close at night; others, like the bat-pollinated night-blooming cereus, open their flowers and release their fragrance well after the sun has gone down. When sunlight dims and temperatures cool during this month’s eclipse, the change might be significant enough to affect these and other organisms. Records of animals or plants reacting to past eclipses are slim. A total eclipse doesn’t happen every day, and rarer still is one that occurs over a long stretch of continuous, populated landmass, like the one coming up later this month. Taking advantage of this opportunity, scientists and educators at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco launched Life Responds, a citizen science project that asks individuals to record changes in plant or animal behavior during the eclipse.