NBM found an excellent online article (which I have seen before but I forgot) depicting Phase-Response Curves (PRC) to injections of melatonin in humans, rodents and lizards.
Note how the shape is roughly opposite to that of a PRC to light pulses, i.e., at phases at which light elicits phase-delays, melatonin produces advances and vice versa:
The lizard PRC was actually constructed in our lab, about ten years before I joined. The article, though, gives the wrong reference to this:
Underwood, H. and M. Harless (1985). "Entrainment of the circadian activity rhythm of a lizard to melatonin injections." Physiology & Behavior 35(2): 267-70.
In that paper, lizards were entrained by daily melatonin injections. The PRC was reported in a different paper the following year:
H Underwood (1986) Circadian Rhythms in Lizards: Phase Response Curve for Melatonin, Journal of Pineal Research 3 (2), 187-196.
Update: an alert reader sends a better figure, taken from this freely available recent paper:
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Thanks! Finally that superimposed version which I've only read about, not seen before.
Now wouldn't it be nice if all studies were online in full text, not just those tantalizing abstracts??
;-)