Department of Animal Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology, PO Box 50, 6700 AB, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G128QQ, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2017 Nov 19;372(1734). doi: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0247.
Chronobiological research has seen a continuous development of novel approaches and techniques to measure rhythmicity at different levels of biological organization from locomotor activity (e.g. migratory restlessness) to physiology (e.g. temperature and hormone rhythms, and relatively recently also in genes, proteins and metabolites). However, the methodological advancements in this field have been mostly and sometimes exclusively used only in indoor laboratory settings. In parallel, there has been an unprecedented and rapid improvement in our ability to track animals and their behaviour in the wild. However, while the spatial analysis of tracking data is widespread, its temporal aspect is largely unexplored. Here, we review the tools that are available or have potential to record rhythms in the wild animals with emphasis on currently overlooked approaches and monitoring systems. We then demonstrate, in three question-driven case studies, how the integration of traditional and newer approaches can help answer novel chronobiological questions in free-living animals. Finally, we highlight unresolved issues in field chronobiology that may benefit from technological development in the future. As most of the studies in the field are descriptive, the future challenge lies in applying the diverse technologies to experimental set-ups in the wild.This article is part of the themed issue 'Wild clocks: integrating chronobiology and ecology to understand timekeeping in free-living animals'.
时间生物学研究不断发展出新颖的方法和技术，以测量从运动活动（例如迁徙不安）到生理学（例如温度和激素节律，最近也包括基因、蛋白质和代谢物）不同层次的节律性。然而，该领域的方法学进展主要且有时仅在室内实验室环境中使用。与此同时，我们追踪动物及其在野外行为的能力得到了前所未有的快速提高。然而，尽管跟踪数据的空间分析已经很普遍，但它的时间方面在很大程度上还未被探索。在这里，我们回顾了现有的或有潜力用于记录野生动物节律的工具，重点介绍了目前被忽视的方法和监测系统。然后，我们通过三个以问题为导向的案例研究展示了如何整合传统和较新的方法来帮助回答自由生活动物中新颖的时间生物学问题。最后，我们强调了野外时间生物学中尚未解决的问题，这些问题可能会受益于未来的技术发展。由于该领域的大多数研究都是描述性的，因此未来的挑战在于将多样化的技术应用于野外的实验设置中。本文是“野生生物钟：整合时间生物学和生态学以了解自由生活动物的计时”主题问题的一部分。
