School of Biosciences and Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Chronobiology Unit, Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2017 Nov 19;372(1734). doi: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0254.
Under natural conditions, many aspects of the abiotic and biotic environment vary with time of day, season or even era, while these conditions are typically kept constant in laboratory settings. The timing information contained within the environment serves as critical timing cues for the internal biological timing system, but how this system drives daily rhythms in behaviour and physiology may also depend on the internal state of the animal. The disparity between timing of these cues in natural and laboratory conditions can result in substantial differences in the scheduling of behaviour and physiology under these conditions. In nature, temporal coordination of biological processes is critical to maximize fitness because they optimize the balance between reproduction, foraging and predation risk. Here we focus on the role of peripheral circadian clocks, and the rhythms that they drive, in enabling adaptive phenotypes. We discuss how reproduction, endocrine activity and metabolism interact with peripheral clocks, and outline the complex phenotypes arising from changes in this system. We conclude that peripheral timing is critical to adaptive plasticity of circadian organization in the field, and that we must abandon standard laboratory conditions to understand the mechanisms that underlie this plasticity which maximizes fitness under natural conditions.This article is part of the themed issue 'Wild clocks: integrating chronobiology and ecology to understand timekeeping in free-living animals'.
在自然条件下，非生物和生物环境的许多方面随时间、季节甚至时代而变化，而这些条件在实验室环境中通常保持不变。环境中包含的时间信息是内部生物时间系统的关键定时线索，但该系统如何驱动行为和生理的日常节律，也可能取决于动物的内部状态。这些线索在自然和实验室条件下的定时差异可能导致在这些条件下行为和生理的安排有很大差异。在自然界中，生物过程的时间协调对于最大限度地提高适应性至关重要，因为它们优化了繁殖、觅食和捕食风险之间的平衡。在这里，我们重点介绍外围生物钟及其驱动的节律如何使适应表型成为可能。我们讨论了繁殖、内分泌活动和新陈代谢如何与外周时钟相互作用，并概述了该系统变化所产生的复杂表型。我们得出结论，外围时间对于在野外适应生物钟组织的可塑性至关重要，我们必须放弃标准的实验室条件，以了解这种最大限度地提高自然条件下适应性的可塑性的机制。本文是主题为“野生时钟：整合时间生物学和生态学以了解自由生活动物的计时”的专刊的一部分。
