Modeling circadian clocks in real environments

A broad range of living systems exhibit oscillations on the timescale of a day, known as circadian rhythms. These often persist even in the absence of external daily signals. These system are commonly studied in laboratory settings, which have been very effective at helping understand the structure of these networks but don't necessarily replicate the complexity of the actual stimuli that these systems evolved to respond to. We use a dynamical systems model of circadian clocks and real-world weather data to study tradeoffs in parameters in these systems, and to understand potential relationships between geography and underlying parameters and structure in circadian clocks. We then interpret this in the light of potential for migrations and the generalization of one circadian estimate in another environment.

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, through the Center for the Physics of Biological Function (PHY-1734030) and a Graduate Research Fellowship.