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Flies as models for circadian clock adaptation to environmental challenges
Author(s) -
HelfrichFörster Charlotte,
Bertolini Enrico,
Menegazzi Pamela
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
european journal of neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.346
H-Index - 206
eISSN - 1460-9568
pISSN - 0953-816X
DOI - 10.1111/ejn.14180
Subject(s) - circadian clock , adaptation (eye) , biology , subarctic climate , circadian rhythm , clock network , evolutionary biology , latitude , biological clock , bacterial circadian rhythms , chronobiology , ecology , neuroscience , geography , computer science , telecommunications , clock signal , synchronous circuit , jitter , geodesy
Life on earth is assumed to have developed in tropical regions that are characterized by regular 24 hr cycles in irradiance and temperature that remain the same throughout the seasons. All organisms developed circadian clocks that predict these environmental cycles and prepare the organisms in advance for them. A central question in chronobiology is how endogenous clocks changed in order to anticipate very different cyclical environmental conditions such as extremely short and long photoperiods existing close to the poles. Flies of the family Drosophilidae can be found all over the world—from the tropics to subarctic regions—making them unprecedented models for studying the evolutionary processes that underlie the adaptation of circadian clocks to different latitudes. This review summarizes our current understanding of these processes. We discuss evolutionary changes in the clock genes and in the clock network in the brain of different Drosophilids that may have caused behavioural adaptations to high latitudes.