Anthropogenic Disruptions and Changes to Circadian Entrainment Cues and Their Effects on Animals

Circadian rhythms are an evolutionarily adaptive trait most animals possess. The circadian clock allows animals to synchronize their internal environment with the external one to optimize ecological and physiological processes for best survival, reproduction, and well-being. To synchronize these rhythms, animals use entrainment cues from the environment such as light, food availability, temperature, social cues, and other arousal cues. However, humans, through our actions, have very rapidly disrupted and changed these environmental cues. Some instances of these disruptions are light pollution, changes in the seasonal cycles of temperature through climate change, and changes to food availability through habitat destruction. These changes to external cues have the potential to cause desynchrony of the circadian system and disrupt behavioural interactions, physiological homeostatic processes, and potentially even ecosystem processes.

Since proper entrainment of the circadian clock is evolutionarily adaptive, it is important to understand how anthropogenic changes that lead to desynchrony of such a fundamental system as the circadian rhythm affects animals. There are a wide variety of possible downstream, detrimental effects to animals and the ecosystem when external cues are mismatched to those animals have evolved to synchronize to. These effects can be seen at the individual level with poor health and welfare, at the community level with disruptions to social timing within and between species, and at the ecosystem level with potential effects on biodiversity in severe cases. By investigating the causes and effects of anthropogenic changes to environmental cues, we can aim to mitigate the detrimental effects and encourage human activity that maintains natural rhythms of common environmental cues.

Within this Research Topic we hope to present manuscripts which identify human-caused changes to circadian environmental cues and their effects on behaviour, physiology and welfare of individual animals or the effects on communities and ecosystems as the interactions and behaviours between species become mistimed. Some specific themes we would encourage would be the effects to circadian rhythms as a result of light pollution, noise pollution, seasonal onset changes from climate change, changes to food availability cues, human controlled cues in captive settings, and any other circadian entrainment cue that has been altered by human activity.

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Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Environmental cues, circadian rhythm, zeitgeber, environmental entrainment cues, anthropogenic disruptions

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