ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2010
Heritable circadian period length in a wild bird population.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 119 citations in OpenAlex.
- Female chronotype relates to lay date but not fitness in an island population of great tits.Oecologia · 2026Article
- Partial night lighting may reduce the physiological impact of artificial light at night on captive zebra finches.Frontiers in physiology · 2025Article
- Review
- Ingrained city rhythms: flexible activity timing but more persistent circadian pace in urban birds.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- No relationship between chronotype and timing of breeding when variation in daily activity patterns across the breeding season is taken into account.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Foraging on the wing for fish while migrating over changing landscapes: traveling behaviors vary with available aquatic habitat for Caspian terns.Movement ecology · 2022Article
- Integrated molecular and behavioural data reveal deep circadian disruption in response to artificial light at night in male Great tits (Parus major).Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Locomotor activity patterns in three spider species suggest relaxed selection on endogenous circadian period and novel features of chronotype.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2020Article
- Variation in chronotype is associated with migratory timing in a songbird.Biology letters · 2019Article
- Article
- Drivers of daily movement patterns affecting an endangered vulture flight activity.BMC ecology · 2018Article
- 'Green incubation': avian offspring benefit from aromatic nest herbs through improved parental incubation behaviour.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Artificial light at night shifts daily activity patterns but not the internal clock in the great tit (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Fitness consequences of fish circadian behavioural variation in exploited marine environments.PeerJ · 2018Article
- Timing as a sexually selected trait: the right mate at the right moment.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Two sides of a coin: ecological and chronobiological perspectives of timing in the wild.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Sex and ancestry determine the free-running circadian period.Journal of sleep research · 2017Article
- The role of race and ethnicity in sleep, circadian rhythms and cardiovascular health.Sleep medicine reviews · 2017Review
- Repeatability of circadian behavioural variation revealed in free-ranging marine fish.Royal Society open science · 2017Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Timing is essential, but circadian clocks, which play a crucial role in timekeeping, are almost unaddressed in evolutionary ecology. A key property of circadian clocks is their free-running period length (τ), i.e. the time taken for a full cycle under constant conditions. Under laboratory conditions, concordance of τ with the ambient light-dark cycle confers major fitness benefits, but little is known about period length and its implications in natural populations. We therefore studied natural variation of circadian traits in a songbird, the great tit (Parus major), by recording locomotor activity of 98 hand-raised, wild-derived individuals. We found, unexpectedly, that the free-running period of this diurnal species was significantly shorter than 24 h in constant dim light. We furthermore demonstrate, to our knowledge for the first time in a wild vertebrate, ample genetic variation and high heritability (h(2) = 0.86 ± 0.24), implying that period length is potentially malleable by micro-evolutionary change. The observed, short period length may be a consequence of sexual selection, as offspring from extra-pair matings had significantly shorter free-running periods than their half-siblings from within-pair matings. These findings position circadian clocks in the 'real world' and underscore the value of using chronobiological approaches in evolutionary ecology. Evolutionary ecologists study variation and its fitness consequences, but often have difficulties relating behavioural variation to physiological mechanisms. The findings presented here open the possibility that properties of internal, circadian clocks affect performance in traits that are relevant to fitness and sexual selection.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.