Biological rhythms and animal behavior

The importance of the temporal organization of behavior is difficult to overestimate. In nature a premium is placed on animals performing responses at appropriate times of the day and seasons of the year. The authors have tried to indicate the central role of biological clocks in the integration of the animal's internal milieu and in the synchronization of these functions and of behavior to environmental periodicities. Biological clocks are inherited, manifested in the adult animal independently of specific postnatal 'learning' experiences, and provide the substrate for the inherent rhythmicity of most animal behavior. The treatment of living animals and their behavior as steady state systems, invariant across time of day, has been common in many branches of psychology and biology but can no longer be justified. As a research strategy, ignoring biorhythmicity may confound the effects of other independent variables, or at least increase the variance associated with any given experimental procedure. Biochronometry has much to offer psychologists in understanding behavior as a cyclic phenomenon whose periodicity serves important functions. By providing methods of analysis and a theoretical framework it also rovides the tools to deal with and understand the temporal organization of behavior. (208 references).